East Coast Indoor Flyers, Lakehurst - - New Jersey, United States

Our annual club meeting will take place on Saturday April 30 starting around noon. The major news for 2011 is that the US Air Force has now officially taken over the base. The new name of the facility is Joint Base – McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst (JB-MDL). Our former sponsor (NAVAIR public relations office) can no longer support us and we had to get a special license from the Air Force.

We have our new license from the US Air Force. I have submitted our membership list to the Visitor's Center (VC). Everyone can now get an official photo ID by going to the VC between 07:00 and 15:00 hours. For our members that live more than half an hour away the VC will be open on Saturday April 30th the day of our annual club meeting. The local members are encouraged to go to the VC during the week.

I have received new base access forms from all members and our club membership is now up-to-date with 132 members signed up. The same membership renewal process will be used for 2012 except all checks must be made out to East Coast Indoor Modelers (ECIM). We plan to again support the Navy Relief Fund, the Air Force Assistance Fund as well as our Hangar 1 neighbor the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society (NLHS). With help from the NLHS we were able to get two additional club lockers for free. I have made a request to the NLHS to get the F4F Phantom jet moved to the east wall of the Hangar. I hope we can get this done soon.

Our president has confirmed all dates for this year’s sanctioned events and we will continue with our current schedule of weekend flying with extra days over the holiday weekends.

A big event this year will be the F1D team finals later in the summer. The FAI F1D category is the World Championship class. Last year the USA F1D team of Steve Brown, John Kagan and Brent Sanborn and Team Manager Rob Romash won the FAI gold medal again. ECIM Member John Kagan won the FAI Silver medal. Congratulations to all. By the end of this year the new USA team going to Belgrade, Serbia in 2012 will be selected at our Hangar 1.