Hensley Airpark (Chuckey, Tenn.) owner Ted Hensley sent along some pictures of beautiful hangar homes. Click here to see the photos in our directory (Full Access subscription required).

Also, Ted reports the airpark will be exhibiting at Sun ‘n Fun in April 2009 to market the 17 (of 49) remaining lots for sale.

While only 12 applicants were interested in the original 41 residential lots (at below market prices), 18 individuals are interested in the airpark component of the project.

Click here to read the complete story from the Lacombe Globe.

• Bear Valley Skyranch Airpark, McCleary, Washington
• Hensley Airpark, Chuckey, Tennessee

Do you have photos you’d like to see loaded into the airpark database? Email them to me.

If you are not a subscriber, click here. (Just $20 per year and its help defray the costs of updating and maintaining our database).

As always, we welcome your comments and ideas and of course, if your residential airpark isn’t listed or if you have information about other fly-in communities in the state for which we’re reporting, or any other state, we urge you to go the website and fill in this form.

Illinois’ 18 airparks include four that opened in the 1960s and 1970s. The oldest of the group saw its first operations in 1966 with another one in 1969. There was one started in 1986 and four in the 1990s. That indicates a good support for the movement in this upper Midwest state.

The airparks vary greatly in size, based on the number of residential lots. One airpark has only six airpark lots with another seven communities listing 15 or less homesites. However, from that point the next smallest fly-in community reports it has 30 lots and the next one up has 40. There’s one more with 45 lots and one with 47 but the next jump is to 65 homesites, then 80 individual properties. Two fly-in communities report they have 140 homesites in their project.

All of the lots are reported at an acre or more. A few fly-in communities failed to report the size of their residential lots so it is possible some have sites less than an acre.

There are no publicly owned residential airparks in Illinois. All claim to be privately owned. By the same token, only two of the Illinois fly-in communities are open to the public. All the others restrict their use to property owners and their guests.

Runways are predominately in the 2.000 to 4,000 range. Nine of the fly-in communities reported runways at least 2,000 feet long and less than 3,000 while another seven listed their runway length between 3,000 and 4,000 feet. There was one landing strip that came in between 4,000 and 5,000 feet. None were over 5,000 or less than 2,000 feet long.

The residential airparks indicated seven of the runways were paved and 11 were unpaved.

1. Day Aero-Place - Urbana
2. Riley’s Field Airport - Plainfield
3. Aero Estates - Belleville
4. Chicago Glider Club Glider port - Minooka
5. Naper Aero Club Airport - Naperville
6. Case de Aero - Hampshire
7. Metro-East Airpark - St. Jacob
8. Bel Air Estates - Poplar Grove
9. Dury Estates - Hurst
10. Woodlake Landing /Sandwich Airport - Sandwich
11. Aero Lake Estates Airport - Genoa
12. Coursen’s Landing - Galena
13. Nettle Creek Landings - Morris
14. Centennial Heights - Danforth
15. Midwest Skypark - Peru
16. Brookeridge Aero - Downers Grove
17. Meadow Creek Airpark - Monee
18. Ariel View Estates - Hurst

As always, we welcome your comments and ideas and of course, if your residential airpark isn’t listed or if you have information about other fly-in communities in the state for which we’re reporting, or any other state, we urge you to go here and add any information you have.

Residential airparks in Idaho are the subject of this article. All of the residential airparks in the state are listed as privately-owned. Eight of the fly-in communities are listed as private use only but five of them are open to the public, according to the information provided by the airpark representatives.The Idaho fly-in communities range in from as few as five residential lots to a high of 78 lots. Two claimed lots in the teens, two airparks listed lots in the 20s, one was 30 lots and three reported 44 to 48 lots. The second largest project reported 60 homesites.

None of the fly-in communities indicated individual home lots were less than an acre each.

Seven airparks indicated a runway length of between 2,000 and 3,000 feet. Three others were between 3,000 and 4,000 feet long and one was reported 4,000 to 5,000 feet. A single airpark claimed a runway in excess of 5,000 feet among the 13 in Idaho.

The surface was evenly divided between paved and unpaved: six reported paved while seven were unpaved.

Not too surprising, the area around Lake Coeur d’Alene attracted a number of the fly-in community projects. Here’s the list of airparks in the Living With Your Plane directory together with the community in which it is located:

• Flying Elk – Kamiah
• Greenleaf Air ranch – Greenleaf
• Hackney Airpark – Athol
• Lava Hot Springs – Lava Hot Springs
• Oasis Private Airpark – Oasis
• Olmstead Sky Ranch – Sandpoint
• Pisch’s Place – Coeur d’Alene
• Red Baron Estates – Oasis
• Selkirk Mountain Airport – Sandpoint
• Silverwing @ Sandpoint – Sandpoint
• Silverwood Theme Park – Athol
• Sunrise Skypark – Melba
• Treeport – Spirit Lake

For years, Craig Draves and his wife, Becky, flew around the U.S. in their Piper Turbo Lance II. They enjoyed the traveling and flying but not the petty details needing attention to ensure smooth trips.

“Every time we went somewhere there were issues with packing personal belongings, hauling recreational gear, renting ground transportation at the destination, and finding living accommodations while there,” says Draves.

The hassles of traveling once the plane landed, coupled with the frustration of arriving at airports to discover there was no hangar space available for his pride and joy, set Draves to thinking there had to be a better way.

After talking with many pilots — some of whom flew to the same destinations over and over again for business or pleasure — he came up with the idea of condominiums for airplane owners, but with a twist: A hangar with living quarters above, while planes are parked on a floor that moves like a carousel. A company called BCD Development Inc. was created to develop and market the new hangar brand Carousel Condos.

While initially aimed at pilots who want to build a new home on an airpark, or need a home away from home near favorite activities such as skiing or hunting, Draves points out that the condo concept also is a solution to a problem that pilots across the nation are facing: No hangar space.

“In all of our travels, one problem that seemed to be prevalent at every airport we visited was that there were no hangar spaces available, either for transient flyers or for local residents and, in fact, most had a list of local pilots who had been waiting years for a hangar to become available,” he says.

Carousel condominiums can be scaled to fit owners’ precise needs, from hangars that can house four Piper Cubs to massive structures that can hold four Gulfstream GVs, along with 14 other twins and mid-size jets, Draves notes.

The size of the living quarters varies according to the size of the hangar, of course. In the smallest model, 70 feet X 70 feet, the four Cub owners would each get living quarters of about 1,225 square feet. Those Gulfstream owners would get living quarters to match their planes — more than 13,000 square feet each. “That’s a world-class chalet for the most discriminating jet owner/ski buff,” Draves says.

The upper level suites also could be used as offices for an FBO, airport owner, flight school or any other business on an airport, he adds.

ROUND HERE

A key selling point of the condominiums is the rotating carousel floor.

The carousel is moved by a computer-controlled rotational device that places an aircraft or an empty parking spot in front of the main hangar door just by pressing a button on the wall, Draves explains.

“Because a computer controls all aircraft movements within the building, and each movement done by a person is either a straight-line pull out of the hangar or a straight-line push back into the hangar, there is no possibility for hangar rash,” he says. “There also is no need for anyone to touch, move or handle anyone else’s aircraft.”

The hangars require the least amount of land per aircraft stored, require only one hangar door, and need just a small amount of apron for a large number of aircraft, he continues.

Once their planes are parked, condominium owners just need to walk upstairs to “be home.”

“There is no substitute for being able to fly in to a destination, place your aircraft inside your hangar, safe and secure, and go to your own home, with your own furnishings, sleep in your own bed, use your own bathroom and kitchen, without having to unpack the aircraft, carry the stuff to a rented car, and then transfer the belongings to rented living quarters,” Draves says.

Each upper level suite is customized to meet each owner’s preferences, from floor plans and layouts down to what kind of flooring they want.

Draves’ young company recently completed its first proof-of-concept Carousel Condos hangar, at the Mason City Municipal Airport (MCW) in Iowa. One suite is used as a model, while another has been sold to a King Air owner. The other two suites are up for sale.

Building a Carousel Condo involves myriad professional tradesmen, architects, engineers and decorators, according to Draves.

“All of our hangars are built to the building codes and requirements associated with the locale where they are constructed,” he says. “This can range from very strict building codes at municipal airports to not-so-strict building requirements in a rural area where only a county board might have jurisdiction over a private airpark development.”

Construction typically takes about five months, with costs starting around $55 a square foot. Those costs, obviously, vary depending on local building requirements, local labor costs, the size of the structure, and the amenities chosen by the owners, he says.

Draves sees several markets for the condos. The first is people who want to live with their planes at airparks and privately owned airports, especially those close to recreational venues such as skiing, hunting, fishing and golf, where people often have vacation homes. Another target market is snowbirds, who need a second home in Arizona, Florida, Texas or other warm places.

The condos also would be a good fit for commercial operations at publicly funded airports, such as FBOs, corporate flight operations offices, training facilities, avionics repair, etc., he says.

Obviously, he’d like to see Carousel Condos across the country, both at airparks and at airports.

“There are more than 5,000 airports and more than 500 airparks in the U.S. alone,” he said. “It is estimated that over 70% of these airports do not have adequate hangar space to meet the current demand.”

This will only get worse, he says, pointing to the new Light Sport Aircraft and Very Light Jets taking off these days. Owners of those aircraft are going to want “new, innovative aircraft hangars complimentary to these new and innovative aircraft,” he says.

Read Michael Armstrong’s complete story from HomerNews.com here.

As always, we welcome your comments and ideas and of course, if your residential airpark isn’t listed or if you have information about other fly-in communities in the state for which we’re reporting, or any other state, we urge you to go the website (http://www.livingwithyourplane.com/apadd.lasso) and add any information you have by clicking on Register your Airpark.

Alabama has six airparks listed in the LWYP directory and Arkansas has eight. Interestingly one of those in Alabama was opened in 1957 and two came on line in 1975. Another opened for business in 1992 while one is under construction and the final one opened in 2006.

In Arkansas, all of the listed airparks have been opened since the turn of the century; a couple in 2000, one in 2001, two in 2002, two each in 2004 and one last year.

The Arkansas airparks are all located at elevations well under 1,000 feet MSL except one and it offers a 4,800-foot paved runway. All the others except one have unpaved runways with lengths ranging from a minimum ofr2,500 feet to the top end of 3,800 feet for a couple of them.

There are 72 lots at the largest of the Arkansas residential airparks while one boasts of 45 lots in the fly-in community and one other has 40 lots. Information from the other airparks reveals the following lot count: 31, 25, 24 and the smallest has only 14 home sites.

In Alabama, there aren’t any reported fly-in communities located at elevations above 1,000 feet MSL. As expected for airparks located at relatively lot elevations, runway lengths are mostly short, too. Two airparks in Alabama report runways of 3,000 feet each, one is 2,800 feet long, a couple come in at 2,500 feet, one is 2,300 feet and the other is only 2,000 feet long. Only one fly-in community reports a paved runway.

The communities in Alabama tend to have fewer residential lots on them. The largest number of home sites for a fl-in community in Alabama is 30 with two of them int aht category although one is under construction and claims 30-plus. Another reports 21 lots, one more says 20 lots and then there is one each at 10 and nine lots.

The Alabama fly-in communities include:

• Collier Airpark at Magnolia Springs
• Roy E. Ray Airpark, Irvington
• Beechwood Airpark, Huntsville
• Heart of Dixie Aero Estates, Greenville
• Lazy Eight AirPark. Wilsonville
• West Blount Aviation, Hayden

Those listed in Arkansas include:

• Fulmer Field Estates, Lonoke
• Holly Mountain Airparkat Clinton
• Tannenbaum Airpark in Drasco
• Winfield Airstrip Community at Altus – website: www.winfieldairpark.com
• Red Oak Airpark at Cabot
• Country Air Estates in Lonoke
• The Valley Airport in Cotter
• Sampley’s Airport, Aguila

I have seen postings on your web site that inquire about homes available for vacations on airparks or near airports.  If you feel it would be a benefit to your subscribers please direct folks to www.pilothomeexchange.com <http://www.pilothomeexchange.com> .

This web site promotes membership into a home exchange program with over 10,000 homes available for exchange around the world.  The web site is still evolving and will list homes that are on airparks or owned by pilots in the near future.  In the interim a pilot with a home on or near an airport can communicate with other property owners and determine the proximity of the home to an airport.  Many times a home exchange will include a courtesy car.

I just thought this might be interesting information for your subscribers.

Happy Holidays,
Rich Jones
Las Vegas, NV