Brett Dance
Clay Center Municipal Airport manager Brett Dance told those at Wednesday’s Chamber Coffee forum the airport is busy with spray plane activity and he has big plans for the airport.
“Our main goal is try to get people back to the airport,” Dance said. “With the help of the city, we’re redoing the FBO (fixed-based operation) ... Basically, our main goal at the airport is to make a place that people want to come to.”
That includes ongoing construction in the main hangar and lobby to make it “a nice place for pilots to relax and stop in for fuel” and a new courtesy car for pilots.
Heinen Brothers Agra Services, the company leasing the airport, would like to build another T-hangar north of the runway. Currently there is space for about a dozen planes in the existing hangars and a few spots for tie-downs. Dance said the airport could attract pilots from Manhattan because there is a three- to four-year waiting list for hangars at the Manhattan airport.
However, the new airport operators aren’t doing a number of operations that were offered when the airport was operated by Mike Spicer, including:
FUEL: The automatic fuel pumps have not yet been installed and currently no fuel is being sold at the airport because the pumps that were there have been removed.
Dance said Heinen Brothers are about three weeks away from having the pumps installed which will be able to accept credit cards at the pump and pilots will be able to access them 24 hours a day.
FLIGHT LESSONS: No one is taking flight lessons at the airport since the new managers took over. Dance also confirmed there are also no pilots in training, though he said Heinen Brothers is “breaking in” a new spray pilot at the airport.
Dance added the company is trying to bring in other people to use the airport, including members of a sky-diving club at Kansas State University. Members of the club seem interested, he said.
AIRCRAFT MECHANIC: There is no aircraft mechanic at the municipal airport as of now.
Dance said annual maintenance and other repairs are offered through a mechanic in Manhattan and said he is trying to convince a student who’s a mechanic to offer his services in Clay Center.
Manager using airport for spray business
Heinen Brothers, to whom the city awarded the FBO-contract, took over operation of the municipal airport on June 1. Since then, the company and other spray pilots have used the airport as a base for their spray operations, which primarily cover north and eastern Kansas, but also southern and western Nebraska and four other states.
“What we do is primarily spray fungicide on corn, wheat, beans.” Dance said. “A lot of time what we’re doing is mostly two-gallon work with these airplanes.”
The wet weather and a later Spring has made this year a busy year for spray pilots. Normally spray pilots get a couple weeks off between spraying corn and spraying beans, but this year they’ve gone “straight from corn to beans” and now are spraying late season corn and early season beans, Dance said.
“It’s going pretty well,” he said. “Really, it’s been pretty busy and it will stay busy for the next couple of weeks. Either because of the moisture or the late start, we’re running a couple weeks behind.”
The main hangar now houses Dance’s spray plane, a big yellow Air Tractor with a 500-gallon capacity and fuel endurance of about three hours.
Dance described the plane as very up to date, with a computer system that tracks where the spray goes, accounting for not only the path the plane takes, but also for wind and other factors. The system is similar to the same systems used in ground rigs, Dance said.
Heinen Brothers get a lot of business by word of mouth, through co-ops, and also through spray contracts in other states, Dance said.
Story and Photo: http://www.ccenterdispatch.com
