Flying Field Construction (by Ken Isaac)

For almost 40 years the RC pilots in this area have flown on a RC runway located on Ft. Sill, Ok. In 2007 the Army informed us that they would be reusing the land to make room to house new units relocation to Ft. Sill. On the week of Christmas 2007 the bulldozers went to work and officially removed our old runway. Facing the cold harsh reality of not having a place to fly the pilots of this area banded together and got to work finding a new location. In just a little bit over 6 weeks we not only built a new flying field, but we also formed and chartered a new AMA club (for many reasons we did not have a club while flying on Ft. Sill). This took a lot of effort on the part of all the members of LAFFS and each and every one of them is proud of what we have built for ourselves. Please take a few minutes and look over the pictures of our getting this new field in and built.

First Work Day

On February 2, 2008 the Lawton Area Fun Flyers had their first work day at the new field location. Prior to the work day the area for the runway had already been scraped and leveled, and the ProPex material for the runway had been delivered on site. We had a fantastic turn out of all the members of LAFFS as well as a few wives and kids. Our main goal for this work day was to get all of the Propex that we obtained from the Elk City club laid out and moved into position. We were able to identify all of the material we would use for the runway and placed in in position. We also had enough material to set up a morning flying pit and a taxiway out to the field. A decision was made to construct a “Y” shaped taxiway in order to accommodate planes entering and exiting the runway. After we were satisfied with position of all of the ProPex pieces we caculated how many turf staples we were going to need to secure the entire runway, and then the pieces were rolled up and left in place until the next work day.

Field Progress

After the first work day for LAFFS we identified areas that needed more dirt work and mowing. Jerry Knight came back out to the field on February 3rd, 2008 and completed the work. the work completed included expanding the apron area around the runway, cutting out an evening parking and pit area on the west side of the runway, clearing and leveling the pit area and taxiway for the morning pit on the east side of the runway, cutting out and leveling an area for heli flying on the east side of the runway, cutting out and leveling a parking area large enough for both pilot and spectator parking, cleaning up and leveling the existing road up to the field, and cutting a new road which leads directly into the parking area. I stopped by on Sunday to take a look and all I could say was “WOW”, it makes a huge improvement to the entire area.

South of runway looking at evening pits (west of runway)

South of runway looking at heli fly area, morning pits, and parking (east of ruway)

South of runway looking at heli fly area (east of runway)

South of runway looking at heli fly area and access road (east of runway)

South of runway looking at morning pits and parking (east of runway)

South end of runway looking north down runway

South end of runway looking at evening pit area (west of runway)

South end of runway looking at access road. This is the original path cut. Will be used to access evening pits (east of runway)

Middle of runway looking at parking area (east of runway)

Middle of runway looking at parking area and heli fly area (east of runway)

Evening pit area looking at south end of the runway

Evening pit area looking at morning pit area (east of runway)

North end of runway looking south down runway

North end of runway looking at evening pit area (west of runway)

North of runway looking at runway and evening pit area (west of runway)

Morning pit area looking into evening pit area (west of runway)

Morning pit area looking at heli fly area (east of runway)

Middle of runway looking at morning pit area and parking area (east of runway)

Middle of runway looking at heli fly area (east of runway)

Middle of runway looking at parking area. Notice new access road cut. (east of runway)

South end of runway looking at morning pit area (east of runway)

South end of runway looking at heli fly area and parking area (east of runway)

February 9th, 2008

Wow!!!! What a day. Just in case anybody forgot, here’s what the field looked like when we started this morning.

But it doesn’t look anything like that anymore!!!! In fact, it looks just a little bit like a RC flying runway. There were some doubts at the beginning of the day on how much we could get done, but as the day ended everybody was totally shocked at the amount of work that did get accomplished. Everybody that showed up rolled up their sleeves and got to work. When the day was over all of the main runway was in place and at least partially tacked down with staples. We will still need to go back tomorrow and finish putting staples in on all of the runway pieces, and we also need to install and tack down the pits and taxiway for the morning side pits. At the end of the day we still had enough extra material for patches on the runway (yes, we need to do that tomorrow as well) as well as a very nice piece for a heli pad in the helicopter training area. The material is supposed to shrink tight in the heat and sun, and even in the cool 60° weather today we saw portions of the runway start to tighten up. The first good day of sun and some warm weather should tighten it up like a drum! All in all it was an outstanding day of work, and it shows!!!

Jerry Knight holds the material down as Trevor Strupp secures it with a staple

Jerry Chinnow and Steve Jakubiszyn work on the runway material

The crew works on putting down the last center strip of material

The center strip is in place, 1/3 of the runway is down

Trevor Strupp and his kids, Tyler 5 and Hailey 3, come out to help daddy build the runway

Tyler Strupp shows his dad how to put the staples in the runway

The crew hard at work putting down one side of the runway

The last piece of the main runway going in.

All the pieces are in and down. All that is left is final staples and building the pits

February 10th, 2008

Sunday turned out to be a much colder day to work than Saturday was, but we still had a good turn out for getting more work done. We worked on getting more staples into the runway to better secure it. On Saturday that last pieces we placed were held down with enough staples to keep the material in place. We worked on filling in those staples by putting down “tweeners” (staples placed between what was put down at first). We will need to purchase some more staples to fully secure the runway, but for the most part it is complete.

We also placed the morning pits today. We were hoping to put the pits directly in the center of the runway, but because of some deep washes in that area we had to more the pits a bit south of center. We place one taxiway out of the pits and angled it so that it enters the runway at almost the center point of the runway. The second taxiway placed into the pits. This gives us two taxiways in and out of the pits, which will serve has an entry and exit for the runway.

LAFFS

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