Admittedly, I haven't read all the reports, but, last time I flew over, the
Academy already had paved runways. Is this a new landing field?


"Mike C" wrote in message
...
On Mar 24, 9:03 am, "kirk.stant" wrote:
On Friday, March 23, 2012 11:41:10 AM UTC-5, tomcatvf51 wrote:
US Air Force Academy has installed an artificial turf landing area for
glider ops.

The way I read it, it's a natural Turf runway, replacing the natural high
desert grass. That's totally different than an artificial turf runway!

So it's fundamentally the same as a football field. Sounds like a good
idea, since the natural grasses in that part of the world aren't the
softest. I would think the protection from rocks, etc would help the
maintenance load on the new DGs a lot. These gliders aren't just flown
once a week - they get used A LOT!

And probably a lot cheaper than a paved runway, which would have been the
Army's approach... ;^)

Go Falcons!

Kirk
66
USAFA '74

Grass is good!