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Narrow Runways
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... |
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"Kyle Boatright" wrote in message ...
What's the narrowest runway you've ever used? Not sure... My current runway is 25 ft wide... It definitely seems narrow, but there's plenty of grass on either side that I could land on also, I guess... At what runway width are you comfortable? Well, I don't feel *uncomfortable* with this one, but most of my flights are probably from an airport with a 50 ft wide runway with ditches along a good portion of it, so rolling off the side would definitely *not* be a good idea... This turned a 3.5 hour trip into an 8 hour odyssey. Ahhhh... The dreaded "scenic route"... grin |
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What's the narrowest runway you've ever used?
I've used runways whose paving was barely wide enough for the wheels. Somehow my approaches are better at such fields - even if I pretend that the big dotted line of a wider runway =is= the entire runway. Dunno why - must be the sight picture. However, I've never landed at a field where wing clearance was an issue. Jose -- Money: what you need when you run out of brains. for Email, make the obvious change in the address. |
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Kyle Boatright asks:
What's the narrowest runway you've ever used? In my COZY MKIV, 40 ft., I think. Wingspan is 29.5 ft. or so. There were trees/bushes on one side of the runway, and I ticked a couple of bushes with one wingtip while turning around at the runway's end. I've landed on 40 ft. wide runways with nothing on either side many times, with no issues, with up to 10 kt. crosswinds. .....At what runway width are you comfortable? I think I'd be OK with 25-30 ft, depending upon how much crosswind there was, and how long the runway was for takeoff. If there's no flora off to the sides, then even narrower would be OK - keeping the plane within 5 ft. of the centerline isn't really a problem, and the gear width is about 6-7 ft. or so. -- Marc J. Zeitlin http://marc.zeitlin.home.comcast.net/ http://www.cozybuilders.org/ Copyright (c) 2005 |
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Kyle Boatright wrote: What's the narrowest runway you've ever used? At what runway width are you comfortable? 38 feet. 39 feet. Kay |
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"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... SNIP! Trona, California, L72. Runway 17/35 is 6000 feet long and 60 feet wide. One of my early problems was flying at IYK with the 150 wide runways, I was somewhat casual about the center line. Hey, in a 150 Aerobat who cares if you are a wing width off to one side or the other? My first experience at L72 was on my second hour of night dual. My CFI, Bob Mikesell, had me fly over to Trona. Cocky ole me, I had mastered the night visual approach at IYK -- piece 'o cake, says I. So Bob has me fly over L72 and check the wind-T, then do all the proper things about entering downwind on a 45, GUMPS, base, and split the lights on final. As a small aside here, flaps were not a routine part of landing back in 1973 unless soft- or short-field, or some other exigency required them. I crossed the threshold on that pitch-black night somewhat to the right of the center-line. The visual difference in surface texture didn't register. The runway edge lights were way over there on the right and way over there on the left. I flared at the perfect height and kept easing back on the yoke, easing back, easing ba... and touchdown... THERE WAS THE GOD AWFULEST RACKET I HAD EVER HEARD! I didn't wait for Bob... In went the Carb Heat. Firewall went the throttle. Wallow went the little airplane back into the air to escape the horrendous noise. With the nose down, the airspeed built up until I was flying again. When I looked over at Mr. Mikesell, he actually had tears running down his cheeks he was laughing so hard. I had almost pee'd my pants and I know I sucked half the cushion off the seat. And he is laughing. Finally, he says, "I don't ever want to tell you about the center-line again." You see, the runway at L72 was 150 feet wide..., well no, the lights were 150' wide. The paved part was only 60. The rest of the space between the asphalt and the lights was gravel. Bob died of a heart attack several years ago, so you don't need to make any critical remarks about him letting a student ding up the 150's paint flying onto the gravel. Besides, it didn't do any noticable paint damage anyway. Thirty-two years later, I can still hear Bob laughing when I'm on final and I get the center-line more than a wheel-span off to either side. |
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Casey Wilson wrote: snip. and touchdown... THERE WAS THE GOD AWFULEST RACKET I HAD EVER HEARD! Thirty-two years later, I can still hear Bob laughing when I'm on final and I get the center-line more than a wheel-span off to either side. now, that was a great story, well told. thanks my narrow runway is about 3" wide. or so it seemed to me. where i got my ppl there are 2 runways, 17/35 r/l and the one on the west side is big. like bravo big. concrete that goes on, as chris rea says, "forever" and is very wide. too much crosswind for your i52? not a problem, just bring her in crosswise. then there was the runway that we terrified students were allowed: "the little dirt raod". that's what we called it and by golly, that's just what it looks like from 1000'. maybe half as long as the real runway and rather than that pretty greyish/whitish concrete, this path was paved with asphalt. or whatever's left after asphalt dies. all black and rough except for the volunteer plants expressing thru the ample cracks. on paper, it's 50' but i'm suspicious. if ray charles really wanted to learn to fly, he could have learned take-offs there. the many potholes formed a kind of brail that you learned to read and about halfway down there's a huge speed bump that tells you it's time to by-god rotate or brake like mad. mostly, we would launch off it. as you tried to line up on the little dirt road you of course had to especially worry about not wandering into the real runway which is exactly 17" west or, to the east, the water-runway which they use for float plane operations and which is also exactly 17" to the other side and they keep it stocked with sharks. a big-shot thousands-of-hours pilot explained to me that they allowed the students to use the little dirt road only because they didn't want our dirty little carcases interfering with important operations. i felt better then. ((G)) dan |
#8
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Kyle Boatright wrote:
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... I can remember going into Westwego, down in New Orleans, LA in a Piper Arrow. You know how the runway spreads out on either side of the aircraft when you flare? Well, this one didn't. It wasn't the softest landing I've ever made but I guarantee it was the straightest. -- Mortimer Schnerd, RN |
#9
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18 feet. I'd rather deal with narrow than wide which are usually lacking in visual clues. "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... |
#10
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I never landed on an 18ft runway - don;t really know it I would want to
- I think not. What was your shortest? Again, I'm very conservative about this. Mine to date is 2400 ft with trees. My worst airport to date is in a very narrow valley where the runway is longer and wider than my minimums, but the surrounding mountains encroach enough that you cannot fly a standard pattern. If I'm being honest, I'm not a great fan of extreme runways (nor is my insurer Tony C-GICE In article , "Dave Stadt" wrote: 18 feet. I'd rather deal with narrow than wide which are usually lacking in visual clues. "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... -- Tony Roberts PP-ASEL VFR OTT Night Cessna 172H C-GICE |
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