Saddlebum

The Hampshire County Radio Controllers (Hadley, MA) is considering installing a geotextile runway and would like to visit any New England club who has already installed one.

We are looking at materials like PetroMat, GeoTex and ProPex.

Do you know of any New England club who has a Geotextile runway?

Please respond in this thread, or PM me if you prefer.

Thanks
...The Bum

Saddlebum

Anybody?

Grasshopper

Not in the North East, but we just installed one at our club in Joplin, MO. I'm sure some of the guys there would be happy to give you info on how it was done if that would help. It's 75' wide by 300' long.

Here's a link to the photo album on our club web site. http://joplinrcclub.webs.com/apps/ph...lbumid=9850278

Saddlebum

GREAT pics Grasshopper, thanks. You guys did a first class job.

What I was hoping to do was to be able to visit an installed site which is why I asked about New England but I will definately keep your offer in mind as we get closer to our actual installation (next Spring).

Thanks
...The Bum

Saddlebum

How about New York or Pennsylvania?

Any Geotextile Runways there?

janyceb85

spam

CHELLIE

spam removed

reported

Larry3215

Did youguys ever get to see a geotex runway?

We have put down two geotex runways in the last 9 years at our club.

Id highly recommend you NOT use petromat. The propex type woven materials are a lot stronger and most of them also have better UV ratings. Costs may be slightly higher though. I think the propex types install easier too but thats just based on word from other clubs that have used petromat.

The problem is that Petromat is made like fiberglass mat - the fibers run in random directions and are very short. The material is kind of fuzzy when new.

The propex on the other hand is actually a woven fabric. Its much more resistant to tearing and having holes punched into it. It also seems to stay shrunk tight better. Plus, like I said, it will likely have a better UV rating which means it will last longer in sunlight before breaking down.

We replaced our runway after 8 years more because we did a poor job on prepping the base under the runway than because the fabric was too old. It had collected a lot of tears over the years from bad landings, but those are easily repaired.

Our problem was water runoff had created many large dips, holes and bumps in the ground under the runway. In many places it was like landing on a trampoline!

Id highly recommend you spend extra money on grading and compacting the soil beneath the runway. We even added a layer of gravel this time and compacted that. After one year its really noticeable how much better the runway is with a good base.

When I was doing the research on our runway, that was the most common thing I heard from other clubs that had done it - they wished they had done MORE on prepping the soil beneath the cloth.

Saddlebum

Thanks for the input, Larry. What you say is VERY useful.

I've been in contact with Tony Stillman AMA Flying Site Assistance Coordinator and he says this product (below) is what many of the Clubs reporting back to him are using.

http://www.usfabricsinc.com/products...ing-geotextile

What do you think?

...The Bum

Larry3215

I lost all my old files when my laptop dies, but Im pretty sure thats the type of fabric we used. Our was a different brand, but the specs are almost exactly the same from my memory.

There are several variations in roll length, width that you can get from different mfg's. id check locally and see what the price is - including delivery! Those rolls are very heavy - a few hundred pounds each. when we called around we found one supplier that was further away than the others, and had a slightly different fabric that was more expensive per roll, but they had free delivery which meant a savings over all.

The one we ended up with was #500 or #520? I cant recall now

Saddlebum

Thanks again, Larry. Now all I have to do is convince all the "Old Crusties" that run my Club that there is a future in this electric stuff and it's not just a passing fad.

...The Bum

RCFlyer44

Me and another rep from our club drove about 60 miles away to find a club with a geotextile mat because our club was considering it, but the gentleman who met us wasn't overly impressed with their mat and said they have had to re-do it a few times over the past 4 years because once the grass and weeds underneath died there was no root structure to hold the soil together and they had erosion, now their runway is on a pretty good incline so may not happen on a very flat and already level runway.

Also it had split from it shrinking and they had made several repairs. After visiting this club we decided to report that it wasn't a good idea.

Totally different climates though and I am not sure what brand of material was used, we decided not to investigate further after this visit.

gramps2361

Bum I wish they would do this at our club even the big gassers nose over sometimes. Can't convince them to upgrade the site either good luck convincing them to go with it. Your runway is better than ours flew off of yours one time makes ours look real poor.

John

Larry3215

Dont get me started on "Old Crusties"!!!!!!!!!! Our club is run by the oldest, cheapest, stingiest, most conservative, most short sited OLD FARTS ever!

It took 3 years of arguing and me getting half the younger members - who never go to meetings - to show up at a meeting and force a vote. The vast majority of the club wanted the new runway but seldom went to meetings, so the old farts were continuing to "save the clubs money".

Once the vote went ahead to do it, then the next battle was HOW to do it. The main points of the battle were again based on money.

The club had over $15,000 in the bank and NO PLANS to spend it on anything!!! The runway was going to cost a max of about $9k if we did a super prep job on the sub-soil and hired almost all the work out to contractors. We have a had time getting good turnout to work parties.

Oh the crying over spending the money!! I finally won and lost that battle. We ended up doing a fair job on soil prep - lite grading, laying down gravel and then compacting that. We really should have done more grading to reduce water running across the runway, but NO we saved almost $700 by doing it half assed. Then on top of that, they decided to make the runway narrower than our original runway! That saved us a whopping $2K - but wait! It didnt really save nearly that muchg because we had to fill in the missing area by more grading and planting with grass, Then we couldnt get members to bring enough jugs of eater to water that grass so we had to hire outside water trucks to come in. i think we managed to "save" $500 at most and ended up with a runway 1/4 smaller than the original.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! I AM and old fart and I HATE old farts! We have no business making money decisions!

That was probably the PetroMat product. It tears a lot more easily then the woven fabrics and doesnt shrink as well.

We fly everything from foamies to 40% IMAC gassers regularly off our fabric runway.

I personally think its the best cheap runway you can get. Beats dirt or grass by a mile. I even like it beyyer than asphalt or concrete because when you nose over on one of those you always get damage to the model. the fabric is very forgiving.

Plus its the easiest, cheapest runway to up keep and repair.

Bald Paul

Now you're starting to scare me! OTOH, it seems I'll have a perfect excuse for a not-so-perfect landing!

gramps2361

It isn't to bad as long as you have 5" to 6" wheels. Doesn't look to scale though on my 36" Tiger Moth though.


Naw not that bad most of it is taxing back. My small stuff I hand launch and kinda hover in for a landing.

RickSide

Saddle did your club ever put this in? I'd love to see how it turned out and if you wouldn't mind sharing the approximate cost I'd appreciate it.

We have some of those Crusties at our club,too. They don't want anything to change and progress is a dirty word. Sadly they don't see how that attitude contributes to shirking memberships and the rapidly approaching need to increase dues to uncomfortable levels just to maintain the field as it is.

Electrics and the people that fly them are a very major part of the future. They also provide an inexpensive entry point to the hobby. New hobbyists means potential new members for those clubs willing to invest in their futures.

Saddlebum

Hi Rick;

No.. the Crusties vetoed it.

I did my best to show them the hobby is changing but finally gave up. Thye crapped all over me for flying electric and told me to "buy bigger wheels" so I stopped all my volunteer work.

Now I just go, fly and go home.

RickSide

Sad to hear that Saddlebum,

Got a similar answer from our Vp about a paved/hard surface for those of us (a rapidly growing number) flying electric. Was told he "wouldn't want it" on the field.

Which I took to mean the club no longer wanted my membership. Sadly, it seems that's the path they're taking as membership is in decline and the youngest/newest pilots are coming in flying electric and they're looking down their noses at them and not considering the future and where the hobby is going.

Thanks for the info.

Saddlebum

Message me and let's talk.

kyleservicetech

H'mmm
That's sad to hear. The club I belong to has a mix of electric, glow and gassers. Not to many are flying the 40 - 60 glow power models anymore. They've gone to the smaller gasoline powered units in this size.

Or, they've gone to electric power, and are getting better performance. Once the wind gets up to 15-20 MPH or so, you should see those electric jet rockets come out of the woodwork. Club members that fly the 60 cc gassers are also flying those electric jets. And having a real ball with them.

kyleservicetech

Hi Larry
I see this is an old posting, but next time you're in Walmart or similar store, take a look at those external USB connected hard drives for your computers. You can get one for under $100 nowdays. Mine has 1 Tb, (1000 Gigabytes). Just plug it into your USB port on occasion, and using the Windows commands (or similar on other type computers) and copy important files to the external drive. When it's done copying, unplug the external drive and put it into a safe place.

As for me, I'd just copied all my important files to one of those drives, and two weeks later got hit by a ransomware virus that completely locked up my computer. Everything was blocked, even the safe mode. Took about an hour to copy all my photos, computer programs, newsletters and similar stuff to my new PC.

Things to look for on an external drive is one about the size of a hard cover book. These use standard drives with a USB converter inside them. Rumor has it those tiny drives have reliability problems.

RickSide

Pm sent.