Sandy Creek Airpark Community Blog

We finally had a gorgeous, sunny, warm, and DRY weekend which brought out many of the planes based here and a lot of others who are frequent visitors to our local EAA chapter.  It also helped that we had our monthly EAA meeting on Saturday as well.  Because it hadn’t rained since the previous Monday, the conditions were great for getting around the field without sinking up to our axles (or wheel pants) in swamp stuff.  At one point the temperature even hit 70 degrees for a short time on Saturday and Sunday!

Living on an airpark flying your own airplane – ain’t living in America wonderful?

We had some more weather this morning – rain again.   Can’t say how much we received because I’m not at  home where the rain gauge is.  (UPDATE:  not enough to measure.)   But it’s mostly sunny now.  And it’ s forecast to be mostly sunny through the weekend!  That means that the runway may dry out enough to use for us “bigger” guys with more than just an ultralight!!!  Yippee!  I know that some of us are getting “cabin fever”.  It’s about time…

Someone at work said they had sleet near the beach last night.  I didn’t see anything like that here at the airpark.  Just cold rain.  Lots of rain.  According to my approximate reading of my precisely accurate rain gauge, we’ve received just under 1.5″ of rain (OK; maybe 1.375″  or thereabouts).  Looking at the radar, it seems most of the rain is beyond us now and there is nothing else coming our way.   I heard a report from a coworker a couple of hours ago who said they heard a report (from somewhere else) that it was snowing in Pensacola, 90 miles west of us.  Maybe it still might happen, maybe not.  Still have lots of low clouds right now.   So the revised forecast is:

Later today:  cold, wet, and cloudy
Tonight:  really cold, wet, and dark
Tomorrow:  cold, wet, and sunny.

Something must have mysteriously moved the airpark to some other part of the country because we’re obviously not in Florida anymore.  Snow is back in the forecast??  It shouldn’t be there in the first place!  This is what the forecast is now saying:

Come again some other….

NOPE. I ain’t gonna finish that. The rain, especially right before a weekend, needs simply to GO AWAY and NEVER RETURN!

I guess it’s obvious; we have yet another forecast (90% right now; earlier it was 100%) of rain for tomorrow. The earlier forecast was even calling for SNOW! Geesh! When will spring come and dry us out so we can all get our airplanes out and start using the runway again (as opposed to the taxiways)?? I just emptied the rain gauge so I can give you an “accurate” approximation of how much of that wet stuff was dumped on us when it finally stops.

If you weren’t here, and you know who you are, you missed a great Super Bowl Party.  Or was that Supper Bowl party??  Hey; it doesn’t matter who is there, you’re supposed to come for the food!  These events brings out some of the best culinary skills our neighborhood has to offer!  And the company really isn’t that bad either (usually)!

As for the game – I knew everyone would come to my way of thinking.  At first I was the only one rooting for the Saints.  By the end of the game, most everyone there was rooting for them!  I wonder why?  It must have been my exceptional skills at persuasion!!

No post full of such colorful descriptions would be complete without some incriminating photos.  So without further adieu, here they are.  Click on the photo below to see the entire gallery of photos!

Late notice – come join us at the club house for a super bowl party starting in 45 minutes at 5pm.  BYOB and BEFTS (bring enough food to share) for everyone to nibble on while they’re swapping lies…er, stories, and watching the game.  Probably more of the former than the latter!  Should have some pictures later…

It seems like I’ve just written about this before.  So far,  since early this morning, we’ve had about 1 inch of rain already.  This is going to keep our runway way too wet to use this weekend for all but maybe the ultralights.  It just doesn’t seem fair.  I haven’t been able to get my 172 out of the hangar for nearly 2 months now.  This is getting old!

Last week we had our annual meeting where we discussed, among other things, paving the runway, repairing/replacing  the culvert in front of the EAA hangar, and adding a gate to make this a gated community.  We have apparently received one paving quote so far which indicated that the work could be done by the time the old airport closes and everyone moves to the new one.  That quote seemed quite excessive plus we haven’t solicited any other competitive bids yet so we’re still waiting.  Plans for financing the upgrades also seem to be coming along.  Maybe in about a year or so we won’t have to worry about soggy runways!

I was contacted by a representative from the FAA yesterday letting me know that they’re in the process of fixing the latitude and longitude values which are stored in the FAA database (and used in all electronic databases as well).  The current numbers place the airport about one mile east of our current location.  Turns out there was one digit that must have been recorded in error which accounts for that discrepancy.  The new numbers should be updated for the April 2010 release of the Airport Facility directory and related paper and electronic databases.

YIPEEE!  People wont’ be “getting lost” when trying to find the airport!!  Now if we could only get the electronic roads and highway databases updated…