By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — Warsaw Municipal Airport is going to SOAR with Cardinal Services again this June, and this time the public is invited.

The second annual SOAR event at the airport, 3000 N. Airport Road, Warsaw, will be 1-3 p.m. Thursday, June 8.

The Board of Aviation Commissioners authorized the event at their meeting Thursday.

“I asked Ray Scott, our line supervisor, to be here tonight. He helped organize the event and I said I loved the idea, and we did our SOAR event last year where we partnered with Cardinal Services and a lot of the city of Warsaw departments to do a touch-a-truck and a touch-an-airplane event out at the airport,” Airport Manager Nick King told the board.

Scott said they had roughly 120 Cardinal Services clients and corporate representatives attend the 2022 event.

“We had a really fun time. They loved it. They wanted to expand it a little bit, so they are inviting some more people from within their group,” King said.

He said they are going to open it up to the public this year so if family members of the clients want to join – or if students out of school want to see some of the equipment the city uses or airplanes upclose – they will be able to.

“We’re not going to do airplane rides or anything like that this year yet. We’re hoping to grow into that in a couple years, but there were some concerns about liability and taking too big of a step upfront, but it should be a really fun event,” King said. “All the city departments really come together and we have a lot of fun.”

When Board President Jay Rigdon asked Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer if it sounded like a good idea to him, Thallemer responded, “I was out and had a great time. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it, and I guess we’re going to do the second one soon.”

According to a flyer provided by Scott, food and T-shirts will be available for purchase, with sales benefitting Cardinal Services.

Some of the specialized vehicles that will be there will include airplanes, RV planes, helicopters, city trucks, water trucks, law enforcement vehicles, fire trucks and more.

The board also approved two pay requests from CHA Consulting Inc., the airport’s engineering firm.

Nathan Lienhart, civil engineer with CHA, said he didn’t really have any updates for the board on the runway 27 power line lowering project with AEP since the April meeting.

“We’re just continuing to progress. We had our biweekly call with AEP earlier today. They placed the order on some long-lead materials, which is a good sign, so just continuing to make progress on that project,” he said.

He presented the first pay request for CHA’s services. Pay request No. 8 and partial pay grant request No. 6 totaled $7,855.68, with the local share being $392.78. The state’s share also is $392.78, with the federal share being $7,070.05.

The board approved paying the invoice.

On the runway 9-27 safety area phase I program definition, Lienhart said they’re continuing to make progress on it.

“We’re about 50% through the report. Our team is working through. We did an internal review, and our team is working through those comments and finalizing the draft for the airport board’s review. We’re also concurrently working on the forecast, this is an added aspect of the project that we’re fast-tracking to get to the finish line by the end of May. So the forecast and the RSAD are tracking on the same schedule to have final drafts complete by the end of the month. A short review period, and then hopefully by mid to late June we’ll be submitting to the FAA for their review as well,” Lienhart said.

For this project, he also presented an invoice. Pay request No. 4 and grant draw-down request No. 4 totaled $20,264.20, with the federal share being $18,237.78; state share of $1,013.21 and the local share of $1,013.21.

The board approved paying the invoice.

In a general update to the board, Lienhart reported he and King were on a “very helpful phone call this afternoon with a line of business within the FAA that oversees navigational aids, and the topic of discussion was the runway 27 ILS (instrument landing system) and what general steps may be needed for the FAA to entertain taking over that system, both in ownership and in maintenance. And so, very, very early, very high-level discussions just to see what possibilities may be out there, if any. More to come on this topic.”

He said they were looking forward to furthering that discussion.