Though I'm sure it isn't as narrow as some of you have done; my narrowest
(so far) was
30 feet wide.... wing tips of 172 hang over the edges of the runway.
Harris Ranch 3O8 in Coalinga.

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Good Flights!

Cecil
PP-ASEL-IA
Student - CP-ASEL

Check out my personal flying adventures from my first flight to the
checkride AND the continuing adventures beyond!
Complete with pictures and text at: www.bayareapilot.com

"I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery -

"We who fly, do so for the love of flying. We are alive in the air with
this miracle that lies in our hands and beneath our feet"
- Cecil Day Lewis -
"Kyle Boatright" wrote in message
...
What's the narrowest runway you've ever used? At what runway width are
you comfortable? Among other things, I had an interesting experience
yesterday with a runway that was far narrower than any I'd used before...

We had gone to Dallas for Mother's day, and returned to Atlanta yesterday
in my RV-6, which is set-up for basic VFR. The weather was marginal for
most of the way, and we made two unscheduled stops and a couple of 180
degree course reversals to avoid weather that was below my minimums. This
turned a 3.5 hour trip into an 8 hour odyssey.

Our first 180 turn and unscheduled stop occurred when the ceiling was
lower than forecast, below my personal minimums, and dropping along our
route of flight. I hit the "nearest" function on the GPS, and retreated
to the nearest airfield to give the FSS a call on the cell phone (we were
too low for radio communication). As we overflew the airfield, I noticed
that all it was was a paved strip and a paved ramp. No buildings nearby.
Also, the strip looked fairly narrow, but I went ahead with the landing
anyway.

On very short final, it became obvious that this strip redefined narrow.
Accoring to the AFD, it is 50' wide, but what the AFD didn't say is that
3' tall sagebrush grows right to the edge of the strip, and occasionally
cuts into the 50' useful width. Given that 3' sagebrush will hit the
RV-6's wingtips, I probably had 10'-12' clear on each side. Catching the
sagebrush with a wingtip would have almost certainly caused a groundloop.

With this in mind, and concentrating hard enough to cause permanant
forehead wrinkles, I managed to keep the airplane centered on landing and
rollout, then taxiied (sp?) to the ramp, where I shut down, pulled out the
cell phone and got exactly zero signal... (Sometimes you can't win.)

So, we fired up again, taxiied out, and I kept the bird out of the weeds
on takeoff and off we went. In the 30 minutes our detour consumed, the
weather along the route improved meaningfully, and we made another 225
miles before the next unplanned stop.

After a 3 hour wait and a couple of visits with the on-field FSS at
Greenville, MS, we found a safe path around the line of storms on the
Alabama/Mississippi border and came on home. One of the real advantages
to a relatively high performance airplane is that if the weather allows,
you can get above most of the cumulus and eyeball your way around the
convective stuff. I'm not sure we would have gotten around yesterday's
weather in a C-172 or Cherokee...