"Bejeeber" wrote in news:1162090921.916075.309980
@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Hey, sorry to be kind of crashing this group since I'm not a pilot.

I bet y'all can help me though.

My current house in the Warm Beach area of Stanwood, Wa 98292 gets
buzzed by small planes all the time - I seem to be on some sort of
regular "route" for planes from Seattle to the San Juans?

Well I'll be moving pretty soon - probably to Athens, GA - and I don't
wish to make the same mistake of locating myself in a neighborhood
that's regularly buzzed over again.

Is there some website I can go to with maps or whatever that will allow
me to find whether a given neighborhood will have busy overhead
traffic, whether small planes or airliners?

Thanks.


I would also recommended you stop into the local Athens Airport.

http://www.athensairport.net/

I'd say call, but I think you will do much better by hanging out at the
flight school for a few hours and talking to the receptionist, the
students, and the instructors especially. Instructors at the flight school
can give you an idea of where they go for practice, what the "typical"
nice-weather runway is, the approach procedures in bad weather, etc... They
will probably be able to show you on a map (Sectional Charts, IFR Low
Altitude Charts, and Approach Plates) the areas of town that are underneath
these routes.

Also, sometimes the best way to avoid noise over your house is the opposite
of what you might expect. For example, I live about halfway between White
Plains airport and Laguardia Airport in NY. I get a lot of planes over my
house on a daily basis, departing or arriving at one of the two airports.
But typically by the time they get here they are in the 10's of thousands
of feet, and all I might hear on a beatiful sunny day is a low hollow rush
as it passes way overhead, almost like a beach noise. I've lived in this
area most of my life, and quite frankly I pretty much tune the noise out.
It's not all that intrusive. Every once in a while, we hear a plane fly
overhead at a fairly low altitude and it's noisy to the point that someone
in the house says, "boy that plane was low!" But that's rare. Because I am
in close proximity to a major airport, the airspace above my home is in
what's called "Class B Airspace". It means that pilots are "controlled" by
ATC, and can't just fly around buzzing and practicing in this area.

In other words, rather than avoid the approaches altogether, you may be
better off finding an area on the approach where planes have to be high.
This way even though you'll have planes flying overhead, they will mostly
be high enough not to be annoying.

Admittedly, it's a little tougher to figure out where planes are going to
be when the weather is clear, since there are far fewer restrictions. And
if the weather is bad, you probably will be inside and won't hear plane
noise anyway. So your best bet might be to talk to neighbors before buying
and see what they say about airplane noise in the area.