WimacWest

[Andre Germain]

Moved to a hobby farm early may and too busy with the property to get to rolling out the Nilex 700$ 15x300' geotextile (on the tractor's pallet forks in the image). I did finally get to mow a 300' grass section lined up with the prevailing winds. Property is 30' above surrounding farm fields, so you can fly below you!

30 seconds from my shop in the barn and same from the kitchen!

Hopefully I'll roll it out soon and get to fly for the first time this year.

[briankizner]

beautiful place. Congratulations

[Andre Germain]

Brian,

you are right on the money! See the 360 view of my *yard*, you got to use your scroll bar to see it all [to see it properly, save to disk and open it outside of your browser]. It was taken from the end of the runway, the highest point of the whole property and indeed the area. I had to decrease the resolution of the original 7000x1100 as it was 2.5MB. The shift from blue to white of the sky is because I should have removed the polarizer from my DSLR, or at least spun it so it wouldn't influence the image].

That silver thing is the observatory housing my telescopes. Two birds, one stone... dark skies for my telescopes, open skies for my EDFs, you can guess, I'm a very happy camper.

[Dwight Macdonald]

It looks like you'll be busy ... enjoy!

[Andre Germain]

Thank you Dwight, I believe I will be busy indeed.

On a side note - I checked the Wimac West club rule book, it states:

"It is mandatory to perform all takeoffs and landings from the side of the runway"



There is a no fly zone here too! Neighbouring farm is 800+ feet to the east, and lots of sheep, goats, cows, dogs, cats, rabbits, and I don't want to disturb them in anyway. Only electrics here, including *loud* EDFs (a.k.a. leaf blowers).

[Andre Germain]

Finally rolled out 200' of Nilex woven geo-textile across my farm. Despite having mowed the grass as short as I could, I'll have to wait until next year for it to die and pack down when I'll unhook one side of the runway and pull it taught. Still, I took off my F18 to the east, hair pin back for a perfect landing, first ever on this soil. I was smiling ear to ear. Sun was getting low, bad lipos all around, managed another 8 T/Os and landings, all very good. Surprising how 15' width of runway can force you to nail them. There is one problem with this material however which I haven't seen mentioned on the web, it is highly reflective so the sun glares off of it at you - solution, hop over to the other side! See the photos here.

I'm quite certain this is the only private runway with an astronomical observatory 50' from it! Never mind the barn. I can shoot landings in the morning before going to work, or whenever the weather and winds are good.

I'd like to thank all those in these forums that encouraged me to leave Wimac with my leaf blowers, couldn't have done it without you.

Cheers and farewell, 20 years of Wimac under my belt.

[Andre Germain]

Isn't it always the case? Two years has gone by and despite having a runway 15 seconds from my barn, I've done little flying. Spring 20C weather got me to the runway with the F18, tarmac soggy and undulated, no matter. It's not like WIMAC, with 5 cats, one has to ensure the runway is clear. Chewy stayed by for 15 minutes, occasionally ingressing runway.

[Andre Germain]

And unrelated to this thread, I always hated using my charger as the voltage sensing connectors are hard to reach - eBay to the rescue, 3$ for 4 extenders, some plywood, a 30 amps 12 V supply (under the table) and charging is now a pleasure!

[Andre Germain]

The board of one voted to spend the monies to dig a 200 foot trench for drainage (30$ of diesel in all), as previous years' torrential rains saw a river on the runway with undulating waves from obstacles - quite surprising!. Work took 3 days. No flying activity was reported over the period.

Rumours of an FPV shelter is next.

Happy flying Wimac.

[Andre Germain]

Google finally paid for a set of satellite scans of Wimac West - the jet runway is visible from space!

https://www.google.com/maps/place/22...!4d-74.5615801

And the property is for sale! We bought a 20 acre farm south of this place which will be more of a challenge for a runway [10 acres of maples], but I'm into quads now, so don't need them wings no more.