Press
March’s Hi-Lo GCSAA Post Card Meeting
By Geoff Sanders, The Classic Club
Our March Post Card guest speaker was Dan Metz and he
is a retired Chef after several years working for both the
Springs Club and Morningside Country Club. Well Dan has
taken his hobby of being outdoors and keeping himself
out of trouble to a whole new level. I think he is on to
something and all of us would be interested in using at least
one of his specialty services.
The first topic of discussion at our meeting was the use
of his RC planes on the golf course and or home owner
association areas to scare away those pesty coots. Dan
has started working with Tom Shephard from Desert Falls,
Ron Cressey from Sunrise Country Club and Rick Sall from
Toscana Country Club. After putting his RC planes and
helicopters into the air Dan has come up with a variety of
techniques to make his business the full service plan of
attack to harass the American coots.
Another technique Dan uses is an Sonic Repeller that his
son Brandon who is and Electrical Engineer at jet Propulsion
Lab collaborated. This devise is actually strapped onto the
RC plane and is programmed with digital sounds of would
be predators to the ducks, geese and coots. He is also
using a variety of scare crow tactics including a devise at
night around your lakes that irritates the coots, ducks and
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Sea to Sand • April 2009 • Page 11
geese. After discussing with the few in attendance we
really think that whatever you do to scare the coots to your
neighbors golf course, we think it is imperative that you
start ASAP. I think that everyone would agree that if a fl ock
of geese, ducks and or coots see more of their buddies on
the water then instinct sets in for them to request a fl y by
of the tower and then come in for landing. But if your lakes
are not populated then they are more likely to continue on
their way.
Our second topic of discussion and service that Dan is
able to offer is Turf Grass analysis using a 110” wing span
electric model plane equipped with 3 different cameras and
a GPS unit. An infrared 12 Meg digital camera, a regular
12 Meg digital camera and a television camera for real
time positioning and recording. The pretty cool part of this
is you are now playing the role of controlling the television
camera to ensure Dan is getting the shots you need. The
GPS unit is an onboard telemetry system which will show
altitude and distance fl own that he converts to a fi le that
can be used with Google Earth in numerous capabilities to
your benefi t. The real interesting part are the regular and
infrared photos which Dan loads into his laptop and uses
CS3 Photo Shop to provide you with images of your golf
course. These photos can be used to assist you giving
you the “bird’s eye view” of your irrigation or compaction
challenges. The infrared photos can be used as a tool to
help prioritize your maintenance program as you see fi t.
For instance you could direct your attention to an area to
add a sprinkler, bumping your heads up or down in irrigation
percentages, or even have your aerifi er hit a certain area an
extra time.
The last topic and service that Dan provides is the use of
a RC helicopter that can take wonderful still shots of your
club house or out on the golf course. This service can be
used as a tool to show your members, management team
or even your owners a perspective they have never seen
before. This could be a tool used by your marketing team
to get that one photo they have been looking for that new
marketing packet they have been putting together. If you
have any questions you can contact Tom, Rick or Ron as a
testimony to their story of harassing the coots instead of
the coots harassing them. Dan is a member of the Hi-Lo
GCSA and can be reached by phone at 760-831-6045
or email desertskycam.@aol.com and he does have his
website you can take a look at. http://www.desertskycam.
com/.
