Big Sky RC Meeting Minutes
Oct 06, 2026
President Dan Woods brought the meeting to order at 7:02 PM at the Great Falls VFW with 9 members in attendance.
Secretary Don Gilles read September’s meeting minutes and they were accepted as read.
Treasurer Darrell Anderson read the Treasurer’s report and it was accepted as read.
Old business:
Dan Woods gave a run-down on Fall Fury and the rescheduling it took to make it happen. In the end it was still a successful event and brought in more money than it took to put it on – so a win in our books. Dan stated the racers might run another small event if we get some nice weather forecasted for a weekend. Dan also gave an quick update on the September Fun Fly – it was a small turn-out but the weather was great. We also just had the Leo Sommerfeld Memorial Fly-In – we had around 14 flyers. The Havre guys came down and gave us a hard time for never coming up to their field.
Dan Woods bought a 7000lb trailer for the club for $2500. It’s the trailer the club had recently been using so we know it’s in working condition. The trailer is titled to BSRC.
Dan next gave a rundown on the work party event to clean-up the concrete pad the old outhouse was secured on. It’s been removed and hauled to the dump. We’ll need to get some gravel to finish filling in and leveling off the old outhouse location. We’ll probably wait till we get our taxes paid and the books looking good before we move ahead with this. We have our Cascade County taxes and Montana DNRC Trust Lands Lease payment coming due soon.
John Sandy stated he may have shingles. I thought poor John…but then he said free shingles we could use on the frequency board roof. John will let us know what he finds out.
New business:
We’ve scheduled the Christmas banquet for 18 Dec, 6-9pm at the Great Falls VFW where we’ve been having our meetings. We’ve rented the big back room for $100 and will be doing pot-luck and probably a chicken order from Albertsons. We haven’t finalized the meal details but we’re two meetings out from the event and can discuss it at our leisure.
Dan Woods checked into indoor flying at Paris Gibson. The GFPS has raised the usage rate to $50 – whether or not we move ahead with this is TBD. Dan sent the info out to see what members think – hard to say.
We had a lot of conversation about publicizing the club’s activities to the Great Falls community such as KRTV’s Out & About Great Falls. A couple of websites for these are https://www.krtv.com/community-calendar and https://baselocal.com/mt/great-falls/events/. The club has gone out to the schools, done the 4th of July parade, displayed up at MANG during the air show, static display in the mall and others. It takes a lot of effort and people’s time and never seems to lead to new members but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep trying. Maybe next year we’ll do better but I think another parade walk isn’t in the cards.
Thanks to all attendees, the meeting was adjourned at 7:58 pm.
Donald Gilles
BSRC Secretary
AMA Club 400
FYI:
Club meetings are the first Tuesday night of the month at the Great Falls VFW, 7pm.
Club lunch is every Friday, noon at Arby’s.
Upcoming Events:
– 18 Dec 2026 Christmas Banquet Great Falls VFW 6-9PM
– 2027’s event schedule TBD