Model Airplanes

The Charlotte Aeromodelers Club is a group of about 135 radio-controlled airplane enthusiasts who meet every weekend, and many weekdays, to fly model planes.

Members, from all around the Charlotte region, bring their planes to the McCracken Aerodome, near the intersection of N.C. 218 and N.C. 200, in Union County. The club has leased five acres of Louann McCracken’s 73-acre family farm. Ducks swim and cows wade in the pond while radio-controlled planes fly nearby. The planes – powered by gas, nitro fuel, or electricity – don’t make much noise and the cows don’t seem to mind.

The club has built a runway with five platforms or pilot stations, a covered shelter with rocking chairs for spectators, a gravel parking lot, and a weather station where pilots can monitor atmospheric conditions. They also hold monthly meetings the first Tuesday of each month to discuss club business and upcoming events.

Club president John Davis said flying RC planes is a hobby that can be enjoyed by all ages. Members in the club range in age from 7 to 80-plus.

“Half of our members are between the ages of 19 and 64. Thirty percent are over 65 and twenty percent are junior members, under 18. We’ve got kids as young as 7 that can fly as well as an adult,” Davis said.

The hobby is a combination of building planes, honing flying skills, enjoying the outdoors and making new friends.

Club treasurer Dave Werts, a five-year veteran of RC flying, puts

Article source: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/community/south-charlotte/article82013152.html

If it flies, hovers or whirs through the air, it will be at the Sauk Prairie Airport Fly-In on June 11 in Prairie du Sac.

The event will include airplane and helicopter rides, drone demonstrations and tours of the Vietnam era U.S. army tank that is part of the airport’s Veterans Memorial along Highway 12 that will be rededicated that day after a group of tankers has worked to refurbish it.

There also will be music, vendors and an open house at the neighboring Sauk Prairie Animal Hospital, which will hold dog agility demonstrations.

Todd Baker of the Eagle Inn and Prairie House restaurants provides the breakfast and lunch offerings.

The event is held every two years to benefit the airport, a non-profit organization, governed by a seven-member board of directors. While it’s a private airport, it is available to private or corporate aircraft operations coming into the area, and local military functions.

Crops to runway

Once a farm field of crops, the land is leased from the town of Prairie du Sac, and was developed and is maintained and sustained mostly by volunteers.

The airport has been in existence since 1963 when the late Milton Zech, a pilot in the area, signed a 99-year lease with the town.

Through the years, hangars and a runway were built. In 2005, Mueller Sports Medicine founder Curt Mueller purchased the buildings on the airport grounds. In 2006, he built large hangar to add corporate flights as a way to increase business by traveling around the Midwest and eastern parts of

Article source: http://www.wiscnews.com/saukprairieeagle/news/local/article_5553a325-b945-5ced-a0a0-f6ad4f1a324d.html

New Age Dome Construction will begin construction of a wooden dome factory in Tuscaloosa this week, where residential, commercial and storm shelter dome building components will be made. Company owner John Johnson said he expects the building to be completed in August.

The 2,796 square-foot, 28 foot-tall factory that will be located on Southside Drive can hold between 500 and 900 people in the event of a tornado, and Johnson said he plans to open it up to the public during tornadic weather.

“I’ve traveled the world, and this place gets more tornadoes and damaging winds than anywhere I’ve ever lived,” Johnson said.

The factory will include an intake dome for raw materials and a component storage dome for processed materials that will be connected by a 350 square-foot processing area.

The 72 triangular components of each dome structure will be made using 2-by-8 inch wood and two layers of three-quarter-inch plywood on top of a 14-gauge steel liner up to a point, which are the requirements of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for wooden dome structures.

Each panel has a shear rating — the twisting or wrenching effect caused by high winds or impact from large objects — of 400,000 pounds.

Jerry Miller said that when a tornado hit the Woodland Forrest area about two years ago, he and his family didn’t hear anything — no howling winds, no snapping trees, nothing.

They hid in the underground portion of their house, a wooden geometric dome building that was built on the site where a tornado had

Article source: http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20160604/NEWS/160609890/-1/tout-rss

In northern climes, dead leaves, gardeners bringing their plants inside and children praying for school closures all signal one thing: Winter is blowing in hard and mean.

Here in Arizona, they mark something else. It’s not winter. It’s summer. The leaves are curling up and dying of heat. Gardeners bring in their plants, fearing not frost but the first truly hot day. And when children supplicate a higher power for bad weather, they’re praying for school-shuttering monsoons.

Arizona State University’s Center for Biology and Society in Tempe as he shelled palo verde beans in his kitchen. He, too, sees the signs of summer’s approach: The late-spring migrating birds in his backyard are almost all gone, along with his students and every snowbird senior citizen that can afford to pack up and roll to cooler summer RV pads.

Yuma is the driest, sunniest and hottest major city in a hot state. Average daily high temperatures hit 100 degrees here in June and don’t look back for the better part of four months.

See more of our top stories on Facebook

That means anything outdoors that doesn’t include a pool or a lake is pretty much out of the question. Goodbye bike rides, adios trail running, and so long … sword fights?