Normally, in the UK, it will be a condition of the planning permission that nobody lives in a hangar 
Yes, but that requires actual planning permissions. Then you have to define “lives” as well. There was a lot of noise over some boat houses close by. People re-decorated and used them as cottages. Don’t remember how it ended. Lots of stupid bureaucracy around.
Something similar happened when I built my shop for building planes. The planning permissions did not allow me to build another “garage”, or to build a larger one, but I could extend my house.
I wonder what is worse. Dying in some less than probable accident, or dying do to self inflicted bureaucratic agony
What’s wrong with these air parks is the inherent contradiction. It would be OK if you were running a flight school, a maintenance shop or something similar. Maybe also if you where doing some real serious air sport. But what other reasons would make you live on the air field when all you want to do with the plane is to fly away to other places? It’s better to live close by a central air airfield, than actually on an airfield far away from other necessities in life. As a summer house kind of thing, maybe, but it’s still a contradiction IMO.
Yes; exactly. This is why air parks are (mostly) either nonexistent due to lack of interest, or are very private communities (most of the US ones) to keep the number of movements down.
If you really could sell say 100 houses at say 1M each, there would be enough “meat” in it to pick a location and drive the planning application all the way through the appeals process. Just like property developers do all day long But you can’t get enough interest nowadays – look at the Murcia Air Park (existed under several names).
Many of the people I know who live on US airports, e.g. Spruce Creek, live there because they are social ‘gearheads’ who want to be in community of pilots and planes, and the more flying activity the better. If they’re in a remote location it’s because they want to live in the country and in addition to fun flying, with the plane they have a way to get to the city fast. Otherwise it’s little different than living elsewhere in suburbia except that the plane is in the garage and you don’t have to drive anywhere to fiddle with it or fly it. The latter case is the most common.
As an example of the above, my plane was for almost 30 years owned by a guy working in engineering and management jobs for a European auto manufacturer and during that period he lived sequentially at three airports, the first just outside of NYC where he commuted a normal distance to his office near the port area in New Jersey, the second at a similar residential airport outside of Detroit, then finally in southern Florida after retirement. He had other planes & projects, a substantial number of (racing) car projects, and was very busy on transatlantic business trips, so my plane flew only about 900 hrs before I bought it. His life was closer to hyperactive than an isolated ‘life on the farm’.
I think it is really hard to reproduce that ethos in Europe.
Anywhere which is “nice” and where people have jobs and money, land values and thus property prices are high. There are probably bits of the former USSR where land is cheap and permissions are easy, but there isn’t a developed economy with the money (the money tends to be controlled by local “businessmen” i.e. gangsters). I am sure same would have been possible in Spain in the goode olde days of “incentivising the local mayor” I used to know a pilot who built an amazing place in the middle of nowhere – here – but then died.
As for Shoreham, I hope this guy does not succeed building houses there because they will take up land which should be used for hangars, which aircraft owners could rent or buy. Selling land off for houses which can house just 1 plane and take up a lot of room is very much the I am allright Jack principle, which is the last thing we need at Shoreham. We already have lost a nice hangar to a laundry (!) and another one is half sold already. We need hangarage where people can look after their planes, where they plug something into the mains, where the birds don’t crap, etc.
I think you can make a case that quality of life depends only on a workable climate, available land (meaning reasonable population density), the local economy and political rights & stability. The rest takes care of itself, driven by individual interests and market forces.
Silvaire wrote:
I think you can make a case that quality of life depends only on a workable climate, available land (meaning reasonable population density), the local economy and political rights & stability. The rest takes care of itself, driven by individual interests and market forces.
More or less exactly what the Vikings thought when they invaded England, Ireland, Russia and Normandy Population density is a tough nut to crack.
I’ve been intrigued that the required elements for an airpark seem to exist in eastern Germany, for example just a few km from the old border, with the exception of probable issues planning permission. There are huge open areas there, and not that far from towns and cities.
(Just my mental meanderings as recent visitor)
@Silvaire : There is at least one airpark project in Eastern Germany I know about, Müritz Airpark:
AFAIK the project didn’t get very far yet…
MedEwok wrote:
There is at least one airpark project in Eastern Germany I know about, Müritz Airpark
Thanks, It’s interesting to see that long paved runway on Google Maps. Just one light plane shows on the ramp, although a photo taken some other time shows more. This is one of the areas that gave rise to my post, I rode a motorcycle from Wismar to Berlin one day, the weather was beautiful and old Cold War runways came to mind.
