qbynewbie
Pre-takeoff checklist
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- Sep 22, 2007
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Qbynewbie
This is a cross-post from the Purple Board. Diana has encouraged me to post here, too, since I'm really looking for advice and opinions. Since all of your fly-in pictures have lots of people smiling in them, I figure that POA is comprised of the world's leading experts on organizing a fly-in.
Any and all comments and advice are welcome, including "Are you out of your mind???"
I've been threatening to organize a fly-in in Glens Falls since last summer. I'm in Oregon right now, so I can't talk to the FBO about this until next week. But I think it would be fun, so I decided to start a thread and solicit ideas.
I'm thinking that a weekend in September would be good, since the weather is usually pretty good and the Fall foliage may be in good form. The weekend of September 20th is no good, since that's the weekend of the Adirondack Balloon Festival, which is a really big deal that closes the airport for three days. There may be other reasons why particular weekends are bad but I'm thinking about the weekend of September 27th right now.
The obvious airport to use is Glens Falls. It's plenty large enough to accommodate more planes than we are likely to be able to attract, has good, long and wide crossing runways and a fairly small amount of commercial traffic. There is no scheduled service there at all and there is no active control tower. The FBO is pretty good and there's a decent restaurant in the terminal. 100LL is available on the field.
However, there are also a couple of grass strips nearby, especially Argyle, which is 8 miles away. It's much smaller, with one strip that is only 2600' long. It's a very friendly, very small airport. It can be slightly challenging to find unless you use the Glens Falls VOR. The approach is slightly challenging, because of trees and hills but not too hard. It might be fun to do something at both airports, since they're really just minutes apart by air. Autogas is likely to be available at Argyle (1C3) but not likely to be at Glens Falls (GFL).
Having never been to a fly-in, I have lots of questions.
First, do people tend to look at these as something to do on a single day and return home at the end of the day? Or do most people prefer to come on a Saturday and leave on a Sunday? If the latter, accommodations might be really easy, since this is a tourist area and September is off-season. Lots should be available, from camping to motels to hotels.
Second, what do people like to do on fly-ins? What types of activities have proven most successful or most fun at other places? Do most things occur right at the local airport? Or are offsite activities included? We're just a few miles from Lake George, which opens up a fair number of offsite possibilities.
As you can all see, I'm looking for any and all suggestions. Once I get some ideas, I'll talk to the FBO and see if they are interested in supporting this idea and go from there.
Anyone who is interested in volunteering to help can sign up here.
Any and all comments and advice are welcome, including "Are you out of your mind???"
I've been threatening to organize a fly-in in Glens Falls since last summer. I'm in Oregon right now, so I can't talk to the FBO about this until next week. But I think it would be fun, so I decided to start a thread and solicit ideas.
I'm thinking that a weekend in September would be good, since the weather is usually pretty good and the Fall foliage may be in good form. The weekend of September 20th is no good, since that's the weekend of the Adirondack Balloon Festival, which is a really big deal that closes the airport for three days. There may be other reasons why particular weekends are bad but I'm thinking about the weekend of September 27th right now.
The obvious airport to use is Glens Falls. It's plenty large enough to accommodate more planes than we are likely to be able to attract, has good, long and wide crossing runways and a fairly small amount of commercial traffic. There is no scheduled service there at all and there is no active control tower. The FBO is pretty good and there's a decent restaurant in the terminal. 100LL is available on the field.
However, there are also a couple of grass strips nearby, especially Argyle, which is 8 miles away. It's much smaller, with one strip that is only 2600' long. It's a very friendly, very small airport. It can be slightly challenging to find unless you use the Glens Falls VOR. The approach is slightly challenging, because of trees and hills but not too hard. It might be fun to do something at both airports, since they're really just minutes apart by air. Autogas is likely to be available at Argyle (1C3) but not likely to be at Glens Falls (GFL).
Having never been to a fly-in, I have lots of questions.
First, do people tend to look at these as something to do on a single day and return home at the end of the day? Or do most people prefer to come on a Saturday and leave on a Sunday? If the latter, accommodations might be really easy, since this is a tourist area and September is off-season. Lots should be available, from camping to motels to hotels.
Second, what do people like to do on fly-ins? What types of activities have proven most successful or most fun at other places? Do most things occur right at the local airport? Or are offsite activities included? We're just a few miles from Lake George, which opens up a fair number of offsite possibilities.
As you can all see, I'm looking for any and all suggestions. Once I get some ideas, I'll talk to the FBO and see if they are interested in supporting this idea and go from there.
Anyone who is interested in volunteering to help can sign up here.