http://www.treetoppers.org/

oliver gregory <<email>> sends:

The Tennessee Tree Toppers are beginning a fund raising project to revamp the famous Radial Ramp at our Henson's Gap site which was originally built way back in 1986. It was carefully designed to promote smooth air flow and ease of launch with LOTS of vertical dive room. It is still beautiful, but getting old! The ramp had a decking face lift many years ago, but the time has come for a major makeover of this hang gliding icon.

The radial section of the ramp is supported by wooden trusses. These will soon need replacement and the planking is quite weather worn though solid for the time being. The initiator of this effort is our fellow Tree Topper Jim Lamb of A-I-R USA. Jim was one of our great team leaders during the 2007 Team Challenge. During a pleasant dinner out one night, several Tree Toppers were talking about how much the TTT club meant to the hang gliding community and lamenting about how tight our funds are for just keeping up with the basics. We were hoping the Team Challenge would help our bottom line which it did to the tune of a little over $1000 net profit. The TTT net profit for the year of 2007 was just a little over $3000, half of which goes, according to our bylaws, into our LZ fund for purchase of a landing field at our Whitwell site.

Anyway, Jim wisely reminded us of our responsibility to maintain what we have. He strongly suggested we focus on fixing up the ramp to tip top condition with any funds we could raise. Then he generously offered to match our fund raising efforts! What a guy!

Early bids for replacing the wooden radial trusses with steel beams and new concrete foundations comes to around $15,000! The steel beams under the flat part of the ramp are still in good shape. We have yet to get estimates for the cost of replacing the decking, but expect that to be in the several thousand dollar range. A TTT board committee is being created to supervise this important project. At this point, we would like your help to promote our "Revamp the Ramp" fund raiser kickoff.

We are CALLING ALL TREE TOPPERS and all who love hang gliding to help by donating to our REVAMP THE RAMP fund. We have been selling "Planks" and have many generous donors so far including Mike Nash for 10 of the $100 planks and Steve Kroop of Flytec for 6 of the $100 planks. Many others have donated items and pledged their efforts to make this work, but we have a very long way to go.

If you would like to help with this great project at the "Hang Gliding Capitol of the East", please check out our website at www.treetoppers.org for information on how to donate. We hope to raise enough funds to complete the project before Team Challenge 2008 which starts September 28th.

Thanks for all your help with this. I'll attach a photo or two that would be nice to include in this announcement. Again, we at the Tennessee Tree Toppers thank you for all the help in promoting this and want to thank all those who have contributed already and all those who pledge donations or efforts toward this necessary project. The original Wooden Radial Ramp at Henson's is one of the most recognizable hang gliding symbols in the country. Let's preserve it!