PRESIDENT’S COLUMN-Steve Gebler

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Happy Holidays and Season’s Greetings everyone! At this time of year, it’s only appropriate to reflect on the many gifts that we are given in our lives. I know that I am grateful for the many blessings that have been given to me in my life and certainly a big part of that is in the fine relationships that I have enjoyed and the wonderful facility that we have at Palomar Radio Control Flyers.

I’m often asked, “which part of the hobby do you enjoy best, building or flying”? Most people unfamiliar with our
hobby miss one of the key benefits of our club — the wonderful people that we have in it.

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN-Steve Gebler

Congratulations to all involved, but especially Jim Gallacher for producing
another great Aerotow event early in October. His ground crew was superb
and the event was well attended. If you were not able to attend, see a
highlight video of the event here: http://tinyurl.com/y8bncnc2

This Fall’s Camp Out and Night Fly was well attended on the same weekend. We had all manor of
campers, night flyers, and guests in attendance. Some highlights of the weekend were certainly the
wide variety of lighted aircraft, the awe inspiring helicopter flights, and Bill Hill’s excellent jungle
illumination aircraft system!

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN-Steve Gebler

As always, there’s a lot going on at the Palomar Radio Control Flyers!

We had a great turnout of volunteers last weekend when our new electronic gate project
led by the amazing Joe Villarreal got started. We had about a dozen hard-working volunteers
there that day to assist in the challenging trenching required to make the gate
possible. Trent “the trencher” Stadick, Dave “the digger” Bracci, and Chuck “the
reamer” Riley were especially helpful manning the jack hammer!

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN-Steve Gebler

As the weather finally begins to cool off, there are a lot of things happening at the field and for the club.

Labor Day is September 3 and the long weekend will be a great opportunity to enjoy a lot of flying with your friends. The field will likely be busy.

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN-Steve Gebler

We have so much to be grateful for as members of the Palomar RC Flyers.
An example of this is the fine instructor crew headed by Chuck “patience of a saint”
Riley. Not only do they make sure that the planes are ready, the instrucon is excellent
and they take me away from their families to give back to our hobby, but they
have to be adept at teaching a WIDE variety of potenal pilots the skills necessary to
fully enjoy the hobby in a safe manner. The crew teaches everyone from old (carefully
used) military pilots like Ray Klotz and former commercial pilots like Wayne Bonfie/
to newbies like father and son teams such as Trent and Brody Stadick (the real future of our club). By the way, Trent and Brody just did their first solo flights this week! (July 23)

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN-Steve Gebler

There’s a lot going on at the field and a lot of people to thank for their efforts.
Thanks to the hard work (and taking time off from work) to get our field repaving
right, we are grateful to David Drowns for all he does for the club.

The shade cover project is ongoing but it couldn’t have been done without a team effort
lead by the human dynamo foreman for the project, Wayne Bonfietti, and Wayne
Bendelow who hauled a lot of lumber to the sites. We had some great installation
teams to get some good shade coverage. Thanks to all that participated.

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN-Steve Gebler

Our club is a great club because of the people that you know will step up, volunteer,
and make our home away from home a better place.
Just a shout out to but a few of the folks that make Palomar Radio Control Flyers
a great place full of great people:
 

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN-Steve Gebler

As we enter May and the warmer weather, I am constantly reminded how fortunate that we are to enjoy the privilege of the ability to use Johnson Field as our home. The Pappas organization has been so generous in our ability to use the land, and now, we have come to find that we will continue to enjoy the field for the foreseeable future!

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN-Steve Gebler

It doesn’t seem to matter what the weather is at our wonderful field — the Palomar Radio Control Flyers find a way
to get in the air! We had two rainouts of the Trifecta combat event this month. I hope that all of you will be at the
field on Sunday April 8 to participate in this fun event

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN-Steve Gebler

Despite the cold mornings at the field, February has been a hot month for the club!

We had a great Trifecta Combat event with Doug Albert taking the win. We got some new comfy chairs. We saw the tremendous generosity of Patrica Pranica who gave a new plane to Greg Wilson which was destroyed at the field. We had an interesting (and somewhat terrifying) presentation on drone anti-terrorism methods by new member John Voorhees.

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN-Steve Gebler

Despite the cold mornings recently, our beautiful home away from home, Johnson Field, has been blessed with weather that would make any of our friends and family nearly anywhere else in the country envious. What a wonderful field we have!

2017 closes out with some exciting events and activities for the club. This could not have been done without the dedicated leadership of Bill Hill who is as dedicated and positive a person as I have ever met.
 

I am pleased and honored to be selected by all of you as the new Palomar Radio Control Flyers President this year. I trust that you will enjoy seeing some exciting new activities this year while respecting and enjoying all of the good things that this club has stood for over the years.

Please give a richly deserved thanks to Sean O’Connor who is departing the role of Treasurer. His replacement
will be Chuck Riley who has already become immersed in his new role.