<div>We are the <strong>Hampshire County Radio Controllers</strong> (HCRC) model airplane club based in Hadley, Massachusetts. We are a 501c7 non-profit social organization. The primary purpose of our club is to: promote fellowship, goodwill and the general enjoyment of its members through participation in the hobby/sport of radio-controlled modeling. Membership is open to anyone interested in the purpose of this club.
</div>
<div><br />
</div><img alt="" media_type="3" src="https://d2g8igdw686xgo.cloudfront.net/75674345_1704333081772786_r.jpeg" width="100%" />
<div><br />
</div>
<div>For over 60 years, since approximately 1964, this club has flown our model airplanes &amp; helicopters off a 7 acre piece of property owned by a local family and leased to us for all these years. Unfortunately, the current generation of the family have other plans for their property and have notified us that they will not be renewing our lease at the end of the 2023 year. We are basically being kicked out.
</div>
<div><br />
</div>
<div>Our club, like the many Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) chartered clubs across the country, have been a positive influence to our community and also to the next generation of young men &amp; women, some of whom have gone on to pursue careers in the aviation industry. A lot of that can be attributed to flying model airplanes with their parents that sparked that interest. Several of our young members have made successful careers in both the commercial and military industries. Some have gone on to be pilots in the U.S. Air Force or also to become commercial or private pilots. Many of our current and past members are or were military veterans themselves. Our club has hosted many RC events in recent years that are open to the public to come in and spectate our activities and some brave souls have even flown airplanes on a buddy box system with the help of a flight instructor. Many families have visited and some have left and came back with their completed membership application filled out and ready to join the club to continue the process of new people flying models and all the positive influences this hobby brings with it. As for giving back to the community, at these events we also collect human food &amp; also pet food and toys as donations for our local charitable pantries and animal shelters.
</div>
<div><br />
</div><img alt="" media_type="3" src="https://d2g8igdw686xgo.cloudfront.net/75674345_1704326834369911_r." width="100%" />
<div><br />
</div><img alt="" media_type="3" src="https://d2g8igdw686xgo.cloudfront.net/75674345_1704327009809623_r." width="100%" />
<div><br />
</div><img alt="" media_type="3" src="https://d2g8igdw686xgo.cloudfront.net/75674345_1704923431468553_r.jpeg" width="100%" />
<div><br />
</div><img alt="" media_type="3" src="https://d2g8igdw686xgo.cloudfront.net/75674345_170433431464787_r.jpeg" width="100%" />
<div><br />
</div>
<div>Many AMA clubs have found themselves in this same predicament of losing their fields especially when land availability continues to shrink. Mostly they seem to have the problem of not finding a new place to relocate to and ultimately this leads to having to disband their clubs. The trend of organizations falling victim to losing their land has been picking up speed in past years all over and now we have fallen victim to this as well, sort of…….
</div>
<div><br />
</div>
<div>So finally I get to the reason for this GoFundMe request and that is we, fortunately, have the opportunity to keep our beloved club alive and continue our love for this hobby. We have the opportunity to buy an adjacent/neighboring plot of property. As you know nothing is cheap and that includes buying property. We expect that one of the best positives to come from this, when we are successful in the purchase, is the fact that <strong>we will OWN our property</strong> for the first time in our club’s storied history! That would be a significant advantage for the club’s future and stability for generations to come.
</div>
<div><br />
</div>
<div><strong>Edit/Update 2026/01/21:</strong>
</div>
<div>We have been given an <strong>extension by the land owner for another year to 1/1/27.</strong> He has seen that we have more than half the money procured now including monies from an in-house certificate buying program and selling off some unused property. At $50K that still leaves us with a deficit of $40K. The certificate program will not get us there in time so we really need help from all you on this fundraiser platform. Please continue to donate as it will help in directly promoting family bonding and continue nurturing future pilots. Thank you so much.
</div>
<div><br />
</div>
<div><strong>Edit/Update 2025/02/12:</strong>
</div>
<div>We continue to except donations. We are indeed approximately half way to our goal of raising $90K that includes our members buying shares in the club, a piece of property to sell (that doesn't work for our overall plan) and some cash we have in the bank. So we still have a ways to go. We continue to need your help to get us to the finish line.
</div>
<div><br />
</div>
<div><strong>Edit/Update 2024/07/22:</strong>
</div>
<div>In full disclosure, while we have indeed lost access to our leased field that was a nice spacious 7 acres of land that we used all these years dating back to 1965, the landowner behind us that wants to sell us his 5 acres, has finished clearing it and it's just sitting there waiting for us to raise the money to purchase it (before we loose the opportunity to buy it and someone else swoops in). But what I didn't foresee when I originally wrote this story was being able fly off of a 70 foot wide strip of land that our club does own between these two parcels. It looked way too small to even consider flying off it safely and it pretty much is, but we were able to clear some trees to make a reasonable approach and have resorted to flying smaller planes and avoid cars driving past the far side of our runway accessing our old leased land. We are able to fly some planes here! It's extremely cramped but is doable. So while the threat of our club's extinction seems to have been avoided this doesn't change our desire to purchase this new property, return to the ability to fly unlimited size planes, resume holding public events again, rebuilding our membership and, most importantly, owning all of our property. I just needed to be forthcoming and transparent on our current situation. Please continue to donate. We are inching our way slowing but steadily towards our goal as we also concurrently run other in-house fundraising efforts in addition to this one.
</div>
<div><br />
</div>
<div>People have asked what the purchase price of the property is. It is $90K. I have since edited our goal amount to this figure. Being my first GFM fundraiser videos I watched said to list your goal amount higher than needed (I may have gotten carried away a little bit) but this caused some confusion so I put the minimum amount we need to raise to meet our primary objective.
</div>
<div><br />
</div>
<div>100% of the monies raised here as stated will be going directly to the purchase of the new 5 acre parcel of property. If we are fortunate enough to meet that primary objective, any additional funds would go towards new infrastructure needed such as land preparation, seating, fencing, storage buildings, etc. I want to thank you in advance for any amount of donation you can contribute to our plight. We are so grateful. Thank you!
</div>
<div><br />
</div>
<div>Mike
</div>
<div>HCRC President
</div>

Nathaniel Pike

Charles H Arkle JR

Karl Hathaway

Anonymous

Robert Marx

Eleanor Dowd

Mark Grennan

Joe Chovan

Fred McNulty

Raphael Houri

mark franke

Myra Emrick

Sharad Mathur

Model Airplane Club Losing Flying Field

platform

Platform is iOS

Android

Adyen Google Pay Development Audience

$opt_dummy_attribute

English only

Deprecate Stripe Legacy

dyn_template_ids

Adyen V6 Bene Transfer & MyMoney Campaign Organizers - test01

Bene transfer V6 and AdyenV6MyMoney Campaign Organizers - production

OneTrust next-app audience

fundCountryCode

NextDoor Share Option Users

Fundraisers with Reactions feature capability

fundCurrencyCode

US + Non-charity COs Only

locale

fund country is US and user language is English

personId

comms-internal-person-ids

Enhanced Story Experience Users

Suggested Goal Experience Users

user language is English and fund country: US, AU, DK, FI, IE, NO, SE, CA, GB; 

Poster share - new funds eligible (newest 9/18)

Streaming widgets beta user

paymentProcessor

3DS payment method

user language is English and fundCountry: US, AU, DK, FI, IE, NO, SE, CA, GB; 

currencyCode

Money Box Donation List Prompt Experiment Audience

GoFundMe Employees

ipAddress

Mark Rieth IP Address

Version 9.2.0 and above

Fund is in English speaking country

desktop

Android v12.11.0 and above

Platform is Android

paymentMethodType

checkoutType

Payment method type group to be vaulted on success

admin pr kit prod

EUR Donation Upsell

Share Text generation Skip Fundraiser

(prod) new funds eligible for amp12 (UGC gallery)

fintrac_cad_idv_form_v2 audience

paymentProcessorAccountId

fallback mode accounts

proCampaignId

p2p legacy startfundraising page

AMP24 New Funds Only PROD (DO NOT MODIFY)

Eligible for Profile Share Badge

countryCode

charityId

UKCharities

Federated Search Internal Testing

route.pathname community

US Donation Upsell audience 

Auto Thanks Feature Audience

International Only

fundId

braze fundraiser group 

Payment Identity Transfers ATO Risk Check (Targeted) - Production

Fundraiser Saved Payment Method Rate Limit Bypass (Production)

leaderboard-partner-id-audience-givepanel

Version 9.2.1 and above

AUD Donation Upsell audience

fundraiserCountryCode is US/EN

Active Fundraiser - Smart Default Cadence

DAF Internal

Vault on success card payment method

Platform is iOS v11.0.0 and above

Desktop users

Person ids

United States (US) users

allow yuno fundraisers for test

Mexico country code

Posters INTL

Support Comments Allowlist

NPO Profile Opted-In

iOS at or above 12.4.0

non-US recurring donors

Canada Campaign Owner Group

Fundraiser Without Meta Link

Scheduler payment tester gorup

charityCommunityId

Charities allow to be claimed unclaimed (PRD)

Canada (CA) users

UC Tipping v20250115 International

pymk_production_xplr_fe_team

Android at or above 12.2.0

Profile photo entry point audience

smart goals (fundraiser/manage) on test01

Activity Tracking v1 Beta Testing

start gfm intl allowed locales

Platform is iOS v11.2.0 and above

NPO upsell education category

unclaimed charities

prod_ach_audience

AI Chatbot Audience

amp13 only new funds (prod) (anyword auto)

UC Flow Enabled (Prod)

Payment Identity Beneficiary Verification - Production

shared notification bell audience

Custom users

ach frontend audience

Android v11.0.0 and above

Users Receiving Payments Paused Notifications

smart goals test01

Manage Coach - US English Organizers Only + new funds only

Team EGG - IP Address list

NPO recommendations prod

Fundraiser Without Instagram Deep Link

Native 11.4.0 and above

UC Tipping v20250107

checkout headers audience

ai_title_page

anyword

openai

control

manual_entry

userEmail

template_id

userId

fundUrl

isCharityCo

email

appVersion

shouldBucketIntoExperiment

isEligibleForProfileBadge

partnerId

donationCadence

isActiveFundraiser

isPartner

isMobile

npoProfileOptIn

fundIsLinkedWithMeta

hasSessionDonation

categoryGroup

isCampaignOwner

fundHasInstagramDeepLink

Native 11.3.0 and above

Native 11.4.0 and higher

New funds eligible - Video Sharing (PROD)

GB Donation Upsell audience 

Auto Thanks V3 Rollout Audience

Thank you V3 testing whitelist

isRecurringFriendly

Is Recurring Friendly

Excluded funds - Video Sharing

NPO upsell animals category

NPO upsell disaster relief category

Logged In Users

CH Donation Upsell audience

Android v10.6.0 and above

NPO upsell essential needs category

NPO upsell medical category

userCurrencyCode

Localized Currency

NPO upsell cancer category

v11.5.0 and above

testAudience

pathname

Survicate

appVersion is at or above 12.8.0

Non-charity fund

isChallengeFundraiser

challenge-fundraisers

Payment Identity Launch Verification - Production

New funds eligible - Posters v2

CAD Donation Upsell Audience

Braze Email Tester

NPO Profile Opted-Out

iOS App Version

hasKnownDonors

PYMK has donors

iOS v12.3.0 and above

Model Airplane Club Losing Flying Field

Still $21,130 to go. Help us build momentum.