LAND O’LAKES, Florida – Pilot Country Estates is a 74-lot development on Pilot Country Airport located between Tampa and Brooksville, Florida.

Frank Malowany, spokesman for the development, said the first half of the project on the west side of the runway, has been sold out and 1-acre runway and 1-acre taxiway lots are now being sold on the east side of the airport. The project already has a number of homes on the original tract and half of the remaining lots are already sold.
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QUESTION: We have had problems maintaining our grass strip. We would appreciate receiving any information regarding the most inexpensive methods for watering and fertilizing grass strips. (The airport is located in Florida, but the same problem exists everywhere so regardless of your location, please let us hear your solutions and suggestions.)

Thanks for sending a sample of your newsletter. As a followup, I have spoken with Paul McKinley in Texas and he answered many of my questions.

As I mentioned, we are in the process of organizing this airpark in Orange County, California before Lake Elsinore and San Juan Capistrano. In addition to the Form 7480 filed with the FAA, we are required to obtain special use permits, one from the county and the other from CalTrans, Department of Airports in Sacramento.
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You can already buy charts, fuel strainers, and other supplies for your airplane from him. Soon, you may be able to buy a homesite on which to park it from Hal Shevers, too. Shevers, founder of Sporty’s Pilot Shop, is negotiating to buy 100 acres adjacent to Claremont County Airport, where the Sporty’s empire is based, to create a residential fly-in community.
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I have a couple questions concerning grass strips:

Do you know of anyt good books or magazine articles or Internet forums or web sites that address issues concerning the care, feeding and maintenance of a grass trip?
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Going back to my discussion last year in the 3rd Quarter issue about the public versus private roads, I thought I would bring everyone up to date on what happened here at the Flying-N-Estates in Luthersville, GA.

Last summer I became aware that the county considered the streets in our community public. The county has never maintained the streets, we had always preformed any repairs needed ourselves, but the mere fact that the county had it on their records, and an official county road map, as public roads was a little upsetting to say the least.
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I’ve just read your latest newsletter (1st quarter 1998, Vol. 8, Issue 1). One article requested information regarding car/airplane traffic interference. There is an airport in Arizona that Mr. Bill Cheek should check. It is Falcon Field in Mesa, Arizona. The hangars are on one side of a public road and the runways are on the other.

I cannot recall any special warnings or control other than “cars must yield to crossing airplane traffic” or some similar warning.

Although this is not an airpark access like Mr. Cheek describes, it is an FAA approved facility and should provide some good guidance.

Terry Sack Columbus, OH

Bill Cheek of Prescott, Arizona is working on a “through the fence” arrangement on a public airpark and is interested in obtaining information from anyone who has information about taxiing across a public road or highway.

He specifically asks “are there any airparks which provide access to a taxiway or airstrip for taxiing aircraft across a public road or highway that anyone knows about?
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I was very interested to read your newsletter and feel it has great value to property owners in a residential airport community.

We own a home at Whispering Pines Airpark, Conyers, Georgia. Our home is on a street adjacent to and connected to a runway by a taxiway. When the developer sold the lot it was understood that our street would be owned and maintained, not by the county, but by homeowners since we are able to taxi planes from our house/hangar to the runway.

My question is how is this handled in other airport communities across the country?

We will soon be tearing up the street and replacing it and would certainly like the county to do the work.

We await your reply.

Betty Mastley

I was reading the airpark article in the August 20, “Flyer”. I have lived on an airport for about fourteen years – the past seven at Spruce Creek Fly-In. It’s interesting to see how many new projects have recently into being.

The article lists “approach aids” which I assume to be various things such as some sort of VASI systems, lights, beacons, etc. but not necessarily FAA approved instrument approach procedure. Is this correct?

Might you have any data on how many instrument approaches are approved for residential airpark communities?

Apparently several of the airparks surrounding Chicago have had approaches approved. We just got a GPS approach approved for Spruce Creek (old 44J but now 7FL6) but have not yet activated it.

This is not something that few, if any, airparks would want to have made known to the public if they have them.

Typically, for liability purposes and because of the often non-standard facilities associated with an airpark, only qualified residents are authorized to use the approaches. The approach plates aren’t made public and residents must be personally briefed before using. Also, the FAA wants a record of pilots who have been issued the approach plates (which are numbered) in order to issue revisions — at least that appears to be the requirements we will have to meet.

Since only people authorized to make the approach need to know they exist, when you ask the question, you might want to state that it’s only for an indication of the total number and type of approaches that have been approved to-date and not to publish information for a particular airpark.

Unless of course they would wish to have that info included as additional info in their listing.

Thank you,

Ronald K. Vickrey American Bonanza Society director — past president

You are correct in assuming that the approach aids varies greatly. I have no idea as to approved instrument approaches but if I was to make a guess I would say the number was extremely low. I’ll be happy to include a question about that in my next which will go into the mail later in September.

Dave Sclair