Just landed

[timewellwasted]

Hi there all, I'm from Gundagai NSW and started flying in August 2010. I fly a Foxbat A22LS from my private Grass strip and take off and land under power line. My old instructor recons better to go under than over on my short strip.Hours flying 183

 

 

[ayavner]

welcome time! Look forward to maybe some pics or video of that Foxbat!!

 

 

[Phil Perry]

We had a strip like that in the UK, I won't go into where, as you may be a proper Aussie, and not au fait with UK geog. It was a strip which was located between a busy industrial estate, and parallel to a main road.

 

Anyway, it had an 11Kv power line running accross at the halfway point. This was ok, BUT. . .it also had an access road at approx one third runway length from the Southern end. . . . so,. . . . if you were taking off to the South,. . . you held the appliance down until well clear under the line, and then performed normal takeoff procedure. Problem. NO radio, no Flight seervice, No Atc, and thick trees bordering the West side of the strip. Often, you would be taking off Southerly, and with no warning, a semi trailer would appear out of the trees and cross over the runway in front of you. ( The drivers usually had no idea that they were crossing a live runway, - no signage.) This became quite interesting. No problem if you were landing, as you could survey the road first, but on takeoff, it was "Interesting" sometimes. How they never had a collision, I don't know. I stopped flying from there after just missing a Ryder Truck rentals semi with a 13 metre trailer on the back, and must have missed it by around a couple of feet with the stall warning light on the PA28 R200 solid red and the gear still down. . . .

 

The owner didn't want to pay the £3,000.00 to have the cable buried UNDER the runway, and I have not been back so I dunno what they did in the end. ( Probably continued playing roulette. . . . . .)

 

Anyhow. . . Timewellwasted ( what a great handle ! )

 

You have exceeded my Foxbat hours by quite a lot !! So I'm sure you will handle that challenging home strip OK. I have to borrow Foxbats ( we have four at our field )from sympathetic friends, the B******s only take me up with them when they need qualified ballast who can nav with a map, compass, stopwatch, analogue CRP computer and pencil, . . . to keep them out of controlled airspace !! ( bleeding moving colourmap GPS nerds ! )