Do they still use grassy airports.

[micky]

I found an airport a few miles from my house, on one map, but on google maps, it's just a strip of grass.

This page says the private airport surface is turf.

Is there some tax reason someone would call a strip of land an airport, even if it never had any planes landing.

OTOH, this page says it flies jet planes out of there, from 6 to 14 passengers, though the bottom plane has 13 windows on one side! https://www.simplecharters.com/private-jet-charter-flights/united-states/maryland/st-john-airport-4md9https://www.google.com/maps/@39.4819848,-76.7589675,669m/data=!3m1!1e3

[angelica...]

How do you know it never had any planes landing?

I haven't been on a grass airstrip since the 1980s, but I don't see why anything would have changed.

You should google "how many grass airstrips are there in the US"

Cindy Hamilton

[micky]

oKAY.

Apparently there are 8459.

Brazil comes in second with 3395 and Mexico has 1471 It's downhill from there.

Not only that, but the number in the USA is dropping:

1999 2000 2002 2004 2006 2007 2008 2010 2013 2016 9,398 9,546 9,670 9,729 9,739 9,804 9,805 9,885 8,459 1,524

8459 seems to be 2013 and three years later it was only 1524.

But in Brazil it's gone up a bit in that time.

This is a great page, and includes with pavement, and roadways and waterways too.

[Fred]

Yep.

[rbowman]

The strip in question is a 3600' grass strip paralleling I-90. I don't know what was determined but my guess is the pilot tried to pull up to avoid a deer and didn't make it.

Rock Creek is a blue ribbon trout stream so the airport gets some use. Rock Creek Lodge dropped the annual Testicle Festival after it got too rowdy but that was a draw too.

[SNAG]

Driving on US Highway 64 between Marion and Bald Knob Arkansas there are several grass strips . Every single one of them is home to a crop duster ... Tens of thousands of acres of soybeans , rice , sorghum , and other grains make it profitable to treat spray chemicals from the air . Much of the land in that area has been leveled to within inches per mile .

[micky]

LOL

I realize I've never seen a cropduster in action.

The head of some drugstore chain whose name I can never remember used to have his own helicopter pad not too far from there so he could commute from Baltimore to work in Harrisburg, but neighbors complained about the noise** and he had to park it somewhere else and drive to and from there. **Which sounds sort of petty to me, unless it actually woke them up in the morning.

This area too at the end of Garrison Valley road is pretty well to do, horse farms, etc. and I was thinking someone used it for their own travel. The picture doesn't show a plane parked there but maybe it was out cropdusting or on its way somewhere.

[Ed Pawlowski]

There is still a grass strip in Woodstock CT with regular use. Years ago I flew out of a grass strip in PA, it was where I first flew a plane, Piper Tri-pacer. Now a shopping center though.

[Tekkie©]

On Sat, 26 Dec 2020 15:21:17 -0500, Ed Pawlowski posted for all of us to digest...

Montgomeryville?

[Ed Pawlowski]

No, but I do know that field. Thus was Buell Field in Bensalem off Street Road.

[micky]

hAHAHA

This one said "pipe 300 feet away. 18 foot trees, 0 feet away.

But on the sat view and (from a distance) street view there are no trees.

[micky]

Come to think of it, the closest I've been to a cropduster was watching North by Northwest. Very good movie.

[danny burstein]

[snip]

Check out the documentary Capricorn One, which portrays how the US faked the Mars landing and it was only thanks to the amazing flying by cropduster pilot Theo Kojak that intrepid reporter Eliot Gould was able to expose The Trooof!

[rbowman]

The person who taught me to fly was a crop duster as was his father. Once I could solo I liked to loiter about a 1000 feet above and watch him working.

Many of his clients were orchards and precision helicopter spraying looked like a good opportunity so he was teaching himself to fly a helo. At times he got as frustrated as I did trying to master fixed wing. Two different animals.

[gfretwell]

The Lee mosquito control district crop dusts with DC-3s They fly at tree top level, having to pull up to clear the power line behind my house. They are pumping Malathion out of the manifolds of the engines.

usually fly 2 or 3 in formation wing tip to wing tip out in the unincorporated county.

[Clare Snyder]

Yes they still use grass airstrips. Not just for cropdusters either. Lots of "private strips" all over North America (and even more across the world) Some are private only - some open to other fliers with permission, and some are "public" - open to anyone who wants to land there. Some are corporate owned and some municipal and others privately owned. Some do run small charter ops too.

AN Antonov AN124 Ruslan (CONDOR) operates off unpaved runways with a payload of 150 metric tons - or 88 passengers. Most military transports can operate off "unimproved" strips.

[Clare Snyder]

More likely in a "hangar" - a "shed" that protects the plane from the elements.

[FromTheRafters]

To the moon landing deniers, it is.

[Ed Pawlowski]

In Alaska, many planes are fitted with skis or pontoons for water.

[micky]

Well, one building is only about 10 feet square, and another bigger but it's hard to tell. When the weather is a little nicer, I'll go over and look. Maybe they have to call for a plane when they want one.

I did see one of those big red balls on the power line fairly near, in line with the strip, so I guess they convinced someone they were a landing strip.