On Tue, 21 Dec 2004 04:51:53 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

Flying on paved strips only helps a lot. My airplane was based on a
grass/dirt strip for several years and pledge and a diaper just wouldn't
cut it!

We fly into a grass strip half a dozen times per year, and it takes Pledge,
diapers, and Simple Green (on the fiberglass parts) to clean up after those
excursions...

Likewise, I have a 1700' gravel driveway and my cars definitely need a
water bath before washing or I'd have my paint ground away in a few
washings.

Gravel driveways are the norm in rural Iowa. You can really tell the

We have a lot of "dirt" driveways in rural Michigan as well.
Although I don't see it much any more, at one time you could purchase
a car with a "chip guard" right from the factory, which was a kind of
plastic coating on the bottom foot of so of the doors and fenders.
The stuff really worked.

At that time I had nearly a mile and a half of gravel road going into
town. It was gravel right up to the village limits.

Of course that is the same town where my 40 acre field (on which I
used to land the Piper Colt) was within the city limits.

One of the guys who lived about 15 miles out actually brought his
equipment up and mowed a strip full length of the field. He could fly
up to the field and walk the rest of the was faster than he could
drive it. Of course that didn't work if he needed to carry a lot.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com
"out-of-towners" by the beaters they drive into town. I'm sure they don't
see much point in buying an expensive car when you basically trash it
without ever leaving your property. (Of course, crushing rural poverty has
something to do with this, too...)