Re: How much runway is enough?
I respect your opinion and expected several like this, and I am not saying you are wrong. You can't argue for very long with the kind of thinking that keeps more people alive/safe. By no means do I think a short down hill strip is the best laid plan, honestly I was hoping to draw out a few stories from people with experience in strips like this. There are a lot of those people out there, there is a hand full of stories every year in aviation periodicals about one way landing strips and their challenges. That is more what I was looking for.Originally Posted by Pilot4Life
But I must beg that you remove that phrase from your vocabulary. "Most conservative approach" is the version of that nonsense that I was brought up with. It makes no sense in the realm of most aviation, especially in a realm such as home built experimental aircraft. The most conservative approach is to not go flying as a hobby. As an HH crew member the most conservative approach would be to never take off and instead point out the mistakes made that led to the injury in the first place. So then you can amend it to "Most conservative approach to accomplish the mission." This makes only slightly more sense and only if there is a mission that needs to be accomplished. I will argue that VERY few people flying Kitfoxes are accomplishing anything more significant then producing ear to ear grins. Unless the stated mission is to spend as much as humanly possible for a hamburger. I underlined challanges above because meeting challenges is one of my missions, which is why I exploit the STOL characteristics of my KF3 the way I do. And why I asked to go to Alaska when I was told I was going to Hawai'i. Bush flying is constantly meeting challenges and putting yourself and your aircraft in what conservative people would call stupid situations. When flying over mountains where there are no forced landing spots available regardless of your AGL altitude and landing on unimproved strips, or sand bars, just to go fishing, it is hard to imagine how somebody might describe how they did that conservatively. I think being honest with yourself and your passengers is more realistic and important, I am sure that more then a few pilots in the thousands of videos on YouTube of people flying with out an out (we Kitfoxers are not innocent of this either) like to use the "most conservative approach" saying in excess.
I will get off my soap box now. It's not you, it's me. I freakin HATE that phrase. Also, I don't know if AK is significantly different then the lower 48 but down here if I could afford a home on a runway I would probably be posting to the Carbon Cub list instead of the Kitfox one.
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