Our field has been quite busy this past period and it seems like this condition is becoming more the norm.

To ensure that everyone enjoys their day at the field, we must all help maintain order and safety. Since we recently decided to allow canopies on a trial basis, several members are taking advantage of this and enjoying their shady palaces . In some cases however the sun shade is installed and then in front of the shade, we see equipment and aircraft which now begins to restrict the clear area between flight line and the pits, forcing vehicles delivering or picking up equipment to drive on to the active runway to get by or simply come quite close to the pilots which can be disturbing. It is recommended that if you enjoy a canopy, you keep your equipment either under or on the sides of the canopy rather than restricting the clear transit area

All our members without exception have been very diligent with regard to parking on the access road and not in the pits area and we all appreciate that. Of course our Marine hosts occasionally stop by to visit with us and they obviously bring their cars up to the pits area and they are most certainly authorized. A recent incident however occurred where an aircraft became uncontrollable and crashed into a Patrol car parked in the pits area!

Most fortunately there was only very minor damage done to the Patrol car and no problem came from that incident.

But, this could happen again regardless of how careful we may be, and therefore I would like to suggest that when we do get military visitors, we welcome them, advise them that they are of course permitted to stop wherever they desire, but most politely try to steer them off the pits area. In the case I am citing, the pilot was extremely competent and his equipment was first class and most expensive. Unfortunately the model suffered severely from the encounter with the Patrol car; most of the damage would have been avoided had we steered the Patrol car to our designated parking area. In spite of the fact that we have insurance that would probably cover damage to the auto, I don’t believe we would like to have our record of safety spoiled and have to face our Marine hosts with a problem of this nature.

Happy Flying - Jose Tellez