Converse 1I8 - Concrete Landing Mat

[Stingray Don]

I was poking around looking for interesting places to fly and found this little gem. Although now it features a runway, it was originally configured as a "landing mat". You could take off/ land in any direction - no crosswinds! I know some early airfields were configured to land in any direction but it is interesting to see something still in use with this layout. I'll put this on my list of airport destinations to fly into.

http://www.airfields-freeman.com/IN/Airfields_IN_N.htm#converse

 

[flhrci]

That is interesting. I have never seen anything like that before.

 

[G-Man]

That seems like one gigantic piece of concrete! How do they maintain it?
You could make a heck of a skid pad, autocross course, or anything else on it!
Looks like it is still around.

 

[Dav8or]

Interesting to be sure. Bring your short field skills, it says it's 1600ft. Navy must have used just for primary training. Great place for an emergency landing though.

 

[Jimmy cooper]

During ww2 large grass plots were mowed with wind sock in middle. ie: stearmans were taught this way often as they love to ground loop in a cross wind!. Saved a lot of repair money's!

 

[cessna182b]

I was poking around looking for interesting places to fly and found this little gem. Although now it features a runway, it was originally configured as a "landing mat". You could take off/ land in any direction - no crosswinds! I know some early airfields were configured to land in any direction but it is interesting to see something still in use with this layout. I'll put this on my list of airport destinations to fly into.

http://www.airfields-freeman.com/IN/Airfields_IN_N.htm#converse

Apparently there were others of that design. There were a couple of them in Orange County, CA (Horse Farm and Haster Field) - which appear in the appropriate section of Freemen's website:
http://www.airfields-freeman.com/CA/Airfields_CA_OrangeCo_NW.htm There was also a facility nearby known as "Outlying Landing Field Mile Square" - but I don't think it was entirely paved. Information on it
is rather sketchy - but the land is now a regional park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile_Square_Regional_Park.

Dave

 

[BiffJ]

I've flown by there a couple times but I was always going somewhere else at the time and couldn't stop. It looks easily landable in most of the little stuff. I think my 175 wouldn't have any issues.
Out west the field would be a section with nothing but dirt and landings in any directions. I've seen a few of those and landed on a couple. Kommiefornia had a few but most were grass and have been farmed now....

Frank

 

[Getonit]

Must be a govt project, who else would have the money to waste on something like this?

 

[creweite]

This is how North Perry airport (HWO) looked during the war years, no problem with cross wind landings!

 

[Dav8or]

A good thing the government finally wised up and instead of building very expensive landing facilities to deal with unstable airplanes in a crosswind, they just changed the airplanes. Much better solution.