Question from Morris: I am inquiring about floor plans. I need to blow up the thumbnails to get a better view and also need the prices and what is included with the plans. Any help? Thanks.

Answer from Dave: The floor plans have been submitted over many years to Living With Your Plane by people all over the country. They are simply to provide you ideas for building… we do not have building plans so there is no charge from us. The name and address of the person who submitted the plans to us usually is on the layout and you might want to contact that person and see if they have and are willing to provide a set of plans. Hope this helps.

Question from Dave Hamann: Been following through the fence issue. For now this does not appear to apply to privately owned, public access airports. Mid Valley Airpark (E98), NM has been open to public for 40 years. However, should we in any way shape or form accept state money, I can see we may get in a bind.

Answer from Dave Sclair: You are correct in your assumption that private-owned, public-use airports don’t seem to be affected. Accepting a state grant for improvements might not be a problem either, although before getting into such an agreement it would be highly intelligent to have the agreements checked out for attachments to the FAA.

The following question came from Fred Herzner:

“Can you recommend an attorney to help us form an Airport HOA in the Knoxville, TN area?”

Answer: I suggest you contact some of the condo units in your area or housing developments with HOAs and ask about the attorney they have used. Any attorney who has prepared a HOA for a condo association or residential subdivision should be able to help you.

If anyone has a personal recommendation or other advise, please post it below.

An email from Wayne Ristine wants to know: “Are there any lenders that understand lending or specialize in lending to purchase an airpark property.”

My response: I don’t know of any lender specializing in airpark properties, but there are firms that can help you. If you’ll share the general area you are looking at perhaps I can help you find a lender. Additionally, by pointing out the region you are looking at some lenders in that area as well as other airpark residents are very likely to come forward with additional information for you. If anyone has suggestions, please post them in the comments section below.

We received the following email regarding multiple airpark homes. My answer is below.

Mr. Sclair,

Could you please, help me with:

1. Do you think that Americans already living in a Fly-In Community could be interested, as a secondary home, to by one in Canada?
2. How popular is it to have a home in more than one Fly-In Community? Is that the exception?
3. How would you promote a new Fly-In Community?

Many thanks,

Isabelle

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Following is an email we received from Thom Barlow of Tampa, Florida:

Charlie Masters from Sandy’s Farm Airpark sandysairpark@sportys.com said to contact you.

I live on a modest little airport community 18 mi. north of Tampa FL. called Tampa North Aeropark (X 39). Before this Sub-Prime Mortgage Fiasco hit the fan the market value of my 4 bedroom 3 full-bath country-style hangar home was approximately $440,000. Now I can’t get an appraisal up over $250,000.00. It seems “they” do everything they can to purposely de-value my place. My loan officer told me Bank of America is holding so many foreclosure properties they have de-valued everything in the market so they can unload their inventory.

My biggest hurdle is the COMPS. The Appraisers don’t know how to appraise “Airport Community Homes”, They just don’t see the VALUE of living with your plane on a runway. They want to compare my place with a run-of-the-mill home in the area. More than likely sold real cheap & fast so the seller could get out from under a sub-prime mortgage and/or they lost their employment during this fiasco the Banks caused to the world economy.

My question to you is . . . Do you have knowledge of this happening elsewhere ? If so . . . What is being done to address it ?

Could you direct my path to Real Estate Appraisers that know what they’re doing ? I don’t care if they’re in other states. They might know useful stratigies and have connections that could help me here. This might be an area for your “Living with your Plane” to address at this time.

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Following is a question from Dale Whiting, and our response:

“What does ‘Through the Fence’ mean? My local GA field has imposed a fee on through the fence operations. I have always understood that ‘through the fence’ applied to operations taking an aircraft through a gate onto or off of the field. The local GA field appears to wish to impose fees on any business located off field which comes through any gate to do anything. Can you cite me to an authoritative FAA definition?”

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We received the following from Bob Aronson:

“We own a 7000 foot runway as part of a closed military base. Do you have any links to qualified firms that can advise on the feasibility of an airpark? Thanks!”

Dave responded with:

I would contact BCRA Design, a large, multi-faceted engineering, design, planning firm. Email: jbrown@bcradesign.com or call 253-627-4367. Good luck and keep us posted on how your project develops. You can also search our resources listings.

During EAA AirVenture, several home / hangar owners asked about the proper maintenance on their hangar door. Since they weren’tt the original owner of the structure, they couldn’t find printed material on what they should or shouldn’t do to make sure their doors worked – 0r continued to work – properly.

Figuring others had the same questions, we asked several door manufacturers to send us some information. The first response was received is reprinted below and as we receive additional comments we’ll add them. Read the full story

We received the following query about soil texture. Please post your comments below.

I’m an extension soils specialist working in Kansas and have received a request for help from a small airport that has many problems with their grass runways. Has anyone ever tried to change the soil texture before? In this case, they want to add sand in order to improve the soil texture and soil strength. Thanks for any help you can give me! I’m going to email Dr. Unruh at the University of Florida now. Thanks. DeAnn Presley.