AMA/ Nats grass field upgrade

[Dave_Trible]

Tom Dixon is spearheading a campaign to get concrete center pads poured on the three north grass circles we use for practice and holding the Nats unofficial events.  He is getting positive buy in from Chad at AMA .  “WE” will pay for the work.  Tom is throwing some cash at it and I’m in for a couple hundred.  Who else will help us?

Dave

[Joe Gilbert]

Colleen and I  in also.

[James Lee]

Dave
I'm in.
Jim

[Gordon Van Tighem]

Although I will probably never get to attend the site, I’ll send a few $$ as I enjoy the annual intrigue seeing the activities at the Nats. (only made it once in 1977)
G

[Dave_Trible]

I can toss in a few bucks. Where and when do we send the loot? I hope we don't get pins and paper plaques like the AMA sent me after donating to the museum many years ago. All that cost more than my donation.

Ty I don’t know if that has been sorted.  I’ll get ahold of Tom and let everyone know.

Dave

[Ken Culbertson]

Count me in for a few bucks.  I haven't made the Nats since 1964 but it is numbers 1 - 5 on my bucket list.
Will someone involved have a PayPal account or Zelle maybe?
Ken

[Joseph Patterson]

  I'm in too if that's what it takes. I want to thank Joe Gilbert, Tom Dixon, and you Dave for talking it up with Chad Budreau about the circle centers. I think it may happen!!
       Doug   

[Dan McEntee]

   Our club put in two new center pads for our carrier circle a few years ago, a 6 foot pad and 9 foot diameter pad, and total cost of the Quick-Crete, mixer rental and such came to about $500 all in and the club did the work. We put these right on top of the old ones that had sunk into the ground so they had a good base already and just tossed in any kind of wire mesh anyone could find for re-enforcement. I'm guessing that if they have them professionally done it would be about $1000 to $1500 per pad. I would make the pads as large as practical. Maybe 8 to 9 feet diameter to allow for some room to step back, and 4" thick. Make them slightly above grade and back fill up to the edge to remove trip hazard, and make them have a slight crown to them so they drain when it rains. Broom finish to prevent slipping when they do get wet. If they are gonna do it, do it right!
  Type at you later,
   Dan McEntee

[Crist Rigotti]

Count me in!

[BillLee]

Any improvement to the 600x600 grass pad will have to meet the approval of the primary users: RC. The proposal to add concrete center pads that has been made several times in the past was always denied since the concrete pads would damage the tow lines for the RC soaring users.

Good luck!

[Dave_Trible]

Hi Bill.  There is already positive feedback from Chad (Executive Director) about this.  It IS on just a narrow strip of that field so shouldn’t be too much in the way of other stuff.  I will admit perhaps a bit of the willingness to help may have been triggered by a few of us getting on to Chad about something else while he visited us on the field.  Also the understanding that the resurface of the LPad (used by a lot of RC too) was paid for by a CL member’s estate. We are also offering to pay for most if not all of these new improvements ourselves,  not asking the AMA EC to cough up the dough.  I don’t know what it will take to get work at McCool- I’d guess more lobbying and perhaps trying to help fund them.  I’d probably try pulling together the groups who use that site and work up a joint plan....

Dave

[Joe Gilbert]

There are pads already there for combat.

[BillLee]

There are pads already there for combat.

Joe, those pads are NOT on the 600x600 as I understsand, but off go the west in the raw land. It was proposed many years ago to put them on the 600x600 and it was shot down due to the multi-use of that pad, but off to the side was o.k.

Bill