A couple of notes about the NARAM schedule and fees.
Permission to fly NARAM at Great Meadow, NOVAAR's home field and site of the Team America's fly offs was contingent on what the Fauquier County, Virginia Board of Zoning had to say. Great Meadow has permission to host a couple of events each year with let's say 5,000 people and a limited number of events with more then 1,000 people. If one wants to hold more events then what's in Great Meadow's zoning plan you need to apply for a variance and go before the Planning Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals in a public meeting. We definitely do not want to do this. To calculate the size of NARAM, each day' s attendance is summed together. Over a course of a week NARAM breaks the
1,000 person mark, so the only solution was to break NARAM in half, where on Great Meadow's calendar the Saturday - Monday part is a separate event from the Wednesday - Friday part. I'm not publicizing this because I don't want to arouse the locals around The Plains to complain that we're 'bending' the rules. It's not secret, but blabbing probably isn't a good idea either. I wasn't pleased initially with the way this turned out, but with a tour of the new Air & Space annex and we hopr a local aerospace concern it won't be idle time. There's a lot to see and do here in DC too.
I originally thought that we would start NARAM on Sunday afternoon by flying one event. I'm glad that we backed off from this. I agree that flying three events on one day is a challenge, but this has been done before. We feel comfortable flying tracking over the course of a day. NOVAAR's record for tracking at NARAM-31 was a superb one.
As for the price of the banquet, there's no mark up on what the Holiday Inn is charging us. The fact is that Washington DC is the top tourist destination in the country and the summer months are peak season. Hotel's don't need to attract groups like us to fill their rooms. I'm thankful that I was able to book the Holiday Inn a year in advance of NARAM. Also, while the DC metro area is not NYC, prices tend to be higher then many metropolitan areas.