Michigan (UP) KSAW winds ??

On 9/5/04 4:39 PM, Steven P. McNicoll wrote the following:

"Mitty" wrote in message
...

The runway is effectively 300' wide


Really? Plates say 150.



When the USAF owned it the runways were 300' wide. Now they're 150' wide
with 75' paved shoulders. Half the pavement to maintain and plow that way.
At Kincheloe/Chippewa County they abandoned the south mile or so of runway
completely and reduced the width of the rest to 200'.



Interesting ... that will be the biggest runway I've ever landed on! I
told my wife that the runway was 150' and she was a bit skeptical as she
has flown in there commercial and thought it looked bigger. Now we know
why.

I'm planning a trip to the Upper Peninsula in about a month, so I've
begun looking at charts. We'll be landing at Marquette, Escanaba,
Menominee, and Houghton. Or that's the plan anyway.

Marquette/Sawyer KSAW has one runway, 2 1/2 miles long x 150' pointed
1/19. Now the collective wisdom of airport designers in this part of
the country is that, if you have only one runway, you do it like 14/32
or 12/34. But I have to believe that whoever committed to 2 1/2 miles
of concrete -- out in the woods where he could have pointed it wherever
he wanted -- must have looked at prevailing winds. So are the winds
different because of the lake? I don't particularly want to divert from
there just because my little PA-28 can't handle a crosswind, although
there are several easy places to go.

SAW was - at least when I was going to school in Marquette in the '70's - a
B-52 base. (Those guys partied like college kids!) Don't BUFFs have that funky
castoring crosswind landing gear? If I recall, the wind was usually out of the
north. I just flew over there on the way to Houghton a couple of months back
and saw several GA planes on the ground. NWA flies in and out of there
regularly - I don't think you'll have too much trouble.