The event director this year is Abram Van Dover.
I spoke with him on the phone the other day (I don't believe he is on
this list) about the helium and some other topics.
He was pretty adamant about not dealing with the helium. The
concerns expressed were that the event was losing about $200 per year
on helium costs, and that the event management folk were too busy to
monitor people filling up to make sure they paid.
I told him that helium pretty much broke even for the last three
years that I was involved in running USIC (with the inflation
adjusted fill fees), but that didn't sway him.
He suggested that we buy a disposable helium tank from K-Mart or Wal-
Mart, but I don't think that is a great option. The $30-$40
Partytime disposable tank has 14.9cf of "party gas". 14.9cf would
barely fill one 36" balloon, and "party gas" has a lower helium
concentration and is therefore less buoyant. I think it would be ok
for retrieval balloons, but not for steering.
In my opinion, other more realistic options are buying your own tank
(although that won't work for anyone flying in), renting a real tank
(there is a party supply store down the street from the dome), or
ordering and dealing with the helium ourselves (I have the info for
the place we rented from the last three years).
On the SO topic, Abram was under the impression that the SO airplane
event did not exist any more, and was also concerned about the cost
of the trophies for that event. I haven't been following SO much,
but I'm pretty sure there still is an airplane event. And I told him
that I thought the competitors would be fine with paper
certificates. I think including and promoting one of the most
effective Indoor FF recruiting tools in recent history is the least
we could do.
As far as other events, I don't feel that low participation is a
reason to nix them. It doesn't cost anything extra to run a
concurrent class (they use the same airspace and processing
personnel), and the trophy cost can be minimized by having only a
first place trophy or having paper certificates. Reducing the number
of events for the purpose of eliminating similar classes or creating
an orderly hierarchical progression – well, that's a different story.
Not to sound unsympathetic, but all the classes I fly are in there, I
plan to have good helium one way or the other, and I've had my share
of battles recently – so I'm probably going to leave these fights up
to you guys.
Although, if no better helium options arise I might be willing to
manage a "Helium Association". It would work like this:
- Pre-pay for a number of fills and top-offs based on size and
type of balloon. Cost to be calculated as your share of the tank
total.
- There would be a sheet with member's names and check boxes
for fills and top-offs
- Anyone caught cheating the Association (bigger balloon,
excessive fills, leaving the valve open) will be publically
humiliated via loudspeaker
Received on Wed Jan 14 2009 - 08:30:08 CET
This archive was generated by Yannick on Sat Dec 14 2019 - 19:13:45 CET