Michigan (UP) KSAW winds ??

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.

Tia,
Mitty

Find the NOAA NWS page for that city.
There should be a wind history page somewhere.

On 9/4/04 4:28 PM, john smith wrote the following:

Find the NOAA NWS page for that city.
There should be a wind history page somewhere.

Thanks for the suggestion. The things you can find online are amazing.
Only took about 10 min. of digging:

"Climatic Wind Data for the United States"
http://nndc.noaa.gov/?http://ols.nnd...0518-PUB-A0001

And, sure enough, the Sawyer prevailing wind tends to be North or South!

Mitty

"Mitty" wrote in message
...

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.


Could he have pointed it wherever he wanted? That runway is long, wide, and
thick, I imagine surface features and subsoils played a significant role.
Perhaps even more significant than prevailing winds. Post-WWII USAF bases,
as SAW was up to about eight years ago, tend to have one large runway or
parallel runways, no crosswind runways at all. The USAF didn't seem to care
that much about crosswinds.

On Sat, 04 Sep 2004 16:13:18 GMT, Mitty
wrote:

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.

Two points for that area.
Dress warm!
Take what your compass says with at least a grain of salt.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

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.

Tia,
Mitty

Mitty wrote:

Marquette/Sawyer KSAW has one runway, 2 1/2 miles long x 150' pointed

1/19.

It's that long so that B-52's and KC-135's could take off and land
there.

The runway is effectively 300' wide, so if you have a strong crosswind,
try landing perpendicular to the runway.

On 9/5/04 1:43 PM, Brien K. Meehan wrote the following:


It's that long so that B-52's and KC-135's could take off and land
there.


The runway is effectively 300' wide

Really? Plates say 150.


, so if you have a strong crosswind,
try landing perpendicular to the runway.


Yes, I thought of that. :-)

"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'.

On Sun, 05 Sep 2004 21:39:30 GMT, "Steven P. McNicoll"
wrote:


"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'.

We ended up with one of their snow plows, or rather blowers. The
thing can take the snow off the runway and put it over the taxiways.
I think we've only had one major snow storm since then.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

Roger Halstead wrote:

On Sun, 05 Sep 2004 21:39:30 GMT, "Steven P. McNicoll"
wrote:


"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'.


We ended up with one of their snow plows, or rather blowers. The
thing can take the snow off the runway and put it over the taxiways.
I think we've only had one major snow storm since then.

Did the blower blow so hard that it blew all the storms away? :-)


Matt