There are a couple of things I neglected to mention so I would like to take this opportunity to add a little more detail.

First, if we were to get the lease there is a very good chance that all members who fly at the field and do not have a military ID (retired, active duty, dependent or civil servant) would be required to have a background check and be vetted in order to get on the property. This may or may not be required but we will have to wait and see what the Air Force says.

Second and probably most importantly, Bob Brown, Dave Mathewson and others within the AMA HQ staff have been kept in the loop for all of this so they do have some knowledge of what has transpired. During this process I discussed different approaches to the problem with our AMA Dist. VP, our AVP and the HQ staff. In the end I determined (after conferring with some senior high ranking retired military officers, our AMA VP and AVP as well as the HQ. staff) that the best path was to try to work this locally and not escalate it to DOD HQ or to our state or federal elected representatives. My thoughts on this were that while we may have been able to get the elected officials to "force" the Air Force to renew the lease at an affordable cost, the down side was that because the air force was "forced" to offer the lease, they would take every opportunity to break the lease if we violated the terms of the lease. In fact, the civilian we worked with (one of the ones that wanted us off "their property") told us that she lived in the area and if she observed us violating the airspace restrictions, she would terminate the lease immediately. Now, we go back to one of the original posts by sluggo regarding the violation of the max altitude restrictions. As he mentioned, the Navy or in our case the Air Force might not catch us but what happens on the one occasion when we were caught. I have told our club members that if they violate the requirements of the lease, they face removal from the club because it is not worth risking loss of the field because of the actions of a few.

In closing, if your club or a club you know of, is encountering problems feel free to contact me and I can discuss "lessons learned". Additionally, one of the things that came out of this process is that the AMA HQ staff have formed a team that can/will advise clubs on how to proceed if they are encountering problems with use of government property. If you are having a problem, please contact Dave Matheson or Bob Brown at AMA and ask for assistance.

Ed