Unpaved Landing areas

Ol Shy & Bashful wrote:
How often do you get to land or take off from something other than a
paved runway? The current books don't give it much thought and I
suspect because the writers are so new at this aviation thing, they
have little or no experience on anything but paved runways.
Part of the reason for this post was the resistance to more than a few
to not land on a great 2000' grass strip that has an Interstate on one
end, and trees on the other. I have no idea why they are afraid to
land on this strip. There are at least three grass strips of 2000'
length in this area and some that are longer (one is about 4000').
What has your experience been? I have no idea how much time I have
operating off strips of 1200' or less, grass, gravel, sand, etc and no
problems. Must be at least thousands of them, both in terms of take
off and landings as well as hours.
Ol S&B

Wonderful question. I land on grass airfields quite often. A favorite
one is locate rather close to me anyway. http://cedarmills.com/airfield.htm.

I learned on 1800' less than paved airport south of Kansas City, MO a
long time ago. Never found that to be short. One time when I moved to
the Boston, MA area I checked out at the Bedford airport and, at that
time, no rental plane could land at a airport less than 2600' I think.

--

Regards, Ross
C-172F 180HP
KSWI

Ross wrote in
:

Ol Shy & Bashful wrote:
How often do you get to land or take off from something other than a
paved runway? The current books don't give it much thought and I
suspect because the writers are so new at this aviation thing, they
have little or no experience on anything but paved runways.
Part of the reason for this post was the resistance to more than a
few to not land on a great 2000' grass strip that has an Interstate
on one end, and trees on the other. I have no idea why they are
afraid to land on this strip. There are at least three grass strips
of 2000' length in this area and some that are longer (one is about
4000'). What has your experience been? I have no idea how much time I
have operating off strips of 1200' or less, grass, gravel, sand, etc
and no problems. Must be at least thousands of them, both in terms of
take off and landings as well as hours.
Ol S&B

Wonderful question. I land on grass airfields quite often. A favorite
one is locate rather close to me anyway.
http://cedarmills.com/airfield.htm.

I learned on 1800' less than paved airport south of Kansas City, MO a
long time ago. Never found that to be short. One time when I moved to
the Boston, MA area I checked out at the Bedford airport and, at that
time, no rental plane could land at a airport less than 2600' I think.


Several years ago I looked into rentals at PAO. Every club I looked at
had, at that time (but not now), a rule restricting club members to landing
on paved runways of 3,000' or longer. PAO's runway is only 2,443'. Where
did they expect pilots to return the aircraft at the conclusion of their
rental?

--
Marty Shapiro
Silicon Rallye Inc.

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