General Announcements

[Celwin]

Good and valid points Dando. The biggest problem that I can see is finding someone keen enough to maintain it if they don't fly there often. I know that if I were a Stanthorpe member, I'd be miffed if I was the one mowing it and flying there on my own because the Warwickians preferred to fly at their field. Since Mick hung up his transmitter (which was Jim's main reason to fly also) and Nick doesn't fly much anymore, the Stanthorpe field has been left to grow long grass. They used to mow it prior to flying. It does sound like someone is using/mowing it though. It's a bit hard to schedule a fly day there when we have such awesome facilities here now. We used to fly there frequently when we were at the drag club, due to events there and at the polocrosse field and also because nearly 1/4 of our members came from there (from memory).
You're right about other clubs being envious of our proximity to several fields/flying sites. They have to travel because they have to, due to urban sprawl. We are very lucky there.
A club in the Latrobe Valley (Victoria) had 4 or 5 sites that they maintained/claimed, spread over an hour or so drive apart. This included a gliding paddock, slope site, edge of a lake with a strip on its edge and standard fields. Some of this was inherited when smaller clubs merged, but they still had scheduled events at most of them. Large membership numbers due to dense population areas helped and many members only flew and maintained their nearest field and never saw the other fields or members.
I had a key to the Stanthorpe field's gate at one stage and flew discus launch and winch gliders after school during Summer, but had to give it back because I wasn't a local member.

From my knowledge, the only time Barclay Field would be compromised is during major polocrosse events such as next year. I predict that during that event, most of our members will be busy feeding the campers using our field and won't feel like driving to Stanthorpe after an early start each morning for 10 days. Apart from that event, there is not usually more than 1 or two events there, so the pressure to have alternative fields has reduced significantly.

If you were to maintain it (like you were doing a few years ago), that would be awesome, but I'd feel bad for you every time an event was scheduled but ended up being poorly attended.