The Troy Airpark residential airpark in Troy, MO, just completed a rebuild of its runway. It is now 2,200 feet long and 25 feet wide with a parallel 50-foot turf strip immediately north of the asphalt.

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We have property on a gravel airstrip. The Board of Directors wants to chip seal the runway. Where can I find out about the strength, cost, endurance, upkeep problems, affect of temperature and any problems with chip seal?

Thanks.

Marilyn Emery

Dear Marilyn

Thanks for your inquiry seeking information about chip sealing a runway.

I would suggest you contact your state’s aeronautics division (frequently a part of the department of transportation) for some thoughts relative to the manner in which such work is done in your state. You might also want to contact your city or county public works departments since they are the ones most likely to utilize such methods for road maintenance.

Check your local phone book for paving contractors for some additional good information on such methods of paving. I doubt the FAA will be much help on info about chip-sealing but you might try the FAA’s airports department in your area.

While I am certainly not well-versed on paving and chip-sealing, I’ve had a few dings in the windshield of a car when rocks flew up from the tires of the car in front of me on a newly chip-sealed street. I would have concern about those chips dinging up my prop as well as chewing up the belly of my plane and the leading edge of the elevator, but those are strictly my personal thoughts and aren’t based on any knowledge of such systems.

Please keep me posted on what you find out. Perhaps some other airpark residents or developers will enter their thoughts and practical experience into this discussion.

Dave Sclair

With Spring just around the corner, maybe it’s time for you to take a good look at the condition of the runway and taxiways and other related facilities at your residential airpark.

Far too often maintenance and normal upkeep is put on the back burner during the winter months. That’s especially true in areas where the property gets buried in snow or other inclement weather. With that time situation, flying is often down and the net result is that problems with the runway and taxiway are missed.

Here’s a quick checklist to get your airpark into top shape for the upcoming increase in flying weather and related flying activities:

1. Read the full story

Editor’s note: Here’s another in our planned series of stories describing state by state the airparks listed in the Living With Your Plane Directory. We started with Alaska and will tackle one state per issue unless there is a particularly low number of airparks in that particular state. In that case, we’ll do several states in the same story.

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

Dave Sclair, publisher of Living With Your Plane, regularly addresses problems affecting residential airparks. Many of the questions he addresses come up during his presentations at various aviation events around the country.

Question: The runway in our fly-in community isn’t a separate legal entity or tax parcel. The lots on either side of the runway go to the center of the runway and each lot owner’s deed provides an easement across their private property for the runway. This means there’s no separate tax for the runway itself since each property owner pays their tax bill which includes an equal share of the runway.

Recently we’ve been looking into obtaining liability insurance for our airpark and the question has come up about how we insure this. Is this a common practice? Have others had problems with this format? Can insurance be obtained for the runway only to be paid for by the various property owners?

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Editor’s note: here’s another in our planned series of stories describing state by state the airparks listed in the Living With Your Plane Directory. We started with Alaska and will tackle one state per issue unless there are a particularly low number of airparks in that particular state. In that case, we’ll try to do several states in the same story.

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 use our Airpark Submission form.

Read the full story

Editor’s note: Another in our planned series of stories describing state by state the airparks listed in the Living With Your Plane Directory. We started with Alaska and will tackle one state per issue unless there are a particularly low number of airparks in that particular state. In that case, we’ll try to do several states in the same story.

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, click here to and fill in as much information as you have.

Read the full story

Editor’s note: Here’s another in our planned series of stories describing state by state the airparks listed in the Living With Your Plane Directory. We started with Alaska and will tackle one state per issue unless there is a particularly low number of airparks in that particular state. In that case, we’ll try to do several states in the same story.

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.

Arizona: We list 25 open airparks in Arizona and one under construction.  The oldest listed airpark in Arizona was opened in 1958 – Moreton Airpark located at Wickenburg, AZ. However, six more claim to have started operations in the 1970s. Since the turn of the century, six more fly-in communities  have opened for business.

Looking at the 25 established communities plus the one under construction that we list in the Living With Your Plane directory, 18 report their individual properties are more than an acre each while only right of the airparks show residential properties of an acre or less.

Also, Arizona has the distinction of listing more large lot projects than most of the other states in the country.  Sixteen of the fly-in communities claim to have 50 or more lots and most of those are in the 100 to 175 lot range. One airpark lists 550 residential sites and another one has 300.

Only two airparks report having 10 or fewer residential sites; a couple more indicate they have between 21 and 35 lots and three list their homesites as bewteen 36 and 50.

As you might expect, the vast majority of Arizona airparks boast runways of between 2,500 and 4,000 feet.  Actually 17 of the fly-in communities report this length while another eight have more than 4,000 feet of runway.

Only six of the airparks show their runway as unpaved. All the rest are paved.

Here’s the fly-in community list:

• Castle Wells – Morristown
• Eagle Roost Airpark – Aguila
• Flying J Ranch – Pima
• Hangar Haciendas – Laveen
• Indian Hills Airpark – Salome
• LaCholla Airpark – Oro Valley
• Mogollon Airpark – Overgaard
• Montezuma Heights Airpark – Camp Verde
• Skyranch at Carefree – Carefree
• Stellar Air Park – Chandler
• Sun Valley Airport – Bullhead City
• Twin Hooks – Marana
• White Mt. Lake Airport – White Mt. Lake
• Pegasus Airpark – Empire
• Mazatzal Mountain Air Park – Payson
• Flying Diamond Airpark – Sahuarita
• Sun Valley Airpark – Fort Mohave
• Phoenix Regional Airport – Maricopa
• Moreton Airpark – Wickenburg
• High Mesa Air Park – Safford
• Wagon Bow Airpark – Kingman
• Whetstone Airpark – Whetstone
• Morning Star Airpark – Pearce
• White Mountain Lakes Airpark – Show Low
• Ruby Star Airpark – Sahuarita
• Sampley’s Airport – Aguila

It happened at every meeting of the homeowners association Bill Tuccio attended.

A resident of Yellow River Airport, an airpark in Holt, Fla., Tuccio said that one question came up every time: What do other airports do to take care of their turf runways?

“A lot of time was wasted on these constant discussions,” said Tuccio, who participates in the maintenance of the airpark’s 2,500-foot runway. That’s why he decided to conduct a Turf Airport Study as his graduate project for Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, as part of his work toward his Master’s degree in Aeronautical Science.

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AOPA has prepared an extensive white paper on thru the fence operations, particularly as it relates to residential airparks, as well as other projects.

Read the entire article by clicking here (PDF download).