AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2019 - 18

WAYPOINTS

The long and short of it

BY THOMAS B. HAINES
Editor in Chief

Runways bring their own personality to GA flying
ONE OF MY SHORTEST FLIGHTS EVER was to the longest
runway ever. A little pull on the Bonanza's yoke and we
were off the runway, gear up, and a right turn, leveling
off seconds later. No sense climbing any higher than
pattern altitude on such a short leg.
Runways, sealanes, notches on hillsides. There are
some 5,200 public-use airports in the United States
and about triple that in landing facilities in total; the
majority of the rest of them are helipads and grass, dirt,
and gravel strips sprinkled across the landscape. So
that equates to more than 30,000 "runway" ends and
each of them presents its own challenges; each its own
personality. Trees, terrain, powerlines, winds-just a
few variables that might make one end of a runway
more friendly than another.

That equates to more than 30,000 "runway" ends
and each of them presents its own challenges;
each its own personality.

Editor in Chief
TOM HAINES

has landed GA
airplanes on all
sorts of surfaces in
48 states and on
four continents. Ask
him about dodging elephant dung
on the runway at
Ngala, South Africa.

18 | AOPA PILOT January 2019

In this case, there were no worries about any
obstacles or terrain around this long strip stuffed into
a wildlife refuge. In fact, there is nothing but scrubby
shrubs on either end of the NASA Shuttle Landing
Facility next to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The famed runway is one of the longest paved strips
in the world. Challenger was the first space shuttle
to land on the runway, February 11, 1984-the tenth
flight of a space shuttle; previous missions landed
at Edwards Air Force Base and White Sands Space
Harbor, which feature dry lake beds of some 35,000
feet or so. Atlantis was the last shuttle to land at
Kennedy, on July 21, 2011.
And there I was in my little Bonanza, puttering
across the Indian River from Space Coast Regional
Airport in Titusville to the mammoth and historic strip
eight nautical miles away-no worries at all about a
sonic boom. Level at 1,000 feet, I called the tower and
was granted permission to land, the traffic ahead of
me taxiing a couple of miles down the pavement. My
goal was to touch down at about the mid-point, next
to the plywood shuttle replica parked along the strip.
I had plenty of time to finesse the landing, but I did
worry a little about the optical illusion that can occur
when landing on an exceptionally wide runway. The
shuttle strip is 300 feet wide, which can cause pilots to

perceive they are lower than they actually are, causing
them to flare too high.
I remember watching shuttle landings on television and agonizing over the fact that they forgot to put
the gear down. There they were on short final. Gear
still up. What are they thinking?
And then, with only seconds to go, the gear would
pop down and then, boom, touch down. I guess when
you're in a glider you don't want to add any drag until
you have to.
I asked Bob Overmyer, a friend who once wrote
columns for this magazine and who flew the shuttle
on two missions, what would happen-seconds from
the cement-if the gear wouldn't go down. "Oh, it will
go down!" he assured me. "Our backup is a series of
explosive charges. Trust me, the gear will go down."
I recalled Overmyer's comments as I put the
Bonanza's gear down in plenty of time, wanting
no drama for the tower controllers. Soon my little
Goodyears squeaked onto the grooved pavement and
we began our 7,000-foot rollout. I was one of a group
of 25 or so aviators invited to land on the shuttle runway and visit the space center. My logbook has a star
in the margin next to that entry.
A few months later, I was on short final for another
Florida runway-this time on a more serious mission,
carrying supplies into the Middle Keys that had been
trashed by Hurricane Irma. As with the shuttle landing
facility, prior permission is required to land at Sugar
Loaf Shores-a spit of land sticking out into the sea, its
surface a weird combination of coral, pavement, and
dirt. At 2,700 feet long, it's not particularly challenging, but at only 12 feet wide it is quite the contrast to
the shuttle strip. In fact, the shuttle strip is 25 times
wider than Sugar Loaf Shores, if that helps paint the
picture for you. It's like landing on a sidewalk.
OK, truth: The pavement-what's left of it-is
listed as 12 feet. In fact, there are berms on either
side that give you a more comfortable 40 feet or so to
play with, but with the rough surface, you still want
to be on your game.
Runways, our gateways to aviation, challenge us in
different ways. Wouldn't it be boring if they were all
the same?
AOPA
EMAIL thomas.haines@aopa.org

Follow on twitter @tomhaines29

AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2019

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