Model Airplane Club Losing Flying Field

We are the Hampshire County Radio Controllers (HCRC) model airplane club based in Hadley, Massachusetts. We are a 501c7 non-profit social organization. The primary purpose of our club is to: promote fellowship, goodwill and the general enjoyment of its members through participation in the hobby/sport of radio-controlled modeling. Membership is open to anyone interested in the purpose of this club.

For over 60 years, since approximately 1964, this club has flown our model airplanes & helicopters off a 7 acre piece of property owned by a local family and leased to us for all these years. Unfortunately, the current generation of the family have other plans for their property and have notified us that they will not be renewing our lease at the end of the 2023 year. We are basically being kicked out.

Our club, like the many Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) chartered clubs across the country, have been a positive influence to our community and also to the next generation of young men & women, some of whom have gone on to pursue careers in the aviation industry. A lot of that can be attributed to flying model airplanes with their parents that sparked that interest. Several of our young members have made successful careers in both the commercial and military industries. Some have gone on to be pilots in the U.S. Air Force or also to become commercial or private pilots. Many of our current and past members are or were military veterans themselves. Our club has hosted many RC events in recent years that are open to the public to come in and spectate our activities and some brave souls have even flown airplanes on a buddy box system with the help of a flight instructor. Many families have visited and some have left and came back with their completed membership application filled out and ready to join the club to continue the process of new people flying models and all the positive influences this hobby brings with it. As for giving back to the community, at these events we also collect human food & also pet food and toys as donations for our local charitable pantries and animal shelters.

Many AMA clubs have found themselves in this same predicament of losing their fields especially when land availability continues to shrink. Mostly they seem to have the problem of not finding a new place to relocate to and ultimately this leads to having to disband their clubs. The trend of organizations falling victim to losing their land has been picking up speed in past years all over and now we have fallen victim to this as well, sort of…….

So finally I get to the reason for this GoFundMe request and that is we, fortunately, have the opportunity to keep our beloved club alive and continue our love for this hobby. We have the opportunity to buy an adjacent/neighboring plot of property. As you know nothing is cheap and that includes buying property. We expect that one of the best positives to come from this, when we are successful in the purchase, is the fact that we will OWN our property for the first time in our club’s storied history! That would be a significant advantage for the club’s future and stability for generations to come.

Edit/Update 07/22/24:

In full disclosure, while we have indeed lost access to our leased field that was a nice spacious 7 acres of land that we used all these years, the landowner behind us that wants to sell us his 5 acres, has finished clearing it and it's just sitting there waiting for us to raise the money to purchase it (before we loose the opportunity to buy it and someone else swoops in). But what I didn't foresee when I originally wrote this story was being able fly off of a 70 foot wide strip of land that our club does own between these two parcels. It looked way too small to even consider flying off it safely and it pretty much is, but we were able to clear some trees to make a reasonable approach and have resorted to flying smaller planes and avoid cars driving past the far side of our runway accessing our old leased land. We are able to fly some planes here! It's extremely cramped but is doable. So while the threat of our club's extinction seems to have been avoided this doesn't change our desire to purchase this new property, return to the ability to fly unlimited size planes, resume holding public events again, rebuilding our membership and, most importantly, owning all of our property. I just needed to be forthcoming and transparent on our current situation. Please continue to donate. We are inching our way slowing but steadily towards our goal as we also concurrently run other in-house fundraising efforts in addition to this one.

People have asked what the purchase price of the property is. It is $90K. I have since edited our goal amount to this figure. Being my first GFM fundraiser videos I watched said to list your goal amount higher than needed (I may have gotten carried away a little bit) but this caused some confusion so I put the minimum amount we need to raise to meet our primary objective.

100% of the monies raised here as stated will be going directly to the purchase of the new 5 acre parcel of property. If we are fortunate enough to meet that primary objective, any additional funds would go towards new infrastructure needed such as land preparation, seating, fencing, storage buildings, etc. I want to thank you in advance for any amount of donation you can contribute to our plight. We are so grateful. Thank you!

Mike

HCRC President