"Ben Hallert" wrote in message
oups.com...

With the big crowd of planes their photos show, it doesn't look like the
hacked together amateur-fest I was expecting.

Negative, sir. The airstrip isn't established by the Burning Man
organization, it's done each year by the pilots themselves; volunteers fly
out there two weeks in advance and spend those scorching days grooming the
surface, setting up markers and the UNICOM and testing the conditions, and
they're out there for a month afterward cleaning up every boa feather,
pistacio shell, cigarette butt and bottle cap in he desert. The BLM
inspects the event overall and their permits are provisional upon passing
the inspection. Those pilots fly people around all day long (everything
from experimentals to a KingAir and an An-2....they're trying to get
approval to bring in a DC-3 next year) so the "spaceport" is a product of
their love for flying and desire to preserve their own airplanes.

The only serious aviation accidents they had out there have involved
trespassers or idiot hotdoggers who violated the rules and tried to land at
night.

I've been wanting to attend, but the 10 hour drive has been a bit of a
barrier. The 1.5 hour flight, on the other hand, suddenly seems pretty
reasonable. Well, I've got a year to get ready.

If you have any questions about any of it from an aviator's perspective (ie,
non deadhead/raver/hippie/college partier), e-mail me at
and I'll help you. In 2005 a dozen friends and I
built the Star Castle and Infinite Improbability Root Beer Saloon and served
16 kegs of homemade rootbeer (free, of course) during the afternoons. I
ended up being too busy to make it out to the airstrip.

The aviation community has already planning for next year.

The 10 hour drive, by the way, is nothing. People return year after year
from all over the world and once you've walked through Black Rock City at
sunset, it's clear why. The -only- reason we didn't go this year is
because last year while we were there, my wife and decided after seven years
to take the next step in our life and have a child.

-c