This transcript features the **Airlake Airport Advisory Committee** meeting held on June 13. Based on the context provided and the dialogue within the meeting, I have identified the speakers. Note: **Dan Walbert** mentioned in the transcript is **Councilmember Dan Wolter**, and **Adam** refers to **Adam Grotte** (owner of Aloft Aviation, a major tenant mentioned in context). *** [0:21] **John Bermel**: Ready to get started with this meeting of the Airlake Airport Advisory Committee, June 13th. We will start with welcome and introductions. So welcome everyone that's here, and we'll start with introductions. First, we'll start with who's in the room, and then we will move to who's online. We'll just start on the far end there. [0:46] **Christa Jack**: All right, good afternoon. Christa Jack with the Lakeville Chamber of Commerce. [0:52] **Dan Wolter**: Dan Wolter. I'm a pilot and own an airplane and part of a hangar. [0:57] **Tom Fitz Henry**: Tom Fitz Henry. I represent as a co-chair and the users group. [1:01] **John Bermel**: John Bermel. I am a co-chair and Lakeville City Council. [1:05] **Tina Goodroad**: Tina Goodroad, Community Development Director, City of Lakeville. [1:06] **Steve Getter**: Steve Getter. [1:07] **Pat Monahan**: And I'm Pat Monahan. I'm a pilot and I own a hangar at the airport. I'm also the RACK representative to the MAC. [1:15] **Jennifer Lewis**: And then over there, Jennifer. Hello, I'm Jennifer Lewis. I'm the MAC's Community Relations Coordinator, and welcome everybody. [1:24] **Sam Sefelt**: Good afternoon, Sam Sefelt, Airport Manager at the Lakeville airport. And I just wanted to mention Adam just texted me, he's on his way. [1:33] **Allyn Kuennen**: Allyn Kuennen, Assistant City Administrator. [1:40] **John Bermel**: Okay. And then for you gentlemen, can you just come up to the microphone and introduce yourselves real quick? [1:53] **Nick Modders**: My name is Nick Modders, and I'm a pilot at the Airlake Airport. [1:58] **Al Oln**: I'm Al Oln, I'm also a pilot at Airlake. [2:03] **John Bermel**: And is there anyone online that should introduce themselves? [2:10] **Katie Burum**: I'm Katie Burum, Farmington City Council. [2:15] **Christopher Gardner**: Christopher Gardner, sitting in on behalf of Met Council. [2:20] **John Bermel**: Is that it? [2:25] **Kayla Vera**: We have a person named Aaron Labry and one other person named Kyle Fischer, and then we have our meeting secretary, Kayla Vera. [2:40] **John Bermel**: All right, thank you. Agenda discussion and information—is there any items on the agenda that the committee would like to talk about? Okay. Number three, consent items. We'll take these both as a package. The consent items are approval of the agenda and the approval of the March 14th minutes, a copy of which was distributed. Is there anybody that would like to pull either of those items to talk about them? All right, hearing none, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? [3:25] **Pat Monahan**: So moved. [3:27] **Dan Wolter**: Second. [3:30] **John Bermel**: Pat Monahan and Dan Wolter. So all in favor of approving the consent items say aye. (Group: Aye). Anyone opposed? And those are approved. Our next section is public comment. This is an opportunity from anyone from the public, either virtually or in the audience, to make a comment up to three minutes. Is there anyone that would like to exercise their ability to make a public comment? Okay, hearing none, our next item is radio frequency change update, and I'm going to have my co-chair, Tom Fitz Henry, introduce our speaker. [4:12] **Tom Fitz Henry**: Thank you, Chair. I'd like to introduce Nick Modders. He’s been diligently working on finding a new frequency for Airlake called CTAF to make it easier for pilots to understand the other pilots. Nick? [4:30] **Nick Modders**: Thank you, Co-Chair Fitz Henry, and thank you Commission for allowing me to appear before you. Agenda item number five does say radio frequency change update. I think another name for that could be an opportunity to make a major aviation safety improvement at the Airlake Airport. The radio frequency in question is the Common Traffic Advisory Frequency. And now that we've said Common Traffic Advisory Frequency enough, its real name with all the pilots is CTAF. And so, if you'll indulge me, we'll just consider this thing CTAF for the rest of the conversation. The Metropolitan Airports Commission is the FCC license holder for the Airlake CTAF, so consequently, I come to you as a way to advance this concept. CTAF service is available at all non-towered airports in the United States. There are 20,000 airports in the lower 48; 50 of them have control towers, and you're probably thinking for 19,950 it's bedlam, but it's not. The CTAF allows pilots to communicate amongst themselves at an airport and coordinate their activities by informing others where they're going and how they're going to do it. And others hear that and say, "Oh, he's there and he's going and he's fast, and I'll accommodate him." And luckily, happily, and safely, all of this works out really good. There are seven radio frequencies allocated by the Federal Communications Commission and the FAA for these CTAF purposes. Now we've just said that there's 19,950 airports sharing these seven frequencies. If you've got a radio in an airplane that's 1,000 feet above the ground, you can imagine that with the airplane transmitter being 1,000 feet above the ground, it's going to have a pretty big range—about 100 miles, maybe a little less. So if you're getting the idea that there's a considerable amount of perhaps frequency congestion, overlap, a lot of squealing and hollering from the radio waves beating against each other, you're right. In the Airlake Airport, there are eight nearby airports that share the same frequency that Airlake has. Airlake in the radio spectrum is on 123.0 MHz. Now these neighbors that we have are the likes of Albert Lea, Princeton, New Ulm, Alexandria, Redwood Falls, Fort Dodge, Mason City, and Spencer, Iowa. New Ulm is particularly interesting because it is a reliever airport for the Mankato State University aviation program. There is always somebody from Mankato at New Ulm in the pattern making announcements on 123.0, as they should. That's good, the system works. Now what I would like to try to do, but I do not have the skill to do, is to be able to present to you what it's like in an airplane in the pattern when it's a good flying day and there's something happening at Airlake and eight other airports. I can't do that. Try something else... picture if you will, you're in your very best automobile and you've got your teenager who has just gotten through driver's training and you're going to go for a ride because you're the responsible adult. We're also going to go parallel parking. So you're going to get in the right seat of the car, and when you get in there, you're going to notice there's no brake pedal. And with this opportunity for you to offer advice during this parallel parking thing, to make it more like the airplane in the pattern at Airlake, we're going to turn on the radio, we're going to find a talk station, and we're going to turn it up loud. And now we're going driving. I don't know about you, but I'd be horrified. Well, by the way, you’ve got to listen to the radio because important information is going to take place—it’s going to come from that and you want to hear it. If I've got that scenario in your mind, you've got some idea of what it's like in an airplane at Airlake on a really nice flying day where it's nice everywhere else around here, and you've got an awful lot of distractions and opportunities to be disoriented. Would you think that it would be a good idea if we could do a couple of things, like turn off the radio? That's going to quiet things down. But from an airplane standpoint, would it be better if we could in fact eliminate the conversations that we're hearing from those eight other airports? And in fact, yes we can. It's easy, it's simple, and there's not going to be any cost. Investigating the seven CTAF frequencies within 100 miles of Airlake, we find there is one frequency that does not have any other airports on it. It's literally a clear channel. It's unused. How did I get that? Using the internet, going into FCC.gov, and then going into licensing and databases... you can do a license search on 123.075. Remember the current frequency is 123.00; this is 123.075. And you'll find there is, in fact, in Duluth a station—in fact, it's at a hospital. If you were to do the same search in Wisconsin, you'd find that there's one airport in Racine, Wisconsin, which is about 400 miles away. There are no licensees in Iowa. So basically, there's nobody on that frequency. Here's where the Airlake Airport Advisory Commission comes into action and a recommendation to MAC to change the CTAF frequency to 123.075. I hope that you would do this. Now taking this process a little bit further—is this an established procedure? Can you change frequencies? Well, yes you can. In fact, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association some time ago published a document on how to do this and why would you want to do that. Well, for all of the things that we just discussed as far as the improvement in aviation safety. In 1960 there was one; now we've got seven. So how does the commission make the improvement? I would ask you that you recommend to the MAC that they make the change to 123.075. Are there any questions? [14:12] **Dan Wolter**: I have a comment. Yes sir, I think it's a great suggestion. I like your presentation. I do have a follow-up question: have you looked into the clutter on 122.8? [14:23] **Nick Modders**: No. I'm only interested selfishly in Airlake. [14:27] **Dan Wolter**: Okay. I was up the other day in that channel... I think that's worse than 123.00. I was up, we shot an approach into Faribault, it's just constant chatter and I think it's completely... [15:09] **Nick Modders**: Well, I would hate to say that I'm the modern version of Don Quixote and I'm not happy unless I'm tilting some windmill, but I am in fact trying to make some headway on what you're talking about. I have found that the FAA and the FCC have 18 frequencies that are available to add to these seven. Trying to get the FAA to even answer the phone is tough. I'm not making any headway. So I hope that you and I could get together and of course if the commission wants to get in on this, we can help solve the 122.8 problem. [15:56] **Dan Wolter**: Yeah, I'd be willing to work with you. I guess my thought was maybe we could do a twofer. Airlake makes sense, get Airlake solved, and then we’ll get on that. [16:08] **Nick Modders**: That sounds like it's very possible. Again, I appreciate your presentation. [16:15] **Dan Wolter**: The 122.8 though—122.8 was the original frequency when that showed up in 1960 something. Whoa, is this ever great. It's grown; we had a hard time getting a slot to make our calls, it was that busy. [16:35] **Nick Modders**: Yeah, and Airlake is equally as bad on a nice day. [16:41] **John Bermel**: Nick, I have a question. So what training do new pilots get on radio use in terms of "be brief, plan your transmission, say what you're going to say and be done"? Do they get training on that and how to use the radio? [16:59] **Nick Modders**: Yeah, okay. Say it quickly, say it clearly, say it concisely, and shut up. [17:05] **Pat Monahan**: I have a comment on that as well. And they should be getting from their flight instructors instruction on exactly what was just said. I think when we listen on 123.0 we do hear a lot of frequency congestion. What I hear—you mentioned Mankato State students—there's a lot of non-standard radio phraseology that comes out of their aircraft. I don't care when you're leaving a VFR pattern that you're at 2,500 feet, you're climbing to 3,500 and going to New Ulm. That's irrelevant to me and it's not standard radio phraseology. I also see within the pattern at Lakeville a lot of pilots trying to become controllers, and this is in a lot of cases the younger CFIs that are teaching and flying out there quite often. They're trying to tell other airplanes what to do; they're trying to point out other airplanes. All you have to really do is be quiet and I'll make my calls where the FAA tells me to make the calls. [18:41] **John Bermel**: So you said, "why wouldn't we?" That's my question. What is the downside to changing this? If it costs nothing and it's available, what is the downside? Is there one? [18:59] **Nick Modders**: I'm not aware of one. [19:02] **Tom Fitz Henry**: And I'll just make a quick comment on what he said. Yeah, 122.8 is terrible. I think Lake Elmo is that, too. Yes, we need it at Lakeville, but MAC may want to look at this. Don’t take the one we're looking at, but Lake Elmo might have an opportunity too because when you get up in the air, 122.8 around here is very popular. It's like the old party line on the phone. [19:45] **John Bermel**: Thank you, Nick, for presenting that. I don't know if there's any other questions. [19:50] **Pat Monahan**: Yeah, any other questions or comments? Otherwise... [19:54] **John Bermel**: Yes, thank you. So what would be the next step? I mean, that's my question. I mean, do we just ask Sam to make a proposal to his management, or is there something different? I don't know your process. [20:15] **Sam Sefelt**: Our process? It's... I mean, that's what I'm asking you, what is the process? Could we make it a resolution? [20:21] **Nick Modders**: Well, the Metropolitan Airport Commission has the license. I've got the license here somewhere. They know how to do this, and I think they need to be asked. Stressing the aviation safety improvement on this, I would hope that the MAC would say, "Yeah, it's a great idea, let's do it." [20:55] **John Bermel**: So I mean, in terms of our group, I'm feeling like there's some consensus that this would be a good idea for somebody to implement, whatever the process is. [21:14] **Dan Wolter**: Absolutely. Can I suggest a motion? I'd like to present a motion that Jennifer and Sam investigate this further. If there's no reason for this not to proceed, that we approve the change; they can spearhead the project and report back. [21:28] **Steve Getter**: I would second that motion. [21:30] **John Bermel**: Yes, we have a motion, we have a second. Is there any other discussion on this before we do a vote? Okay, so all in favor of the motion say aye. (Group: Aye). Anyone opposed? Okay, so that motion passes. And is it clear what we're doing here? [22:03] **Sam Sefelt**: Yeah, no, I can definitely take this back and we can make sure to have an agenda item at the next meeting. I can update the commission on what I found out. [22:12] **John Bermel**: Excellent, thank you. Thank you for a great presentation. [22:15] **Kayla Vera**: One second—can you repeat who the first and second was on that? [22:18] **John Bermel**: The first was Dan Wolter, the second was Steve Getter. [22:20] **Dan Wolter**: Can I offer another suggestion? Everyone here that flies has dealt with Mankato State. There might be some value in this body addressing that issue directly with the director of flight operations or instruction at Mankato State in terms of phraseology. [22:49] **Sam Sefelt**: I think that would go back to me. I can say in very polite, tactful terms that the radio phraseology is not consistent. That's a CFI issue. We deal with it a lot. To your point, sir, I don't care if someone's going to leave the pattern to go see their grandmother; it just doesn't matter. There's just a lot of over-talk. So I think it could be appropriate for this body to address the school. [23:25] **John Bermel**: Okay, duly noted. I can do what I can there. I can't make any promises that it will have change, but yeah, I can do what I can. I think conversation would be a good place to start. [23:34] **Dan Wolter**: I would agree. Thank you for the suggestion. [23:35] **John Bermel**: All right, anything else on the radio frequency change update? Otherwise we'll move on to item number six, Sam. Airport Manager update. [23:42] **Sam Sefelt**: Okay, well good afternoon. Appreciate the time here. I just wanted to update on some of the progress that we've had since the last meeting on our construction projects over the summer. The South taxiway edge light project, as well as the replacement runway end identifier lights, is expected to start on June 21st. We're preparing to have no closures; construction supervisor out there to maintain separation from any aircraft taxiing through the Bravo area. The runway crack seal—we received bids and the project was awarded. We're anticipating construction to start sometime in July. We are targeting to have the contractors do it during the night, as well as surface markings will be repainted. Once we get exact dates, I'll be able to communicate to the pilots through the newsletter and email blasts, as well as via NOTAM. We are doing that to decrease any impact to anybody's flight operation and maintain the airport open during daytime. Any questions about those two projects? [25:54] **Pat Monahan**: No. [25:55] **Sam Sefelt**: Okay. Some other things: we are continuing to do the design for the airport maintenance building where John Ham works. We're anticipating a spring construction project for that, as well as some drainage issues that we're having on the south side. We're working closely this summer with Adam and Aloft Aviation as we mitigate some of the drainage issues on the south side. Other than that, we don't have any firm progress on the runway extension EA (Environmental Assessment), but we do have some good news: our CEO and COO have a scheduled meeting with the FAA Great Lakes regional administrator in Chicago, and our EA is on the agenda to try to spearhead getting that moving. I hope to bring some good news to you guys on the EA shortly. Any questions? [26:50] **Tom Fitz Henry**: When's that meeting? [26:52] **Sam Sefelt**: That meeting is today, this morning. [26:55] **Dan Wolter**: I have one question. So I know Adam has a problem on the south side; there's a lot of other hangars that have a problem on the south side with drainage. Are you interested in looking at any of that? I mean, during heavy rains, some of them could have a floatplane taxi out. [27:15] **Sam Sefelt**: Exactly, yes. There's definitely standing water issues on the south side. As of right now, the project we have is more focused on what's going on to the east of the parking lot that was put in for the big hangar. The rest of that, there are future plans, but we don't have any plans to do anything on that this summer. But we are aware of it and we're looking into solutions. [28:05] **Dan Wolter**: It happens on the north side too. I was going to add that where CAP (Civil Air Patrol) and where my hangar is, there’s just nowhere for the water to go. As you know, it's mostly clay underneath that couple inches of dirt. It'd be nice if they decide to mitigate that too because there's a few rows there that we're all pushing the water out, and if it goes out of my hangar, it goes into the next one. It's been that way for years. [28:45] **Pat Monahan**: Yeah, I see Pat nodding his head too. It'd be nice to find out if we could mitigate it on a north end too. Actually, I think it's gotten worse. I built my hangar in '85, and it was dry for the first 10 or more years, maybe 15. And now I have standing water. In the wintertime it melts and blows in, I can't get rid of it. You just can't put it anywhere. [29:05] **Adam Grotte**: We have a similar issue on Lima Lane. [29:08] **Sam Sefelt**: Drainage issues everywhere. We do have consultants looking into a lot of different issues, but I'll make sure I don't let them forget about the north side. The last thing I wanted to mention—I was able to meet with Councilmember Volk yesterday for a tour, and I just wanted to put the invitation out to everybody else. If you wanted to tour some of the facilities that you might not have seen yet, reach out anytime and I can get you out to drive around the airport. [29:48] **John Bermel**: Thank you. [29:49] **Pat Monahan**: Go ahead. I do have a question on the EA that has been simmering for, I don't know how many years now—five or six years. Is there a stop date? Is there like a date certain where this will be complete? [30:15] **Sam Sefelt**: I don't have that information at this time. I honestly can't tell you if there is a stop date or not. All I can say is we're continuing to push forward, and just by the fact that we have our CEO and COO pushing the point today, I feel like that's a good sign of some progress. [30:45] **John Bermel**: Right. Any other questions? Next item is the aircraft noise complaints and operations summary for Quarter 1. [30:54] **John Bermel**: You want to do the rate increase? [30:57] **Sam Sefelt**: Oh yeah. Sorry, yeah. Just a quick update: the administration for the reliever department held a couple public meetings for any tenant to come and learn about that. Basically, they presented their formulas on how they got to some of the rate increases that the commercial tenants mostly will see. There was actually a proposal for a decrease for normal storage tenants from 3.3% per year down to 3%. I think that's why none of the storage tenants were at those meetings. There is more information coming out on this; there's a public hearing currently being scheduled. [32:29] **Pat Monahan**: And one of the proposals was to drop the sublease fee. If you're a hangar owner and you rent a subspace to somebody else, there was a fee involved with that; that's proposed to go away. As a part of the RACK committee, we were just shown the overview of the process. Personally, I thought the process was fair and it was done diligently. It was based on as much data as you can when you're forecasting the future. It seemed to be a reasonable look at making sure that the reliever airports in general were moving towards self-sufficiency. Anyway, the details are still coming out. I'd encourage everybody to look at it with an open mind. [33:14] **John Bermel**: Any more questions or comments about that? Or else we'll move on to the complaint report. [33:20] **Jennifer Lewis**: Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Metropolitan Airports Commission collects aircraft noise complaint information through various means. 24 hours a day, we have a hotline available for people to leave information about particular aircraft operations, and then the MAC will take that complaint information and try to match it up with specific aircraft operations based on the details provided to us. We will respond to complaints whenever we're asked to. We use our flight tracker data for investigating the complaints. We also make all of our flight tracking information available through that tool at macnoms.com. It's a busy airspace around the Twin Cities. Currently, we do have some runway closures at MSP which is making the airspace a little bit challenging. In Quarter 1 of 2024, all the runways were available at MSP and at all of the other MAC airports. For 2024, there was only one complaint, and there were no complaints last year for Quarter 1. So that's a 100% increase, but the complaint that we did receive was from a household near the northern Twin Cities area—just south of Anoka County Blaine Airport, not in the vicinity of the Airlake Airport. People can look up and actually pinpoint which airport they want to tag their complaint to. Even though this particular household lives in the northern metro area, they identified that a helicopter operation was disturbing to them and that helicopter originated from Airlake Airport. Relatively speaking, if you look across the year, we really don't have a high volume of complaints that come through for Airlake. Airlake is actually one of the lowest complaint level airports in the MAC system. At this point I'll turn it over to Sam; he'll talk about the actual aircraft operation volume. [37:52] **Sam Sefelt**: Yep, as you can see on the chart, from last year Quarter 1 looked like we have a 1,650 operation increase this year. A number of factors: could be the better weather at the beginning of the year, possibly more fair-weather flying for transient tenants and the flight school. So just an increase of operations, not a whole lot more nighttime actually—there were a few less—but a lot more operations and not an increase in noise complaints. I think that's a good sign. [38:50] **John Bermel**: Right. Any questions about that report? Otherwise, we will move on to the noise abatement recommended practices item. [39:15] **Jennifer Lewis**: Okay, thank you. I have a very short presentation that just gives you an overview of the work that we've been doing for updating the noise abatement information for Airlake Airport. The AAC work plan does include reviewing the noise abatement plan and pilot guide. Before you today, you do have the final version of what we're proposing the update to include. Just briefly, I'll say we are changing the title of that document. The document was called "Noise Abatement Plan"; in your packet you'll see the title is "Noise Abatement Recommended Practices." I'm going to propose again that we change the title to "Noise Abatement Information," and that is consistent with how the FAA is standardizing their terminology for these voluntary measures. If you don't like "Noise Abatement Information," another recommendation from the FAA would be "Noise Abatement Best Practices." Everything in this document is voluntary. We are following the recommendations from both NBAA and AOPA. We would like to keep the traffic pattern altitude to be 1,000 feet for piston aircraft and 1,500 feet for turbine or turbojet aircraft. We are also suggesting that pilots try to avoid stop-and-gos; we’d like full-stop taxi-back or avoid touch-and-go operations during nighttime hours. On the screen, you'll see there's a map of the airport. The purple box represents where we are suggesting the new location to be for maintenance run-ups. There's a difference between a maintenance run-up and a pre-departure run-up. A maintenance run-up is more of a high-power, longer duration engine testing. And then the last piece—we're creating a "Fly Neighborly Guide" which is a concise representation of what the measures are, a one-page quick reference for pilots. What we're asking you all today to do is accept the documentation and recommend that we move forward with that. [45:15] **John Bermel**: Thank you for the information. Is there any questions or comments? Have you landed on your final title? [45:25] **Jennifer Lewis**: I would like it to be "Noise Abatement Information" if this group agrees. [45:45] **Dan Wolter**: Calling it "Information" sounds kind of like just general information. I understand that these are voluntary, but from my point of view, calling it "Best Practices" is more of a polite suggestion—not so much a directive, but a little bit more than "hey, here's some information." Personally, I would prefer that. [46:20] **Michelle Volk**: I was going to say something along those lines as well, that "Best Practices" implies some type of action, even if it's voluntary action, as opposed to "Information." I think that would make sense from a title standpoint. [46:40] **John Bermel**: Good points. Anybody have any other comments on that? [46:50] **Adam Grotte**: I guess I probably have one comment regarding the maintenance run-ups. I mean, I think it should be "when practical," because we're obviously performing maintenance and we're not going to pack up all our tools and bring them to the other side of the airport. For the ramp in front of the maintenance hangar, we have to do maintenance on the aircraft. If you actually look where the maintenance hangar is, it's still the same distance south as the place you selected, and the hangar provides a great deal of a sound barrier to the north. Personally, I think our ramp is probably a very good location to do run-ups. [47:50] **Jennifer Lewis**: How often do maintenance run-ups happen? [48:00] **Adam Grotte**: It's not that often, but it's every single annual, every 100-hour. You bring the airplane out without the cowl, you do a run-up on the engine. You have your tools there; you're checking timing. It averages just 10-15 minutes, and then you cowl up the airplane. It's very impractical to perform that work on the other side of the runway on a taxiway. [48:25] **Sam Sefelt**: Would an alternative location be on the north side? [48:30] **Adam Grotte**: Our ramp, effectively. There's no net gain to put it over on the other side. [48:47] **Pat Monahan**: I'd like to make a very practical point. My hangar partners do a fair amount of work, and to Adam's point, the hangars can block noise. I'm going to tell you straight up, they're not going to taxi that airplane across the field with toolboxes in a pickup truck, tweak it, put it back together, and drive it back. They're going to work on the plane and do a run-up right there. Big part of this is we're dealing with humans; in reality, it's just not going to change. Mechanics are going to pop the door and do a run-up right by the hangar. [49:50] **Adam Grotte**: To put this in perspective, the average person flies 50 to 60 hours a year. They have one annual performed. So for most GA people, there's typically one to two maintenance run-ups annually for five minutes. It's no louder than the run-up before you take off. On the maintenance side, our flight school is doing maybe 55 maintenance run-ups a year. Once again, they're no longer or louder than the run-up before you take off. It's a very, very small number. [51:25] **Dan Wolter**: Just to piggyback on that—in terms of all the reliever airports, we're the quietest, we have the fewest complaints, and the complaints have always been airborne, not ground-based. [51:45] **Michelle Volk**: I just have a question as well. What decision-making process was used to put your maintenance run-up at this particular location where it is currently on the map? [52:05] **Sam Sefelt**: Well, I think this plan did have a maintenance run-up in there to the south side of the runway in the taxiway that now is being used by more aircraft than previously. We kind of just shifted it out into an actual run-up area for the runway. But I understand all of your points. Are you bothered by a neighbor of yours doing a maintenance run-up at all? [52:45] **Pat Monahan**: Maintenance run-ups on small planes like ours are really short. In fact, it's not good to run them very long because the engines aren't being cooled properly if the cowlings are off. At most a minute, at most. You're just looking to make sure pressure comes up on the oil and everything looks good. [53:29] **John Bermel**: I think when you look at the maintenance run-up section, you talk about run-ups in excess of five minutes. Like Mr. Monahan has said, most of the run-ups we're talking about fit within that five minutes. I know where I work at the Fleming airport, occasionally we will move out to an area that's more convenient for all of the other users. I believe listening to the discussion, for the most part, the five-minute run-ups are not what you're concerned about. [54:40] **Dan Wolter**: Would it be possible like in that section 3A, instead of "conduct all engine tests," to say "conduct extended engine tests and maintenance run-ups in excess of five minutes only in a designated area" and leave the rest to people's discretion? [55:10] **Jennifer Lewis**: Certainly, we can make that change. [55:12] **Tom Fitz Henry**: I agree. It's more of an advisory. [55:35] **John Bermel**: So any other comments on that? What I'm hearing so far is a strong preference for the title to be "Noise Abatement Best Practices" and for section 3A to replace "conduct all" with "conduct extended." I had a couple others: in Section 1D, where we talk about reducing manifold pressure and engine RPM—manifold pressure does not contribute to noise, engine RPM does. I would remove the manifold pressure reference. In Section 2C, "keeping the traffic pattern legs as short as possible," I think we also intend that to be the downwind distance from the runway. I think this is important for noise abatement and the efficiency of aircraft operations. And then in Section 5, nighttime operations, point A is redundant with the preamble, and point C is redundant with Section 2D. [57:57] **Adam Grotte**: One clarifying question on 5D: you have "avoid low-level flyovers of the airport." Are you addressing like shooting missed approaches, or what does that entail? [58:30] **Jennifer Lewis**: It would be missed approaches or an approach where you're coming in and doing your flyover and then entering the pattern. [58:43] **Michelle Volk**: Just a question from someone that's not a pilot—what's a stop-and-go? I know what a touch-and-go is; what's a stop-and-go? [58:55] **Pat Monahan**: A stop-and-go is where you would land the airplane, come to a full stop, and then commence another takeoff. At nighttime, the FAA says to be current at night we have to do a landing to a full stop. This is saying we don't want pilots to stop in the middle of the runway and then start another takeoff roll; we'd prefer them to go back to the beginning. [59:45] **Michelle Volk**: I understand what you're saying, but I'm not understanding the "why" of it. If you come in and you're clear of the pattern altitude and you do a teardrop entry... I don't understand the downside to that. [1:00:20] **Jennifer Lewis**: It's merely reducing the operation at non-approach power settings. What we're trying to achieve is to have fewer aircraft operating at the airport with patterns or legs that they don't need to operate. [1:00:55] **Pat Monahan**: I understand your intent, but I think the process is wrong because you're actually going to fly a longer leg. If I come in and do the teardrop, I'm over fields. If I go around the east side, now I'm actually over homes. I understand your intent; I just think the methodology is not right. [1:03:23] **Dan Wolter**: What if we just stated, "avoid unnecessary low-level approaches at the airport"? [1:04:10] **Jennifer Lewis**: I'm happy to make the change to "avoid unnecessary low-level flyovers." [1:04:54] **John Bermel**: Any other comments or questions? I'm starting to get a sense that there's a lot of changes in here. Is this something that we could get a new draft of, or does the timeliness require us to do an approval right now? [1:05:15] **Jennifer Lewis**: The timeliness is important because the sooner we can finalize this, the sooner we can create that Fly Neighborly Guide. We would mail this out to tenants, but we would also like to put this electronically into the ForeFlight tool that's being used by the pilots. Ideally, it would be great to move forward with this today because this group would not meet again until September. [1:06:15] **Jennifer Lewis**: I can review the changes: we're changing the title to "Noise Abatement Best Practices." In section 2C, I'm going to add a note for "keep traffic pattern legs as short as possible and close to the airport." In section 3A, "conduct extended engine tests and maintenance run-ups in excess of five minutes only in a designated area." In section 5, we will remove A and C, and modify D to say "avoid unnecessary low-level flyovers." [1:07:45] **Dan Wolter**: Motion to approve as defined by Jennifer. [1:07:55] **Adam Grotte**: Second. [1:08:15] **John Bermel**: Friendly amendment—a motion to approve it with the recommended changes. All in favor say aye. (Group: Aye). Anyone opposed? [1:08:35] **Kayla Vera**: Can we confirm it was Dan Wolter who made the motion and Adam who seconded? [1:08:42] **Jennifer Lewis**: Yes. [1:08:45] **John Bermel**: And Jennifer, I have to leave, I have another commitment. I will be turning the meeting over to my co-chair, Mr. Fitz Henry. I will leave it in your capable hands, sir. [1:09:10] **Sam Sefelt**: Okay, let's move to item number nine, the airport 101 and tour discussion for the Commissioners. What I'd recommend is offering a tour of the Airlake Airport either both before and after the next commission meeting in September for any commissioner that would like to take part in that, and then during that meeting having an agenda item with an airport 101 familiarization course. [1:10:30] **Dan Wolter**: I just did this yesterday and I learned a ton. Even though I've been to the airport before, I learned a lot. Sam's a great tour guide and I highly recommend it to anybody that's not familiar with airports in general. [1:11:00] **Tom Fitz Henry**: I would agree. Sam, are you thinking you'd have like a handout? It can be a firehose of information for a non-flyer. [1:11:53] **Sam Sefelt**: Yeah, what I had thought about was a PowerPoint presentation during the meeting, and that PowerPoint would become take-home material. [1:12:15] **Pat Monahan**: I think it'd be invaluable. Unless you're a pilot, if you're a pilot you can visualize what we're talking about with a pattern, but if you don't know what that is, it's probably a foreign language. [1:12:40] **Dan Wolter**: I like the idea of having it available too, maybe on a YouTube or whatever. [1:13:59] **Michelle Ross**: Hi, I am the manager for community relations at the MAC. I just wanted to let you know that as Jennifer mentioned, we do have some airport construction at MSP and we are trying to coordinate the timing of the tour to best accommodate staff capacity. [1:15:15] **Dan Wolter**: I understand her comment. I like the idea of having it available as a video. [1:16:30] **Pat Monahan**: I think your comment about getting to hear the radio and see the radio personalizes it more than a YouTube video. [1:17:15] **Jennifer Lewis**: We can take back what you've suggested and think about how we want to move forward with that. We can present the ideas at the next leadership meeting. [1:18:40] **Sam Sefelt**: I wanted to mention too that we're not forgetting that there's six alternates that are part of this too that should also be included. [1:18:55] **Dan Wolter**: It might be an opportunity for other council members from Farmington or whatever city to get in there. You might even invite some realtors so they can talk to people about whether they should buy a home in this area. [1:21:00] **Michelle Volk**: I think we would just pick an alternative date for this tour, right? Whenever is convenient for you. [1:21:40] **Tom Fitz Henry**: I would suggest that we meet with those individuals specifically and arrange the tour. [1:22:00] **Sam Sefelt**: I wanted to mention—Christopher Gardner representing Met Council says, "FYI Mankato State is in the process of changing their frequency from 123.0." [1:22:30] **Tom Fitz Henry**: They are going to get a control tower in Mankato, but they don't affect Airlake other than the quantity of aircraft that comes out of there. [1:23:25] **Sam Sefelt**: Upcoming events: EAA Chapter 25 is having their Father's Day breakfast on Sunday morning. The Airlake tenant barbecue is the following Monday, 4:30 p.m. And Pan-O-Prog July 7th is still on schedule. Pat, is there some things you would like to add? [1:25:02] **Pat Monahan**: This is our fly-in breakfast; I think it's our 12th year. It's going to be at the Adam super hangar down there on the south side. We're offering tickets online at the panoprog.org website. Commemorative Air Force is bringing in some of their aircraft; the MAC is going to have some equipment on display for the kids. It's going to be from 7:30 to 11:30 on the 7th of July. [1:28:15] **Tom Fitz Henry**: Okay, member comments. Adam, anybody have any comments? [1:28:20] **Adam Grotte**: None here. [1:28:30] **Tom Fitz Henry**: Announcements? None from me. We'll review the schedule—next meeting September 12th and then December 12th. If we have nothing else, I say we're adjourned. Thank you everybody.