New Solo Venue - Airdrie Airpark

[Cagare]

EDIT:


We have settled that May 11 is acceptable for the Airdrie Airpark. We are just in the process of finalizing the written agreement but will move forward with Registration for our members only until we have finalized this agreement later this week.

Registration is now open to Members only at the following link:
https://www.motorsportreg.com/events/sasc-airdrie-solo-event-1-air-park-southern-alberta-solosport-club-615319

Please do not share this link. We are capping this at 60 participants, and we would like to leave this opportunity in place for our members first. If anything goes wrong in the final agreement with the Airpark we will refund any registrations. We don’t believe this will be the case, but we want everyone to know.
Since the primary tenant at the Airdrie Airpark is the flying club, and they primarily fly out on Saturday mornings, we cannot get access to the runway till 10:00am, and must be completely off the runway by 6:30pm. This has caused us to have to compress/change our schedule, reduce our entry cap to 60 people, and then increase fees slightly. We feel comfortable that we should be able at 6 runs with this large of a group, and wanted to plan for contingency as it is a new site.

The schedule and fees (also in the link above) are as follows:

Daily Itinerary
Airdrie Air Park
10:00am – Gates Open, drive to and park in PITS as shown on map below (20km/hr speed limit on runway) 
10:45am – Gates Close, no entry after this time (Gate is electronically locked and not manned full time during event, gate exit on request only)
11:00am - On-Site Mandatory Check-In (with timing vehicle) & Vehicle Tech Inspection Close
11:00am – Course open for walking/Guided Course Walk (aka Rookie Course Walk)/Group 1 cars may move to grid
11:40am – Mandatory Drivers Meeting - Group 1 cars must be in grid with all equipment needed to run/Group 1 Workers ready to work after meeting.
12:00pm - First car out, start of timed runs
5:30pm – Timed Runs Must Finish, Takedown & Cleanup
6:30pm – Everything must be off-site, Runway Now Active

NOTE: Anyone that has not checked in with the timing vehicle prior to 11:00am will not be allowed to run that day, no exceptions. Online registration is different from the on-site check-in with the workers in the timing vehicle.

Additional Notes about Airdrie Airpark Site:

• This is a new site for our club, some of the timing and logistics will be flexible in the day, but we cannot enter the runway until 10:00am and must vacate it completely by 6:30pm. We appreciate everyone's effort to help this event run as smooth and as quickly as possible. This time restraint is the reasoning behind the 60 vehicle cap
• Due to the configuration of the site, and the electronic code, the gate will only be manned for the start of the day and the end of the day. If you need to leave the site for any reason it may be done by request. This will be discussed at the drivers meeting once we have finalized run groups.
• There will be no lunch break, the only breaks will be between heats depending on group orientation. Please make sure to bring food with you for the day, try your best to eat prior to the start of the event and eat between running/working, again depending on group configuration.
• The site configuration is similar to Fort MacLeod that there is not free access between pit and grids, please make sure you have everything with you at your car when you bring it to grid, it will take a long time to walk back to the pits to get anything
• The portable washrooms will be at the north end of the runway, and we will be at the south, please keep this in mind throughout the day.
• Finally, please respect the site speed limit and show respect for the property as it is an active runway (which is shut down for our event).

Map of the site areas:


Airdrie Air Park Fees
•   $90 – Members Online Payment (cutoff is 60hrs before event starts)
•   $110–  Members Late Sign Up Fee (cutoff is 18hrs before event starts)
•   $110 – Non-Members Online Payment (cutoff is 60hrs before event starts)
•   $130 – Non-Members Late Sign Up Fee (cutoff is 18hrs before event starts)

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

ORIGINAL MESSAGE

We have some positive news on the venue front, but would only like to share this with members at this time.

We have received a positive reception to renting the Airdrie Airpark for events this year and potentially into the future. This is great as this venue is about 22km north of the YYC lot, and while not in Calgary it is tremendously closer than our other venues for this year. This is an active airport with a flying club and they are required to provide notice both to Transport Canada and the flying club for any shut downs of the runway. We are currently waiting on confirmation along with a formalized agreement, which we should receive on Monday of next week, that we can run an event on Saturday May 11. More details are at the bottom of this post on that.

For those of you that do not know about this airport, you can find it on google maps fairly easily. The main runway is approximately 1500m long, and 30 m wide with a small tarmac area at the south end of the runway. For comparison the Fort MacLeod Airport is 1000m long and 20 m wide. Photo of it below:



There are two downsides to this facility and it relates to club finances. The first is that the daily rental rate they have asked for is quite a bit higher than anything we have paid previously. The other is that this is an active airport with a flying club as mentioned above, and based on our discussion if we book an event we do not have the option to cancel if we do not have enough participation, or if we run into a situation like we have this upcoming weekend. This causes a risk that the club could run events where it loses money if we do not have enough participation, and also the rates for the event will be higher than previously. We expect that we will be charging $80 for club members and $100 for non club members at this site, and we still require more than 50 people to break even in this scenario when taking into account operating costs, rental, portable toilets, etc. It is our hope that through running successful, safe events and being grade A tenants we may be able to negotiate lower day rates in the future. We also have consideration for weeknight events in the future, but still at a significant cost.

So, assuming they do not have extreme contractual demands we expect to run one event there in the near future, and likely on May 11 as long as that is enough time for proper notification.

Our intention is to make this first event available, hopefully on Monday, first to club members then opening it up to the general public before the end of next week. If this first event is positive we will consider adding a few more events at this site this year.

Once we have the event available on Motorsportreg a link will be posted in this forum post for members only to use.

[Midnightsky]

This is awesome news

[Cagare]

Also, I did not mention this, but I really only intended to notify the membership here at this stage.

Please do your best not to broadcast this around. I think we can all understand how hard it is to find venues and I would like to avoid anything that messes our opportunity here.

[JamesTCallaghan]

This is encouraging! Great job those of you who have been working on our hunt for venues.

[Bitters]

Good news!

[94boosted]

This is fantastic!!! Great work guys!

At first the price seems a bit high but at the end of the day probably a wash when compared with FM or Westerner as I don't have to spend $30-40 in fuel to get there and back, not to mention nearly 3hrs of my time driving to & from.

Fingers crossed that we can dot the I's and cross the T's.

[Rubicon]

$80 for me living in Banff is a bargain compared to 6 hrs of driving time to and from as well as cost of a motel. Great news!

[Cagare]

Registration for the May 11 event is now open to Members only, the first post has been updated with the link.

Due to restrictions with their flying club we have had to make some changes to the schedule. It means we will be starting a bit later than normal, and ending slightly later than normal. It also means that we have had to reduce the amount of entrants we can have for this first event as well as a slight change in the fee structure due to this.

The goal is to get 6 runs per entrant in 2 run groups, and we wanted to be conservative this first event. We will work to make changes if we do subsequent events at this venue, once we have adjusted and the Airpark knows how we operate.

Registration will be open to the public on Thursday/Friday of this week after we have finalized the agreement.

Please ask any questions if something is not clear. Thanks!

[PedalFaster]

Does this event count towards championship points? It's titled "Solo Event 1", but not "Points Event #1" like the other points event, but the description includes an explanation of how season points work.

[Cagare]

Does this event count towards championship points? It's titled "Solo Event 1", but not "Points Event #1" like the other points event, but the description includes an explanation of how season points work.

That is the intent. Although we haven't had a chance to discuss the venue rule. Since it is a one off it likely would not be included in the venue rule and it would stay as at least 1 event at the 2 other sites.

If this event goes smoothly, and we don't lose a lot of money, we will likely have one more Championship event at this site this year as the schedule is getting quite full. These are all things that will be on the May meeting agenda for the club.

[Cagare]

We were at the site today and everything looks positive, and we collected information to allow for a course design and understand logistics at the site.. While we do not have an agreement, because their lawyer is on holiday, we have already provide our insurance info and the owner/operator has stated we are good to go.

There will be a minor schedule revision as well as a site map. I will email everyone that already registered, and we are sitting at 18 people registered when I last checked. The Motorsportreg will also be updated at the same time with this schedule/logistics info.

This will be open publicly tomorrow afternoon/evening once those changes are made and a general post to the forum and the facebook page made at that time. So, if you are thinking about registering it may be good to do so in the next few days because we aren't sure what the response will be like once it is opened up publicly.

[Cagare]

Based on our site meeting today there has been some minor revisions to schedule in the first post, and some notes about the site specific logistics items. There is also a site map which shows the approximate areas on the site.

Registration will be open publicly tomorrow, and public posts will be made at that time.

[John in Calgary]

Will we also be trying to squeeze 2019 tech in at this event too, or will we be trying to make the most of the event time and defer tech to the first event down at Ft. McLeod?

[Cagare]

Will we also be trying to squeeze 2019 tech in at this event too, or will we be trying to make the most of the event time and defer tech to the first event down at Ft. McLeod?

No, we will be doing tech at this event. We are currently discussing how best to handle that, stay tuned.

[Cagare]

Just an update since we have had our last event there.

The owner was happy with how the event ran. As you can already tell we have been able to agree to some additional events, with a few practice evenings as well. We have been able to secure an earlier time to have access to the runway. This was based on scheduling our events further out in time which would allow them more time for notice.

Currently fee structure and entry cap will stay as is but we will be discussing the possibility of raising it to 70 entrants, but we want to ensure we can run a smooth event.

The practice events will be open to club members only as we will only and we have not settled on an entry cap or price for those yet. We are still finalizing the overall cost for the remaining events for this season at that venue.

To support the ever increasing costs to our club, both in this venue and to maintain our equipment and storage we have raised the event prices for other venues as well slightly. These are still in line with what other clubs charge at these venues, and it will continue to allow us to operate in venues like Airdrie for the foreseeable future.

Also to add, we have cancelled two Westerner events to hold those at Airdrie. We still feel that we need to maintain a relationship with the Westerner and will still host some events there for the foreseeable future. I would appreciate everyone doing what they can to support us in maintaining that relationship by continuing to run there.

Thanks to everyone who hustled that day to help show the organized we are as a group. I think we made a positive impression which has allowed us the possibility to continue to rent into the future.