Gary Gallagher, Bill Armstrong and Tom Donald of the Big South Fork Airpark began planning the community in 2006.

The Big South Fork Airpark has realized over 19 properties and homes sold or reserved in the initial development phase. However, houses at the peaceful community are still available, and work on the next phase has already begun. With the announcement of phase one completion, all infrastructure and amenities are in place, including fiber optics, natural gas, city water and sewer, roads, hangars, airport access, equestrian and hiking trails, equestrian training areas and stables. Every current and future home site has easy access to all of the exciting activities in the area. By setting strict rules about how and where homes could be built, the community has worked hard to leave the environment intact, preserving its natural beauty for the residents, while providing the luxury of modern facilities.

One of the most unique features of the Big South Fork Airpark Community is that it also offers a full-care, full-boarding equestrian facility, truly catering to aviation and horse enthusiasts alike. The 450 acres of the BSF Airpark connect directly to 180 additional miles of horse trails in the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area.

BSFA offers 1-3 acre home sites, starting at $99,000. Two personal hangars, starting at $95,000, are still available. BSFA grounds total 450 acres and include a 5,500 foot runway with 4 instrument approaches served by the Scott County Airport complete with on-site maintenance facilities and 24 hour fuel. There are endless outdoor activities in the bordering Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area including: camping, hiking, fishing, hunting and river rafting.

Do you have questions about residential airparks? Are there things about possibly Living With Your Plane that you are particularly concerned about? Is your spouse questioning certain aspects of moving to a residential airpark?

I want to hear your questions and concerns or thoughts that you have so I can think about them in advance and attempt to come up with solutions. In addition, over the years, I’ve discovered that when a question is shared with the group sitting in on my program, someone usually can produce a good answer so I plan on sharing your questions with the audience.

Give me your thoughts as soon as you can. Contact me at dave@generalaviationnews.com. I look forward to seeing you all in Lakeland.

“Airparks have proven successful elsewhere. Twin Island Airpark, 20 km southeast of Edmonton, and Okotoks Air Ranch, 50 km southeast of Calgary, have offered similar opportunities to those who like to keep their heads in the clouds. The idea has proven popular in the U.S., where more than 600 airparks have been developed.”

ACM 5190.6B Chapter 20, Section 4A, is a horrific statement, “Any residential use existing on the airport or any residential use granting “through-the-fence” access is an incompatible land use.” The FAA is painting the subject with the broadest possible brush.

Same Chapter, Section 3B, “The likelihood that residents of an airpark will seek restrictions on the use of the airport for the benefit of their residential use is very high, whether or not they own aircraft.” The FAA offers no evidence from existing federally-funded airports with airparks that substantiate this assertion.

Chapter 12 has further language pertaining to TTF and incompatible land use, including a response to Sporty’s Pilot Shop owner Hal Shevers in his attempt to encourage the FAA to promote TTF and airparks as a way to save airports across the country. As you might imagine, he was rebuffed.

The federal docket for comments on the ACM is open until March 31, 2010. Now is the time to make your voice heard. Download chapters 12 and 20 or the entire ACM (22MB PDF) and post your comments at this page at regulations.gov by clicking on the top Submit a Comment link (next to the original FAA notice dated 10/7/2009). Should you think this issue does not apply to you, think again. For the FAA to cavalierly state residential use near an airport is an incompatible land use (with no regard to circumstance and no apparent flexibility) is beyond the scope of rational thought.

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.

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 FAA has consistently justified most of their opposition to “through the fence” residential hangars as being related to noise complaints. They have frequently stated that the FAA has spent $1.8 billion to buy land to mitigate noise sensitive neighbors. However, the FAA has never delineated residential hangars from residences which have no airport connection.

In order to find out exactly how much of a problem noise has been for the FAA from hangar home residents, ThroughTheFence.org asked to FAA, through the Freedom of Information Act, for two items related to noise.

One was to produce all the noise complaints from anyone with a “through the fence” agreement (residential, commercial, factory, etc) and a second request for how much money has been spent to buy land to mitigate noise sensitive “through the fence” agreement holders.

The results are staggering! During the past 10 years, the FAA does not have one documented noise complaint from anyone with a “through the fence” agreement. What is more interesting, the FAA can not document one dollar being spent to buy adjacent airport land to mitigate noise issues from “through the fence” agreement holders.

Thus, it is very clear that the noise argument from the FAA is nothing more than “smoke and mirrors”.

“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.