​July 2023                  

   

On Saturday, July 15, flying resumed at Fairview Park for the first time in 3 ½ years. Hooray! The runway, pits, and kiosk required some maintenance, since only minimal kiosk maintenance was able to be performed during the 3.5 years of downtime. A significant amount of the invasive black mustard and Russian thistle plants were removed from the pits and runway due to the large amount of rainfall in January and March of this year. HSS worked with the City to identify the runway boundaries, and City staff and biologists surveyed the site before any maintenance was performed. Over 25 members of HSS and the community showed up to help clear the brush by hand, similar to how we have cleared brush at Fairview Park restoration events over the last 18 months. Enough was cleared in order to get a few flights in. A BIG Thank You to all who helped! We also want to thank the members of the City Council and the CostaAmazing community members, who pushed to get the flying field reopened, and the parks staff, who re-wrote the field rules per Council direction. Almost everyone that walked by on our first flight day welcomed back the airplanes and the re-opening of the flying field. On July 29th, we had the second fly day of the year. It was very successful. A number of the local youth also flew the simulator that was set up at the field. The field is open on the First and Third Saturdays of every month!