MAJSteve
Posts: 322
Joined: 1/26/2002
From: Baghdad, USA
Status: offline
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Runway: 70 x 600 asphalt on top of Class 2 base (what the whole desert is made of). Price $43,000. We did the rough grading and the contractor did even more, and the finish grading. We rolled the strip for a week with a water truck and about 100,000 gallons of water (another benefactor). This price was basically at cost + a small amount for the contractor - he liked the idea.
The field costs us essentially nothing (county park) but the county has not put a dime into it besides a 24" square bronze plaque on a concrete base ($4,000) listing all the country people who wanted to be on it, and nothing about the club that spent all the money, sweated out the details, and blistered their hands in 100+ degree weather for 6 weeks.
We considered grass (too much maintance here in the desert), concrete (twice as expensive) and matting (too porous). Since the kitty had been growing for 10 years, it was capable of paying for the strip with a lot of additional financial help from the members. We've since put in a 30 x 230 concrete pit area (county spilled fuel requirement), commercial shade structure (those square awnings they have at car dealerships), and are putting in a shipping container for a building.
The club has been awarded a "10% of the cost" grant from AMA flying site program which has basically kept us solvent. We still recieve the occasional donation (a water truck, a small street sweeper) and we write tax benefit receipts for those. We're keeping the dues at $150/yr ($65 for seasonal flyers). When we have the improvements we've planned, we'll probably drop the dues to the continuing members and charge an initiation fee.
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Building a runway - 
