Here are a few pictures of our flying site, showing the "before" and "after" views. Click on the small pictures to bring up a larger version. Check HERE for an aerial view of the site.

Before: The white sticks mark the boundary of the planned path leading from the car park to the runway.

During: One of the Himacs rolls into action. This one is 12 tons and the other was 32 tons.

After: This shows the actual 60m x 3m path leading from the car park to the runway. This also serves as the pits area. The starter box can just be seen on the left hand side near the far end. The runway runs from East to West at the far end of this path. Pilots fly with their back to the sun.

Before: This is the original grass area with various drains. The first idea was for Astro Turf but the preperation was just the same as for Tarmac. Concrete was considered to be too hard on the models.

During. Here the lorry feeds to spreader to lay the bottoming. This was repeated for the top surface.

Before:

After: Our current gate and entrance. the drive has now changed from grass to recycled road plannings. The gates have been moved back 10 metres to give a safer entry / exit from the site.

The grass runway. First you dig out the old peat. Then you fire in about 60 tons of crushed roof tiles to act as drainage, then you cover it up with 60 tons of new top soil.

Then you level it, rotovate it, and finally drag a ladder, loaded down with heavy boulders, up and down it to get it level. Sow the grass seed, pray for a nice mixture of rain, sun and humidity, and hey presto - a new grass runway. Well done the runway team.

Unfortunately, the field is also used by cattle. Here is the fence team putting in the first of 100 fence posts for the electric fence.

And the last one. Well done the fence team. The fence has 2 "gates" in it where the fence wire can be dropped to allow people through.