Minimalist airfield specifications and construction

your grand-grand-father fought in the Boer War with the similar ancestor of the strip owner

…does your great great uncle by marriage fighting at Rorke’s drift count? He subsequently gambled away the Lincolnshire estate at Brooks, but did get an A lister to play him in the movies…although said A lister was more in character in Get Carter

…there is a Welsh link, it was Welsh Guards regiment soldiers.

There’s currently an advert for a farm where you could make a 400m runway

That’s the story of the UK… for some reason, agricultural land has been divided up into 400m parcels. And if one of them has not changed hands since c. 1971 it won’t be in the Land Registry so you have to make local enquiries to find the owner. And the instant the owner realises what you want it for, the price goes up 10x to 100×. Agri land goes for c. £3000 per acre, between farmers… probably less in Wales. This is all OK if a C182 (or one of many other “STOL” types) fulfils your mission profile.

However, for the cost of setting up a decent strip, you could operate out of Welshpool and get a limo to take you there every time you want to fly, and you would still end up with a lower blood pressure in the end I have seen lots of people “emigrate” out of Shoreham in protest for the £30 landing fee, to various strips, only to sit there with water up to the wheels 6 months of the year… It’s great for generating UK forum traffic but that’s about all.

Is there any consensus here as to what constitutes a “STOL” airplane? Should we say less than 100 ft flat take-off roll at ISA?

I had a CH701 which could take off quite smartly and several Cub-alikes seem to do as well, but I wouldn’t describe a standard Maule or C182 etc. as “STOL”. Those are just ordinary utilitarian airplanes. They usually need 250 ft or more of runway, but they do have reasonably strong undercarriage and adequate prop clearance for operating at “minimalist” airfields.

Jacko wrote:

Is there any consensus here as to what constitutes a “STOL” airplane?

Apparently not

Should we say less than 100 ft flat take-off roll at ISA?

@kwlf, I should perhaps add by way of encouragement that having acquired one’s own aircraft, however humble, few things are as nice to have as one’s own airfield, however minimalist.

@huv, or maybe we should say 200 ft, with 2 POB and a good hour’s fuel. But yes, much longer than that and it’s more “bush” than “STOL”.

I should perhaps add by way of encouragement that having acquired one’s own aircraft, however humble, few things are as nice to have as one’s own airfield, however minimalist.

I agree 100%… having your own runway and a hangar where you and a freelance engineer can work, is close to heaven But there is quite a bit involved in achieving that. I have looked into it and it would be several tens of k and that’s assuming the hangar is already there and ready. There are potentially many small things e.g. mole draining the runway, security equipment, etc.

Incidentally, how do people cut their grass? If you just cut it and leave the cuttings in place (the usual mode with lawns, because the cuttings fertilise the soil) then any plane using the runway in the next week or so will be covered with grass cuttings, and they don’t come off easily. An if you collect the cuttings into a bag, you quickly end up with a massive volume of the stuff. In a previous life (a wife with a horse field) I used to do it with a ride-on mower and initially I tried to collect the cuttings, only to find myself spending about 90% of the mowing time detaching the massively heavy basket and dumping it onto a rapidly growing pile. Cutting the grass on say a 700×20m strip will generate god knows how many cubic metres of cuttings.

Peter wrote:

An if you collect the cuttings into a bag, you quickly end up with a massive volume of the stuff.

The most efficient and cost-effective way to dispose of grass cuttings is to get a cow.

Ultranomad wrote:

The most efficient and cost-effective way to dispose of grass cuttings is to get a cow.

Cow pats are the worst thing to clean off an aeroplane though, they also have a tendency to want to lick or chew and aircraft to bits.

With regards to cutting grass, if you do it frequently enough a cylinder gang mower will make them fine enough that they mulch / blow away. Longer grass I’ve never had much of an issue with other than sometimes collecting a bit in the tail wheel.

If one does decide to collect the grass a a hydraulic high lift tip helps, then make a few piles and once they’ve dried out a bit they usually burn / smoulder away fairly quickly.

The Helio Courier is arguably a red meat STOL design and it needed around 500 feet to operate from, with a stall speed of around 30 mph and ability to carry six – might it be a fairer benchmark?