Here are a few historical notes and photos of the
Ocean County Modelers Air Park Wiskow Field RC flying site:
Here is what this flying site looks like (as the field is constantly being enhanced!)
Back in 2003:
and in April 2005, looking at the pit from the runway:
Field Development:
This flying site is "on top" of former land fill. Our club negotiated with the local township on how we could make use of a piece of their useless property. We were given permission to have a grass runway, etc. area in-between landfill cells, so no one is actually driving or walking on top of the actual landfill cells during normal day-today operations. Due to environmental regulations, we are not allowed to pave any type of hard surface because the ground must be allowed to "breathe."
Here is what the site looked like prior to any work to convert it into a radio control model airplane club flying site:
:
Click here to see a panoramic picture of the site before we began converting
it into an RC flying site (it really did look like a desert):
This field is essentially made soft, sand-like dirt. We
obtained several truck-loads of wood chips to use as a foundation on top of the
beach-like sand. Here is a photo taken around February 1st, 2001 of some
of the mounds of wood chips, and one of our members standing in front of a
typical wood-chip mound:
Click here to view the field in one spliced-together photo showing 360 degrees of view taken from the north-east-corner of the grass runway, as of July 2001. (Note: this photo is very wide and will require use of the browser horizontal slider to view it. )
Here is the spectator/cell-phone limit rope line, the pit area, 3 out of 4 pilot flight stations and a portion of the grass runway as of July, 2001:
In July, 2001, the grass runway has been expanded in length by hydro-seeding both ends shown here with a thin layer of protective hay to allow it to grow:
The hydro-seed never grew! On the plus side, that
hydro-seed-treated area remained flatter than our grass-sod area.
A few
years later, we added a black tarp to this area .
The black tarp allows
moisture to flow through it, which makes it compliant with environmental
regulations imposed on this landfill site.
Notes regarding the following Quick Time movie:
1.Quick Time software may be required to be installed in order to run properly.
2. It was windy on the day this was recorded. Therefore, we strongly
recommend you turn your volume down before playing this video.
Click here to see a
Quick-Time movie showing the field via panning from a digital video camera in
May of 2004.
Field improvements continue to this day.
The latest
field improvement includes adding gravel to the parking lot area.
The
gravel is placed on top of a layer of tarp which is of the same material used
for the right-side portion of the runway.
Here are some photos of this
effort:
