Main Streeters name Tenderfoot of the Year | COMMUNITY A6
TUESDAY, MAY 3, 2022
146th Year, No. 58
$1.50
WINNER OF 16 ONPA AWARDS IN 2021
PENDLETON
Wranglers herd cattle Saturday,
April 30, 2022, for steer roping at the
Pavilion on the Pendleton Round-Up
Grounds during the annual Pendle-
ton Cattle Barons Weekend.
UAS Range is
busier than ever
Wyatt Teggens/East Oregonian
By JOHN TILLMAN
East Oregonian
By WYATT TEGGINS
East Oregonian
ENDLETON — The Pend-
leton Cattle Barons Week-
end wrapped up its 14th year
Saturday, April 30, with a
solid horse auction and the
barbecue competition stick-
ing it out through a thunder-
storm.
Now in its 14th year, all the proceeds
of the nonprofit event showcasing
Western heritage provide more than
$100,000 worth of college scholarships
to regional students pursuing studies
within agriculture. A large chunk of
which stems from the auctions for work-
ing dogs and horses.
P
Auctions provide
abundance of funds
Hopes were high going into this
year’s working dog and horse auction,
following the previous year when the
top dog sold for an astonishing $48,000,
and two horses both sold separately for
$28,500. Auction manager Tygh Camp-
bell explained the good-hearted spirit of
the auction.
“Some people will bid on a dog or
a horse with no prospect of actually
owning it,” he said. “They do it to help
get scholarship funds up.”
This year, the Pavilion on the Pendle-
ton Round-Up Grounds had a deep hum
as people gathered and discussed the lots
for sale. Following the previews of the
horses and dogs, the bidding war began
as soon as the fi rst horse hit the stadium.
Within two minutes the steed sold for
$42,000 the top price at the event.
Wyatt Teggens/East Oregonian
Team Meatsweats celebrates Saturday, April 30, 2022, at the Pendleton Convention
Center after winning the People’s Champion award in the Buckaroo Barbecue Chal-
lenge during Pendleton Cattle Barons Weekend.
Two other horses sold for more than
$30,000 causing an all-out fight for
the remaining lots. Campbell after the
auction said 16 out of 18 horses sold at
an average of $15,906, raising a consid-
erable sum for future scholarships.
Although the working dog auction
didn’t have the luck as years prior,
several dogs broke the $4,000 mark,
with the top sale being $7,500. The
consensus among the breeders and
trainers was for the well-being of Cattle
Barons scholarship efforts. Several
trainers said dogs of such pedigree
usually would sell for nearly double at
another auction, but it is in the spirit of
giving and helping others, so they are
glad to take the pay cut.
Barbecue weathers a challenge
Contestants for this year’s Buckaroo
Barbecue Challenge not only had to face
rigorous judging of the Pacifi c Northwest
Barbecue Association but endured the
two-hour thunderstorm that hit the area.
The storm caused signifi cant delays
to contest judging and led to animosity
building up between members of separate
teams, causing a minor altercation that
event staffi ng had to resolve.
See Bang, Page A9
PENDLETON — The manager of the Pend-
leton UAS Range reported the site is busier than
ever.
“Despite the weather, as of the end of April,
we’ve had 1,292 operations in 2022,” Darryl
Abling said. “When we fi nally get spring and
into summer, we’ll fl y even more often.”
Last year, the range had around 7,000 opera-
tions. This year, Abling said he expects 15,000
to 20,000.
The test range has about 15 unmanned aerial
system clients with semi-permanent leases and
operating on a daily or weekly basis.
“We have several new clients whom I can’t
talk about,” he stated. “We get new people all
the time, and the 15 here are expanding their
operations.”
Nondisclosure agreements bind Abling
and the rest of the city from publicly disclos-
ing specifi cs about the clients operating at the
range.
The Pendleton UAS Range was awarded in
2013, but started off slowly. Air Force veteran
Abling came to Pendleton in 2016, after 29 years
with Northrop Grumman Corp., working on
the B-2 stealth bomber in Southern California.
“I don’t want to go back,” he commented.
“Even to visit.”
The range in 2016 had only 54 operations,
but its use started to take off after Air Bus’ and
the Navmar Applied Sciences Corporation’s
programs arrived the next year.
Air Bus’ Vahana project was an all-electric,
tilt-wing vehicle demonstrator. The only fl yable
Vahana in existence is in boxes at the Eastern
Oregon Regional Airport, Pendleton. It spent
two years in a San Francisco warehouse before
returning to Pendleton. NASC’s ArcticShark
developed a cold weather drone.
Some range clients include Amazon, Verizon
Robotics, Cubic Corporation’s ISR Systems of
San Diego and two Columbia Gorge companies,
Insitu of Bingen, Washington, and Hood River’s
Hood Tech Mechanical.
Started in a small garage in 1994, Insitu is
now a subsidiary of Boeing. It makes the wide-
ly-used military ScanEagle drone and the Navy
and Marine Corps’ larger RQ-21 Blackjack. Its
neighbor, Hood Tech, produces the Flying Air
Recovery System, which provides fi xed-wing
drones with vertical take-off and landing capa-
bility.
Hood Tech engineer Cory Roeseler said,
“(Range staff ) have been terrifi c. They do a
nice job.”
He said his company has fl own 700 times
during the years on the range with a perfect
safety record. Hood Tech is working on
FLARES 3.0 at Pendleton, a system capable of
handling larger and heavier drones.
“It’s a challenge to integrate unmanned
and manned fl ights in the same air space,” he
concluded. “They do it as well as anyone. Better
in fact. We’ve been all over, from the Army’s
Yuma Proving Ground to Florida and every-
where in between. Pendleton does it the best.”
Pendleton’s range belongs to the Pan-Pacifi c
UAS Test Range Complex, one of seven offi cial
FAA test sites in the country. Managed by the
University of Alaska Fairbanks, the PPUTRC
spans seven climate zones, allowing UAS
manufacturers and potential users to test their
equipment in the Arctic, the tropics and in arid
environments. It encompasses ranges in Hawaii,
California, Oregon, Kansas and Mississippi.
Besides Pendleton, UAS test ranges in Oregon
are at Warm Springs and Tillamook.
The other six Federal Aviation Administra-
tion-approved ranges are in New York, Virginia,
North Dakota, Texas, New Mexico and Nevada.
Milton-Freewater residents volunteer to ‘make a diff erence’
By MAX ERICKSON
Walla Walla Union-Bulletin
MILTON-FREEWATER — Even
a wet spring morning didn’t discour-
age volunteers here from contrib-
uting to Make a Diff erence Day on
Saturday, April 30. Dozens of people
helped clean and restore Main Street
in the fi rst of a two-day event.
The Milton-Freewater Downtown
Alliance and the community’s Cham-
ber of Commerce combined eff orts
to organize the event bringing resi-
dents together to restart these organi-
zations’ goals post pandemic.
The Downtown Alliance, specifi -
cally, was created to boost economic
activity in the community and to
restore and beautify Milton-Freewa-
ter.
Dr. Norm Saager has been the
Greg Lehman/Walla Walla Union-Bulletin
Local artist Sheila Lane helps Coyote Joe make a hand print on her mural Sat-
urday morning, April 30, 2022, during the fi rst day of the Make A Diff erence
Weekend in Milton-Freewater.
organization’s president off and on
for the past 12 years and frequently
participates in the community devel-
opment for Milton-Freeewater.
The local dentist said events like
Make a Diff erence Day are a step in
the right direction for Milton-Free-
water.
“We hope we can inspire a volun-
teerism boost,” he said. “We were
moving in the right direction before
COVID-19 hit, and now we are just
starting to get back to where we were,
and this is our fi rst big step towards
doing that.”
The weekend’s projects included
installing new bike racks, convert-
ing whiskey barrels into f lower
planters and weeding the sidewalks
on Main Street.
See Diff erence, Page A9