Our work crew consisted of Ray Breton, John Hayes, Rich Kelley and one of our newer members, Paul Scarlett and, of course, good ole Harry Peters without whom we would have accomplished little. Harry is always there with his equipment, his cheerful presence and smart aleck remarks.

The reconnaissance team, Harry and Ray were out to the field on Friday checking out what needed to be done. I got there in the afternoon, it was just going to be a quick check to see what we were going to be doing on Saturday. There they were, Harry and Ray, already having put in what amounted to a full day's work, noses red from the cold but grins on their faces as they somewhat gleefully handed me a rake and put me to work. I'd like to say I stopped by to look over the situation and see what I could do to help.

Actually, it was nosiness for which I paid dearly. In spite of the nasty cold weather Friday was a productive day. The one redeeming thing about the whole day when it just got too miserable to continue working was topping it off with hot coffee and a great bull session. The same guys along with the others mentioned started out early Saturday to get the field in A-one condition.

Like all well planned things, something always goes wrong. This time it was the roller Harry brought which only had 50 hours on it, but had been sitting around for a while. The tank sprung a leak! Here we are trying to figure out the best way to get this thing fixed without running all over creation to do it.

"Anybody got chewing gum?" No!

"Patches, repair kits, tape, anything?" No!

Then along came John and a casual, "I might have something in my trunk." Reminiscent of the early wagons that crossed the plains selling everything from sewing thread to wedding gowns, John's trunk was a virtual K-Mart on wheels. Up he came with, would you believe, one lonely golf tee, a roll of very old and very sticky tape and a spike, long enough to reach the bottom of the tank. Voila, back in business, thanks to tinker John.

It was a good day, we accomplished a lot, had a few laughs and patted each other on the back for a job well done. Couldn't resist needling Harry though, who puts a trailer hitch on a Cadillac and hauls a trailer and roller with it?

The field looks great, it has been fertilized and seeded and top soil was used to top off the runway. The pit has been redone with new loam, the parking lot has been graded with crushed gravel and in general we're ready to go.

A word of caution, do not drive on the parking lot grass, it has been marked off with tape, but not ready for parking yet. For the time being, we will be using the electric and gliding field until the new grass grows.

The last thing most of us wanted to do was give up Saturday to go play in the rain, if it can be called playing, oh what the heck, we had a good time. My point is that if we didn't have enough sense to come in out of the rain, what makes the rest of the 120 members think that they're more sensible than we are. We need a better turn out for our work parties. Believe it or not, aside from having a sense of accomplishment, we do have a good time. We could use more volunteers. Try it, you'll like it.

• SNHRCC MEETING Apr 8th, 2003
• Litchfield Middle School, Litchfield, NH

Officers in attendance: John Marien, Roland Harmon, Kip Bean and John Hayes

Secretary and Treasurer's reports were read and accepted.

Old Business:

John Marion to provide construction derby information at the next meeting.

John described voting process for the show and tell.

Kip described the forum's, both the website and the yahoo groups forum.

Christi Brown mentioned the future attempt to link the two forums so everyone will have a choice of receiving e-mail, as messages come in, or not.

Darrell asked about the Bullsheet and the publishing date indicating that the same day the meeting is too short notice.

Roland Harmon said that the Bullsheet is being done by Kip who already does other functions. Roland suggested that others might want to help with the Bullsheet to ease the burden. Much discussion followed.

Following the business meeting the annual show and tell was held with many nice airplanes and a description of each been given.

The group was set-up specifically for SNHRCC members and is a great tool for communicating with other club members. It is easy to subscribe. Just send a blank e-mail to flysnh-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. You will receive a message asking you to confirm your subscription. Once you have replied to that message, your e-mail address gets added to the group and you are ready to start talking.

To send a message to the group, simply write an e-mail and send it to flysnh@yahoogroups.com.

Now who would have thought that a Train Air could be built to fit in a box like this? Built by the very capable hands of Maurice Theriault...Wow.

Maurice had a handful of models in the lineup this year. As you can see, this is a very nice original electric. The clear covering shows off all the "pieces".