BOY IS IT HOT! As I write this, 100° temperatures have been the norm for Texas and the Southeast. Flying is tough, unless you get to the field early or very late in the day. However, it is now August and cooler days are ahead—I hope!
I received an email from AMA member James Holland. He has a very interesting flying site that I thought you might want to read about! Intel Corporation now has a new flying club!
Mr. Holland wrote:
“I work at the Intel Corp in DuPont, Washington. Intel has an initiative called ‘great place to work.’ Part of this initiative is to develop ‘fun-teams.’ Several have already developed here such as kayaking/rafting, golf, soccer, basketball, photography club, dancing, and several other start-up teams. Several of us RC pilots saw this as a unique opportunity …
“After initial negotiations with the fun-team managers, we have started an RC fun-team called Intel RC DuPont Group! (We may change the name as the team evolves.) We fly on a vacant corner lot on Intel property during our lunch hour. It is a football field-size area surrounded by trees and very safely suitable for park flyer-size electric aircraft.
“Our team has already grown to include about 15 members, and several active pilots who fly every day. We have based our safety rules around AMA safety codes. Since we are flying on Intel property, we are covered under the Intel insurance for the site.
“But, I have been wondering lately if AMA membership could bring about some new opportunities for us? We are unique in the fact that we are all Intel employees. I don’t know of many other companies which offer this as a benefit (a flying site). We want to ‘play by the rules’ so it remains safe and can continue to grow.
“Lately we have been thinking of ways to attract more attention to our group, and have come up with the idea of fun-fly events, or open-house type events where we have training aircraft and instructor pilots to give introductory flights.
“I’m not asking for anything in particular … I just wanted to see if AMA has a stance on these types of clubs or if AMA can provide anything to offer to this type of employer-sponsored club? We literally are just getting off the ground now, and don’t want to make a wrong step. Any thoughts or helpful/constructive comments you may have regarding this new fun-team would be greatly appreciated!
“I look forward to any reply from AMA. Thanks very much for your time!”
I think you have a really cool situation here with Intel, such that AMA is interested in working with other companies to persuade them to create similar clubs/flying sites. We would be especially interested in how the Intel management views this and why they see fun-teams as an important tool for the company.
We think you have identified an area that AMA should focus on to help both the company as well as AMA.
I would like to hear from other AMA members about similar situations that you might have at your workplace. Please e-mail me at FSAC@modelaircraft.org.
See you at the field!