This seems all too common
Months without flying, and it doesn’t do the engine much good…
Often, this is the price paid for the ultra-important-in-the-UK £10 landing fee…
I battle with this a bit myself. The answer is you have the wrong aeroplane and or the wrong tires. In this instance, a NOTAM closed airfield there is no workaround but for a similarly wet field, it’s machine/tires. 6-00×6 tires on the mains get bogged in, where 8-00×6 or 8.50×6 would ride through it. If you have something like a fixed gear PA28/32/C172/C182/Maule you can play the tire game. I’m putting some used 8.00×6 mains on the 206 and the nose is already upsized to deal with the ground conditions.
I have flown in strips where when you got out of the plane you went in the mud past your ankles. We have been experimenting a bit lately with a Rockwell 112 in wet and muddy grass strips. Pilot technique plays a huge part in it.
Sometimes it’s borderline and just one landing aircraft can dig trenches and make the strip unusable, at least by us mortal weekend pilots.
Low ground pressure is the key. It is the case though that some aircraft are just not suited to operating on soft ground. You pay your money and make your choice.
Peter wrote:
Months without flying, and it doesn’t do the engine much good…
Yes – engine suffers.
Use a dehumidifier. I have built one myself. Very cheap and easy. Small air pump, tube to a canister with silca gel and via filter to the engine breather.
Just cover a small icing hole in a breather with a tape to have a tight seal.
Most of our engines have some amount of water diluted in the oil which slowly evaporates and fills the crankcase with badly 100% humidity during non-use period.
Heating the engine is not recommended as you speed up the water release from the oil.
Isn’t the real problem experienced by the airfield operator with damage to the runway
I don’t know the cost off and in turn the return of upgrading drainage. Or if it is even possible.
Manchester Barton and Goodwood must of spent a fortune on grading their runways.
Would of been better to tarmac one of them. But then how much would that of cost?
It’s not just the cost of tarmacing them, it’s the apparently extremely slim chance of getting planning permission to do so. To make the grass runway well drained and firm doesn’t need planning permission.
AFAIK the main issue is that a hard runway triggers a need for a planning application. Then you get lots of objections. When Shoreham went tarmac c. 1978 there was a huge local campaign that there will be 747s going in there! OK; a lot of people are stupid, but… Redhill is currently fighting an action over their tarmacing of a taxiway used as a runway.
Goodwood used to be shut for months at a time. Have they done something?
This issue shows we need to support our hard runway airfields, not boycott them as per the UK social media “boycott everything over £10” movement. GA as we now have it can’t exist from grass strips.
Peter wrote:
Goodwood used to be shut for months at a time. Have they done something?
Yes, they have spent a load of money upgrading the grass runway
WilliamF wrote:
The answer is you have the wrong aeroplane and or the wrong tires.
As much as I agree on the aircraft-comments, usually the goal is to save the airfields surface. In EDXE we had that problem for long times and sometimes they still have it with wet grass surface. Even with big tires and light aircraft you can damage the surface enough in wet conditions to make a partial renovation in spring necessary. EDXE has solved this in part by a good drainage system, but that requires maintenance and energy, too.
Varrelbush and Konstanz have tackled the problem with these surface mats. http://www.perfoplatten.de/flugplatze.html They don’t close the surface and to my knowledge don’t need approval in Germany (could be wrong, this is third hand knowledge). They are very nice to use and good for aircraft and airfield.
