Sin:

I'll take you roughly through the "Escambia Model Port," where we have "Rae Fritz Field."

The site is what was a badly contaminated land fill, thanks to a bankruptcy of the polluter the ground became Escambia County property. Then came the EPA and the "Superfund," filling in over the nasties, and installing vents here and there. It will be at least 50 years before any building can be done on it.

It is mildly rolling ground, a grassy meadow, sloping down to the river at the south end. About 150 acres. We were given a lease to 50 acres on the north end. The county has put a chain link fence around the entire plot, with a partitioning fence around our area.

Driving into our area you park on a cinder lot, about 150' by 400'. To your left are our metal buuildings in a row, the two on the ends are open walled, with all weather carpet floors, these are the pit areas. The carpet, when oil soaked can be easily replaced, and being relatively soft a dropped part will be less likely to be damaged than it would be hitting the paved slab in the center building. The center building is open walled on three sides, one end is enclosed as our equipment shed. It is our "Outdoor Cafe." All three are wired for 110v power. Withing six months we'll put up two more pit buildings, one at each end.

Going past the buildings there is a barrier fence to keep runaway planes out of the pits and the cafe, then you come to the pilot stations near the runway. At each end on the runway, there is an engine starting area, with a short taxiway entering the runway at the side - the starting pads are at 90 degrees to the runway so traffic is not over them.

If you leave the parking area going in the other way you come to two control line circles, one paved, the other grass.

Not far away is the pond. The water here is clean, not to worry. roughly 150' by 600'. For boats and float fliers.

And there is an area for the model car boys' off road race track.

Finally, the 50 odd acres for model operations has its own chanlink fence.

All in all, it's pretty nice.

And now the cost.

We have a ten year renewable lease, annual cost zero. The county deprtment of parks and recreation has ceded control of the area to our local model clubs organization. And the fences have all been out up at their (county's) expense, and the access roads were also paved by the county P&R department.

One of our members is a paving contractor, the material for paving was overage from other jobs, and cost us nothing. He and some of his workers came out and did the paving as volunteers, again no cost.

Another member, a landscaping contractor, donated the sod to surround the runway. Another freebie. Our members did have to place it, but we didn't charge ourselves for the labor.

Many of our members have put things in as donations to the club, not only for this field, but the others as well. I put six dry chemical fire extinguishers in myself. No cost to the club.

The supply of cinders for the parking area? The local power company was happy for us to haul it away.

We did have to pay out cash bucks for the buildings and footings. The power wiring? Another contractor.

Since we already had insurance coverage for six fields, a simple rider added the new one to the existing policy. And as I mentioned before, we just added another field. We now have eight. Our insurance bill is one of very few continuing expenses we have, and it's not exorbitant.

Our total expenditure of cash for the entire complex has been less than $5000, due mainly to the efforts of Rae Frtiz.

Rae has worked for several years on this project, has had correspondence with not only the county administration, but also the EPA and the state government, all the way to a couple letters to and from Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida.

And we named it "Rae Frtiz Field," at the Escambia County Model Port. I suggested that since fields were supposed to be named in honor of a person's memory we should take Rae out and shoot him, but Rae objected. So we bucked tradition and put his name on it anyway.

Rae did have some assistance from others of us, but he was the driving force, the real spark plug of the project.

Almost any area will have a land fill, lok around and find it, With some work your club can do the same thing we did here.

Bill.