Everyone
As you may have gathered, we had a fantastic weekend completing the Perfo runway. I have to say, it was one of my proudest moments in the club seeing how everyone came together and supported us in seeing this project through.
Let's start with some statistics:
2 days' effort
Around 200 man hours
1287 black tiles clipped together
286 black tiles split and then re-clipped around white marker tiles
1745 white marker tiles clipped together for centreline and runway numbers
20km on the big roller rolling in the tiles
50 km on the smaller roller consolidating the runway and levelling other grass areas 1 take off
1 landing (with the last gasp of daylight!)
The whole weekend was a wonderful display of club spirit at its best and I cannot thank you all enough for coming out and for your messages of support from those who could not be there.
It would be dangerous to mention names for people to thank because I would not want to miss anyone out. However, there are some key people, without whom we simply could not have achieved this.
Robbie Mackay has been a fantastic supporter of this project in so many ways and has to be top of my list. The icing on the cake was the loan of the rollers, which were perfect for the job.
Geddes has provided huge support with his machinery throughout the life of this project from ploughing and reseeding to offloading and earth moving. Again, we could not have done it without him.
The core team of Anne, Bruce and Andy who helped with the administrative efforts to try and get a grant. Sadly unsuccessful, but a great deal of effort went into our application and this should be recognised.
All the members who brought tools and equipment to allow us to do the job, particularly Rick Phillips who went all the way home and brought his trailer out to move earth and left it with us on Sunday.
The runway is a real asset for the club and we must look after it so we will need to have some rules about its use.
NO VEHICLES are permitted to drive on it.
Aircraft may take off and land on it.
The grass topper mower is not to be used on it, nor the tractor towed roller.
Grass cuttings will need to be removed from it so we will need a different mower to do this job. I will use mine to get us going.
At last we have a surface which should ensure we have year round ability to launch the two- seaters. Here's hoping we get the weather to play with it soon.
Robert, 11 January 2017
See the gallery for a full set of pictures. Videos are available in Video section.