How did your club aquire land for a flying field?

[ddierking]

We as a new club in the St Charles County, MO area are on the search for land for a flying field. I have already been shot down by the City of St Peters, even though we can continue to fly in their parks unofficially. I was talking to one of the guys in the club who told me when he lived in Michigan, landowners could get a tax break for setting aside land. I have already emailed Missouri dept of revenue to see if this available.

Its like pulling teeth around here to get landowners to allow use of their ground. I was wondering how other clubs aquired their land? Just looking for some pointers. I've already contacted AMA, but they don't find the land for you, they just give you ideas of what to say to the land owners.

Thanks,

[BarracudaHockey]

See if there's any superfund clean up sites around.

Ours is a city park we lease for 1 dollar a year and do all the upkeep on.

Also the boys in Munice can be particularly helpful in this area as far as dealing with city governments etc, might want to give their flying site assistance guru a buzz.

[WayneBrown]

We found a guy who had land sitting idle and bought him toys.
Now he's addicted. :)

[flyinfool]

We used Andy's approach.
We got a piece of flood plain that can not be used for anything else and lease it from the County parks commission for $1 per year. We never had to deal with the city, just the parks department. All improvements and upkeep are out of our pockets.

[sdlloyd]

Check around for closed or active/inactive landfills. Check in with the flting site assistance guys at AMA. They have a wealth of knowledge on locations and landfills in the area. I did a search on the web and found several in my State (Ohio). Although I had already found my site (closed citry owned landfill), I was using the info to help my case with the City. It has worked well. we have 5 acres of landing area with 25 acres or so of flyover and room to add if we continue to grow (30 members so far)with a 10 year lease and they pay us $1 /year (If we pay them they are taed on the land like $30K as it is revenue generating then).

Try the EPA superfund office in your region some of the RPM are willing to help the cause.

Call the EPA Region 7 Office and ask them for possible sites in your area. here is their contact info.

phone #913-551-7003
Toll-Free: 1-800-223-0425
Hours: 8 am to 4:30 pm, Mon - Fri.
Fax: 913-551-7066


If you need any help give me an email (slloyd@lataenv.com) and I will see if I can dredge up my landfill list. Also I do environemental cleanup work and am on landfills so I may be able to offer some technical assistance if you need any.

Once you get the land thefun starts, you do all the work to get the site and then you do all the work to keep the site.

GOOD LUCK!!!

[ddierking]

Well, I placed a call with the EPA and left them a message. I also talked with someone in charge of closed and inactive landfills. He is going to do some checking for me and get back to me. Apparently there is a closed landfill in the next county over from me being used to fly airplanes on.

[LITHIUMSTATIC]

A group of local guys about 20-30 of them want to use my land to fly on. They offered me $200 a year to use my land. That's not enough money to have a bunch of people on my land that I got to watch after. Any ideas?

[ShooShoo]

I think the money is secondary for most land owners. The AMA insurance both individual and site owner, alleviated a lot of their concerns. We also had to convince the owner that we were a responsible group that wouldn't trash the place or cause issues with neighbors.

Shawn

[Jason Chow]

we met the guy who was leaving, talked to him who we never met before, offered to sponsor his baseball team, we got the field....

[keith shaw]

Well, I placed a call with the EPA and left them a message. I also talked with someone in charge of closed and inactive landfills. He is going to do some checking for me and get back to me. Apparently there is a closed landfill in the next county over from me being used to fly airplanes on.
That's exactly the status of my club. We are planes/helis coexisting on a closed landfill. As it stands, we are a part of the Parks and Recreation Dept. The county provides a porta potty, maintained, they mow the field as needed, they pay our power bill, they pay our water bill, and they paved the road and unloading area. We, as a club paid for the sod, the shelters, tables and did all the manual labor to convert the site into the flying site it is today. BTW, the county also paid 1/2 for our paved runway which is 500 ft.x 50 ft.

[Wayne]

Finding a field is hard. Unless AMA has changed, they offered little to no assistance to us for a heli only field, other than sending some papers to read. Our county is anti-RC, and all they did was come up with excuses not to let us fly on county land (it is against the law, for real....). We've put ads in local farm papers, put flyers in farmers mail boxes, and knocked on doors.

What finally worked was when we had a drought and the local soy bean crop was not producing... I was flying in a vacant gravel mine (that the county owned but would not let us use) and the farmer drove up on an ATV to see what was going on. I gave him my sales pitch, and a few days later we had a contract to put grass on half of a 17 acre soy bean field for a few thousand dollars rent per year. We've been at that field now over 7 years. He even helped us plant the field. And now we have no BS local politics or worries about little Junior getting hurt. Although the medivac is at that gravel pit turned into ball fields often.

We still have the problem that if there ever is any problems or legal action, he will boot us off. With lawyers around here costing 400 dollars an hour, our years rent will not cover half a day for the lawyer bills.

Keep knocking on doors and do demos. Use Google earth to find decent sites.

Good luck

Wayne
www.flymha.com