AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2016 - 62

ROB TRAYNHAM talks to young visitors to Triple Tree Aerodrome

(below). Pat Hartness with his eight-foot Sukhoi SU-26 radiocontrolled aircraft (right). It has a 124-inch wingspan, weighs 37
pounds, and has a 150-cc engine.

at Hartness might be aviation's Peter Pan. His "Lost Boys"
have found their happy place at his playground, Triple
Tree Aerodrome outside Greenville, South Carolina. They
fly, they build things, they party, they laugh, they work hard, and
they play hard. Don't let the gray hair fool you.
THE STORY BEGINS. What would you do if life had been extraordinarily kind to you, had given you all the material things you'd
ever wished for, and there was nothing you could ever want? Well,
you'd set up a great playground for your friends, share the fun, and
build up the economy of your little hometown, right?
That's what "Mr. Pat" did-and is doing.
The Hartnesses were Pepsi-Cola in the South. Not only selling the products but the bottler, too-the inventor of a bottling
system, to be exact. His dad offered him a little money upon graduation and Pat invested it in Pepsi, the "other" cola-Coke was
king here then-so a little money went a long way. Then stores
came along looking for a cheaper cola than Coke, and a small
fortune was made. Add the ingenuity to improve on the packaging process, and an empire was built. Hartness International
was sold several years ago for an undisclosed amount to Illinois
Tool Works.
Hartness's dad, Tom, was a big part of this success, and his
mom was the first female certificated pilot in South Carolina.
The family loved flying. Hartness built model aircraft and eventually started flying radio-controlled (RC) aircraft. At Furman

If you go
Triple Tree Aerodrome (SC00) is
located in Woodruff, South Carolina.
It is a private airstrip but happily welcomes visitors. Use Triple Tree's
multicom frequency (122.9 MHz) and give
24 hours notice before your arrival. Bring your own
tiedowns and remember there is no fuel on site. Pilot information is on the website and has very detailed instructions for
arrivals and departures during the annual general aviation fly-in.
Celebrating its tenth year, the GA fly-in takes place September 7
through 11, 2016. Those instructions are great for pilots visiting
any time. Subscribe to the mailing list and receive updates and
additional information. In addition to the GA fly-in in September,
on the calendar currently is a Fabric and Tailwheel Lunch on June
11 and the South Carolina Breakfast Club fly-in July 19. The Joe Nall
RC fly-in takes place May 7 through 14 and the aerodrome is closed to
GA traffic during that time. For more information and to sign up for
the mailing list, visit the website (www.tripletreeaerodrome.com).

62 | AOPA PILOT March 2016

University he met his best friend: Joseph T. Nall. Joe Nall was the
former NTSB member who was killed as a passenger in a 1989
airplane crash in Caracas, Venezuela, and for whom the AOPA
Air Safety Institute's annual aviation safety report is named. Nall
and Hartness flew radio-controlled aircraft together and started
an RC fly-in at the Hartness property. That was in 1978. What is
now Joe Nall Week at Triple Tree has grown from 1,700 attendees to more than 15,000; RC teams come from all over the world
to participate.
THE PROPERTY. Hartness and his wife, Mary Lou, discovered what
is now Triple Tree Aerodrome in 2000. It was her suggestion that
it be named after the three large oak trees on the property. And
it was a much better name than Kilgore, the plantation of which
the property once was a part. Kilgore Aerodrome doesn't work
for an aviation Mecca.
Rob Traynham, Triple Tree's volunteer communications coordinator, says that after Hartness International was sold, Pat took
up moving dirt. "He just loves to move dirt," Traynham jokes.
But there's a lot of truth to that. Hartness says he moved
more than "nine years" of dirt around to create the crown jewel
of Triple Tree: a 7,000-foot-long, 400-foot-wide, flatter-than-apancake runway on which a jet can land. Its grass is Tifway 419
Bermuda-the kind you find on golf courses. Kids are known to
spread out on the turf as if they are making snow angels; grownups want to do it, too.
In creating his aviation playground, Hartness was adamant
that it serve two purposes: a great GA airport and a great RC airport. So there's a special area for flying and viewing RC aircraft.

http://www.tripletreeaerodrome.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2016