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After several changes of design, materials, and placement, the eagle life flight cage was completed on 7/7/08.
We would like to thank everyone involved, especially our donors and Connie and Clayton Cook for their work on this fundraiser. We were able to raise $19,700 and to mostly stay within that budget. The flight cage is now known as the Oncale Eagle Flight with special thanks to Brent and Kelley Oncale for their extremely generous donation.
Prices for wood have gone up considerably, and we had to stay within our budget. We opted to buy three "pony wall" buildings from FarmTek. These buildings have many uses, but never have they been put up as a flight cage! There is a first time for everything.
Our first decision was placement. At first we had it out in the open but then decided to push back into the brush to give the flight a more secluded feel. Special thanks to Travis Mertz for donating his services for clearing and leveling.
We then built our pony walls and created a 100' long, 20' wide, and 6' high enclosure.
The next step was placing the metal hoops into the brackets on top of the pony walls. These were then stood up and tied into place with struts. One thing we didn't count on was how hot the hoops were to the touch. This was extremely tiring work and took us a weekend longer than anticipated. But our contractor Valdemar kept his crew working.
