Our 2003 Schedule Continues to Grate

By Jack Hagerty, LUNAR # 002

The schedule has been so screwed up this year that occasional fliers have been really confused. A few weeks back, one of them complained publicly on our e-mail discussion group saying that our schedule was just so much "wishful thinking." Here's my reply, updated for current events to make a valid report on the situation.

Sorry about the calendar of "wishful thinking" dates, but I'll give you the whole story, and maybe you can tell me how we could have done better. I must have really screwed up in a previous life to get this year's schedule...

Starting last summer ('02), it looked like the new houses going up across the street would be occupied within a few months. At the same time, Charles Winter told us that one of his clients owned a ranch in the Altamont hills (we keep calling it "Tracy" but it's really closer to Livermore, being just off of Grant Line Road on the east side of the Altamont Pass). They were willing to let us fly high power off of their property, although they couldn't be pinned down for a date. In August last year, soccer games bumped us twice and eventually forced us out all together. In October, Charles and I did a walk-around on the "Tracy" property to make sure it was even suitable for flying. We thought that this would lead to club flying relatively quickly, like in a couple months. It really seemed to me that our days at Robertson Park were numbered.

At the November planning meeting, we took this into account when hammering out a schedule for 2003. We thought for sure that we'd be out of Robertson (at least for High Power) by summer, but that we should have the "Tracy" field up and running. The original plan was to have a test launch there in late March or April, so we scheduled club events there starting in June. The plan was for HP ("F" and above) to be flown at Tracy while keeping LP ("E" and below) at Robertson. We split the launches with the LP at the beginning of the month and HP at the end. We admitted that our crystal ball couldn't see past summer, so we only scheduled launches for real up through September. After last year's experience we didn't even try to schedule a Robertson launch in August so put down only a Tracy launch. We felt that after September, we might be out of Robertson all together, thus we went back to single launches for the last three months not really knowing where they would be held.

That was the plan.

Well, our days at Robertson are numbered, but the number is larger than we originally thought. For reasons I don't understand (and don't really care about), the houses closest to us across the street still aren't occupied, and newer (closer) ones are being built as we speak. The people in Tracy are still friendly and still willing to let us fly, but still can't be pinned down. They were originally supposed to come out and watch a launch in autumn of last year. They finally made it out for the April night launch (which they though was really cool). LARPD mixed things up by asking us to switch some launches from early in the month to late, which, in all the confusion, I forgot to pass on to the public keepers of our calendars. Bill and Geoff are probably really tired of me sending them "emergency calendar updates" every other month.

Current status:

Calendar - The calendar shouldn't change for the rest of the year, but the locations of the launches might change. Please note that the September 27 date published in older versions of the calendar is NOT valid.

Robertson - Looks like we are OK through the rest of the year for launches as we have known them the past decade (our July launch was our 10th anniversary on that field, having started in July '93). After that, I'm sure those houses will be occupied. Even if they aren't, I've made an executive decision that there will be no more "G" and "H" flights from Robertson after December. The field (and adjoining parking lot) are big enough to support "E" flights, but I'll have to get out a map and check some distances to see if we can still fly "F".

Tracy - I had a meeting with Charles Winter to get the current status. The people want us to do another walk-around but they are currently on vacation. They are supposed to return by the end of September, and we are going to schedule another visit (those of you keeping track of this whole saga will note that this will be exactly a year from our first visit). I am going to invite some of our most active HP fliers to join us to give us an expert evaluation of the site. We will do our damnedest at that point to get a hard date commitment out of them. Either we are going to do this or we aren't. In any case, it would be a Level 1 field at best. The freeway and California Aqueduct are too close for anything larger.

Other sites - I am still open to looking at other sites. Bill Orvis has identified several in the greater Livermore area, but they all seem to go nowhere after the initial contact. We have a second potential HP site in the works that is even further out, both in time and distance, but it would be a full L2 (possibly low end L3) field.

That's where we are. It's been pretty much one continuous scheduling nightmare of shifting dates and unfulfilled commitments the whole year. I have no doubt that it "is really confusing to the uninitiated." As soon as I have any further news I will post it on the e-mail lists and hotline.

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