Narrow Runways

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...

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