Own airstrip

[shar0119]

I am planning to buy land and put an airstrip on it and a hanger. pls does anyone have an idea of how much land would be required for a 3000 ft runway and enough room for a taxiway and hanger. I am guessing it would be like 40 acres but I could be wrong. My intention is to register it as a private airport and allow people to land and tie down if they visit the bay area and would like an alternative to Hayward Executive or Half Moon bay etc.

The location in plan is Los Gatos, CA being just 10-15 miles from San Jose.

Any input about expenses and other issues with throwing an airstrip, allowing GA planes to land etc will be very helpful.

Honestly, I did rather live in a shack with an airstrip on it, rather than a fancy home with a 30 minute drive to the airport and heavy hangar rentals etc.

All comments welcome!

[dverespey]

40 acres in Los Gatos? Life is good.....


I remember this dicussion on another board sometime, I'll scan around and see if I can find it. I think the local regulations and evironmental impact are more important than the land size. I seem to recall a town back east passed a law to to keep one person from flying their helicopter off of their own land.

Check out a sectional and give a call to one of the pvt strips in the area and see how they did things. Looking at the SF Class B either Funny Farm or Boonnydoon would be a good bet.

Good luck!

[shadow_roper]

Just my opinion but 40 acres is going to be too small unless you compromise dramatically on the length of the runway. An acre, if perfectly square, would be approx 208 ft x 208 ft (43,560 sq.ft).

So, for 3000 ft runway, you will require a strip of land, absolute minimum, 15 acres deep by 1 acre wide. That is 3/5 of a mile by 200 ft. Also, the runway should align (as much as possible) with prevailing winds. Otherwise, you're going to get a lot of crosswind takeoff/landing experience.

Then, allowing for setbacks from property edge (depends on local ordinances, for the sake of simplicity we'll say 50 ft from each property edge), width of runway (at least 50 ft), if you maintain a taxiway alongside (say another 50 ft), that 15 acres is completely taken by your airstrip. You only need one (or less) acre for your house and hangar, but please put them beside the taxiway, not at the end of the runway so now you're up to 30 acres. ;-)

Oh all these acres have to be pretty level or you will be hiring someone to level that ground.

OK, most neighbors are not going to be real happy about planes landing over or beside their houses. You're going to need a lot more ground for buffer zones than you will for the runway.

On top of that, what the previous poster stated about land use regulations, environmental impact studies, etc, ad infinitum, applies in spades.

Sorry to paint a dark picture, this is expensive at best and there are a lot of NIMBY's around who will let you get started and then do their best to smash you. My sweetie and I briefly examined the idea of developing a private airport/residential development near where we live. An idea quickly abandoned. Instead we bought 10 acres near our airport, IXD (Gardner, KS, southwest edge of KC metro area), a 10 minute drive from our plane.

bobk