RDRC Field History update...

[Dave Hockaday]

More info about previous site has been unearthed. It now looks like
there may have been 7 sites... The latest discovery has yielded what
we'll call #1A for the moment. Marshall is gonna meet with George
Abbott shortly to talk about this a bit more. Here's the latest info:

- 1st RDRC field: 1958. Since we discovered info about the beginnings
of RDRC in 1958, even more has been learned. Field #1 was just off
Avent Ferry Road, near Western Blvd.

- 1A...this is the newest info and is still under investigation. There
was a period of time that RDRC flew at cow pasture on Kidd Brewer's
land, where
Crabtree Mall is now located. This may have acutally been field #2,
making the total # of fields to be 7. More on this as
we learn...

- 2nd RDRC field: 1963, as best as we can tell. It was at the location
where the present day National Guard complex is located now, just off
Blue Ridge Road. RDRC lost that spot after only one season and moved
across the ditch to the 3rd field in 1964.

- 3rd RDRC field: 1964. Field #3 was paved in 1972 and the club had a promise
to have the field for 5 more years at that time. It's captured in a
N&O newspaper piece in March of 1973 with paved and grass runways.
Located on a dirt road off District Drive, across the ditch from site
#2, behind the DOT building on Blue Ridge Road. At the time, the club
was meeting at the Merchants Association Building at North Hills Mall.
I have pics as late as Oct of 1975 at this location. This field was
lost as a result of concerns by the manager of the DOT helicopter
division, that the model RC aircraft were dangerous to the operations
of their DOT helicopters.

- 4th RDRC field: Sometime including 1976, RDRC flew from a paved
runway on the closed landfill on the Dorthea Dix properties. It was
only for a very short time, and was a 'test' field to determine the
viability of it as a permanent
club site. It was deemed unsuitable as a conventional club field, as
it was on a hillside and required an experienced pilot for sucessful
flights.

- 5th RDRC field: At some point in time in 1976, RDRC moved to a field
at the powerlines on Watkins road (nr Buffalo rd). The powerlines were
not there at the time. RDRC operated this site until sometime in 1980.
When the club
decided to move away from site #5, a few RDRC members decided to keep
the site operational and formed the 'Prop Nuts' club.

- 6th RDRC field: Current location on 1339 Bethlehem Church Rd.,
Youngsville, NC. Clyde Long and George Abbott laid out this site when
the club acquired it. This site was occupied beginning sometime in
1980 and the runway was paved right away.


Dave

[Ken Boone]

Lets make it 8 fields.  After Dorthea Dix some of us were flying at the closed airport in west Raleigh.  I don't remember a paved runway at Dix.

Ken Boone

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[Dave Hockaday]

Quoting Ken Boone <kensr...@gmail.com>:

> Lets make it 8 fields. After Dorthea Dix some of us were flying at the
> closed airport in west Raleigh. I don't remember a paved runway at Dix.
>
> Ken Boone

Thanks Ken. I forgot to edit out the part about the runway, Clyde
confirmed a grass strip at Dix yesterday.

Was the field at the closed airport at about the same time the Watkins
road field was being developed/set up?

Dave

[Dave Hockaday]

Quoting Ken Boone <kensr...@gmail.com>:

> Lets make it 8 fields. After Dorthea Dix some of us were flying at the
> closed airport in west Raleigh. I don't remember a paved runway at Dix.
>
> Ken Boone

Hey Ken, do you remember the approximate location or what that closed
airport might have been called?

Thanks,
Dave

[Dick Pettit]

Wikipedia is your friend

"The region's first airport opened in 1929 as Raleigh's Municipal Airport, just south of what is now downtown."

-- 

Dick Pettit
Assistant Design Lab Manager
Texas Instruments Cary
1000 CentreGreen Way
Suite 100
Cary, NC 27513
(919) 859-7704

 "Marriage is natures way of keeping us from fighting with strangers."     Alan King

 

[Dave Hockaday]

Quoting Dick Pettit <pet...@ti.com>:
> Wikipedia is your friend
> "/The region's first airport opened in 1929 as Raleigh's Municipal
> Airport, just south of what is now downtown/."

You da man, Dick!!!

On a side note, we've gotta get Marshall & Clyde back on the air on
something other than 50mhz RC :-)

Dave

[Dave Hockaday]

Holy smokes, I remember this field!!! In the summer when I was 16, I
remember going to this site a couple of times with my dad and watching
RC airplanes. It was what got me interested in RC (had played with CL
a bit prior). According to google:

"Raleigh's first air transportation hub was established in 1929 by the
Curtiss Wright Flying Service at the present-day location of the
intersection of Tryon Road & U.S. 70-401, south of Raleigh."

http://www.airfields-freeman.com/NC/Airfields_NC_Raleigh.htm#raleigh

This is the old airfield Ken was talking about. Wow...Raleigh has
grown. I never talked to the guys out there to find out about the club
they were in. I got my first RC airplane and went back to that
location, and everyone was gone. That's about the time RDRC set up
camp at the Watkins Road location. Wow... It's kinda beginning to tie
together for my memories, now.

Dave

[David Hayes]

There was a runway at the Dix location. It was graded and then received a sprayed asphalt surface (1/2" -3/4" thick) that kept the grass from growing back and acted like a paved runway for the short duration of that location. I flew at the Raleigh Airport a couple of times myself, they had cut ditches across the runway every couple hundred yards in an attempt to "stop" the drag races that were occurring out there. Some of us also flew off of the pavement of old hwy 64 "below" the bridges just past Apex after they built the new highway and before they filled Jordon Lake, although that wasn't an official RDRC activity.

[Dave Hockaday]

Quoting 'David Hayes' via RDRC <rd...@googlegroups.com>:

> There was a runway at the Dix location. It was graded and then received a
> sprayed asphalt surface (1/2" -3/4" thick) that kept the grass from growing
> back and acted like a paved runway for the short duration of that location.
> I flew at the Raleigh Airport a couple of times myself, they had cut
> ditches across the runway every couple hundred yards in an attempt to
> "stop" the drag races that were occurring out there. Some of us also flew
> off of the pavement of old hwy 64 "below" the bridges just past Apex after
> they built the new highway and before they filled Jordon Lake, although
> that wasn't an official RDRC activity.

Good info, David. Someone mentioned having seen a black runway there,
but never flew on it. I wasn't aware that there were 2 "hwy 64's" when
it became a 4-lane, I thought they had just widened the existing one.
My dad did mention that he remembered when Jordan Lake was filled.

Dave

[David Hayes]

Old 64 is still visible in spots when you cross the Jordon Lake on west bound 64 at the bridges, it comes up out of the water and then goes back under on the north side near Seaforth on the Google map. You can also see where it used to leave the current location at the curve northeast of the Jordan Lake State Park Office. My wife is from Siler City so I used to travel that way on a more regular basis. I believe we flew down in the first section on the east side, although that must have been close to 40 years ago that we flew there.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Jordan+Lake+State+Park+Office/@35.7362279,-79.0203838,2971m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x89ac9561869cbd5b:0xf293dd47f149c12b