I had a flight in a Maule once and it got up in something like 50-100m. If a type like that fulfils your mission profile flying requirements then you can operate from just about any field which a farmer is willing to lease you, and there are plenty of farmers looking for a bit of diversification.
The difficulty starts if you want to operate a type which goes a bit further and a bit faster… a friend of mine, with a ~400m field of his own, solved it with this but that wasn’t exactly cheap.
The Maule guy did however have a lot of trouble landing afterwards with a bit of crosswind (probably 1/3 of what would be straightforward in a TB20 on tarmac) and had to divert to somewhere 1hr away, while his wife was being sick in the back seat due to the summer turbulence… that is the other price you pay for a low wing loading i.e. a low Vs i.e. a short runway capability.
In the UK we have seen a continual migration of taildraggers away from GA airfields to the farm strip scene. Looking at it from the sidelines, they do get a lot of theoretical freedom (and getting away from airport politics can be priceless) and the strip scene is great for the 1970 MGB GT kind of tinkering with planes, but few of them do a lot of flying other than the same old summer Sunday burger runs. I have a few strips near where I live and that is all they seem to do. One pilot I know who “emigrated” to a strip is back in the old place buying into some syndicates. One needs to look at this very tempting option with a cold dose of reality.
The Husky/Maule/Carbon Cub are solid 120 KTAS aircraft so the compromise is not that demanding. The typical farm strip aircraft is a vintage Chief/Vagabond/Champ/Auster/Cub/Super Cub 90 where a block speed of 80 KTAS is more typical.
The Maule shouldn’t be that susceptible to crosswinds, hopefully Jacko will chip in. A steerable tailwheel aircraft, while technically is only good for around half stall speed for crosswind component (10-15 knots), on grass and using correct technique it is able to cope with more – the taxying in winds above 20-25 knots without a wing walker tends to be the real limitation.
A 300 ft take-off roll is quite typical for a 180 hp Maule with 2 POB, 3 hours of fuel and no dogs and stuff in the back. It’s a bushplane, not a STOL airplane.
It’s designed to haul 8 or 9 hours of fuel and a stack of gear in grotty weather, not just to take off short. It’s not fast, but the seats are comfy, the a/p works well enough and it gets me from home to, say, Bavaria or Haute Savoie an hour or two quicker than by CAT. However, it’s fair to say I mostly use it for short trips, instead of a car, and I only fly about 15-20k miles a year.
There’s no crosswind limit in the manual, but somewhere over 20 kts the laws of physics begin to favour landing across any hard runway. More proficient pilots can easily do better. It’s very docile on the ground, easy to lift and swing the tail over brush or rocks to turn in a tight spot. All in all, it’s about as difficult to fly and land as a Cessna 150 – but much easier to manoeuvre on the ground.
Off_Field wrote:
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.
That’s certainly true, but I actually meant using a lawnmower and hauling the cuttings away to the cows rather than letting the cows onto the runway to graze.
Peter wrote:
Incidentally, how do people cut their grass
We pay a local farmer to do it with agricultural equipment. The grass is left on the field and does not give any problems other than if it is wet it will stick in the wheel pants.
We use no fertilizer and the only other thing is that every second year we have someone to flatten it with a roller.
Benefit is we are about to change the first tyre in app. 800h only because somebody flatspotted it on a tarmac runway.
If you want the normal c172 and pa28 I think 500mtr is a minimum. Sky gods can do it in less, but pilots used to longer runways will be uncomfortable with less.
The most efficient and cost-effective way to dispose of grass cuttings is to get a cow.
I think Peter is divorced now.
Peter wrote:
Agri land goes for c. £3000 per acre, between farmers… probably less in Wales.
Sorry you are a way out of date here. By a factor of 3 or 4. I know for a fact that agricultural land in my area has changed hands privately in a price range from 9000 to 15000 per acre, the latter where it adjoins the neighbour and fits in a jigsaw, but 9000 is considered a cheap distressed sale price.
Ultranomad wrote:
The most efficient and cost-effective way to dispose of grass cuttings is to get a cow.
Sheep are better, but all stock takes some tending. I saw a video of someone using a robotic mower to do an airstrip, it was in Italy I think. They work on the principle of really frequent cutting so the clippings are insignificant.
I got my figure from a local farmer (Sussex) about 10 years ago but even if it is way out my point remains: you will never get it at anywhere near that price if it is for an amenity e.g. a runway. One reason for this is that “obviously you have money” and another is that, over a long time, this could open a route to developing the land for building and all farmers are extremely tuned in to any such possibility because it produces a massive profit.
Peter wrote:
One reason for this is that “obviously you have money” and another is that, over a long time, this could open a route to developing the land for building and all farmers are extremely tuned in to any such possibility because it produces a massive profit.
You are right. Uplift clauses are now fairly common, the seller getting a percentage of subsequent profits due to a planning permission
Something I haven’t managed to find much about, is how to choose good terrain for an airfield. It seems the British Government could also benefit from some hints.
For example, in my hang-gliding days we discussed how you would get a lot of rotor coming back off sharp clifftops, but it was meant to be relatively safe to land on a rounded hilltop. Landing downwind of a hill (even a rounded one) was also a no-no – you were meant to leave 3 x the height of the hill downwind. Obviously the ideal airfield would be a flat field aligned to the prevailing winds, but some countries simply aren’t flat.
Obviously light aircraft, even microlights, have much higher wing loadings than hang-gliders – but at the same time, wind effects can be important for larger aircraft – light aircraft at Caernarfon, or airliners at St Helena. Are there any rules of thumb about where to site airfields for light aircraft?
