Gravel Pit or Airport

Which came first?

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    7
EppyGA

EppyGA

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Hoschton, GA
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Let's Fly
Don't know about other parts of the country but it seems here in the SE that it is a requirement that a gravel pit be located near an airport or vice versa. Is this the aviation equivalent of the chicken and egg dilemma?
 
What's the significance?
 
It is probably a better choice than a housing development from a land use consideration. We do have a rock crushing operation about three miles from my home airport.
 
There are several gravel pits within a mile of our airport. Also the city sewer plant is next to us. They use to throw the new CFIs into the holding pond that is on one side of the runway. :tongue:
 
We have a landfill under the approach of the most commonly used runway at my home 'drome. Problem is, it attracts LOTS of California Gulls and other birds :yikes:.
 
Ummm, the really good airports have a cliff face right at the numbers on the approach end...
Or a bluff (big one) with pine trees (big ones) and a prevailing cross wind rotor off the trees (vigorous) like Mackinac Island...
 
My airport has the world's largest coal fired power plant 5 miles due West (but alas, no quarry). The powerplant acts as both a great windsock (with the steam coming from the cooling towers) and an outstanding visual waypoint.
 
EppyGA said:
Does there have to be a significance in everything? You're not able to have fun now and then? ;)
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This is the POA. I'm pretty sure that's against the board rules and regulations.
 
Both gravel and airports tend to be in flat-bottomed valleys.
 
ARFlyer said:
There are several gravel pits within a mile of our airport. Also the city sewer plant is next to us. They use to throw the new CFIs into the holding pond that is on one side of the runway. :tongue:
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There is a large field to the west of Ramona Airport in San Diego county. When I was a student my instructors often took me there for T&Gs.

Anyway, there were these huge water sprinklers firing off one day all over that field, and my instructor told me that he used to deliberately fly through them for a free plane wash.

I found out a few years later that those sprinklers were returning treated sewage water back to the aquifer.

-John
 
otoh - some geniuses built elderly housing across the street from KBED.

Brilliant!
 
6B4 sports a significant drop off at 31 [several people have ended up at the bottom over the years] and also has a small gravel pit parallel to the runway and another large one about four miles away.

"I see the Oriskany gravel pit, so 6B4 must be near by!"

The first owner of 6B4 (who also built it) owned the gravel pit as well. It started out as grass strip in the 50s. There was a flight school, parachute jumping etc. Ironically the owner was not a pilot. There still is Cherokee (owned by a friend) that lived all it's live at the field. Quite a few people recognize it decades later as the plane they got lessons in.
 
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Out here there's always a Golf Course and Fairgrounds next to the airport.
 
At KTCY the airport was first, as a WWII training field. However, the gravel pit is hella old, from 1970s at least. Unfortunately even the pit is unable to contain NIMBYs that press the airport from the north. Only the collapse of California economy cooled them down a bit.
 
COFlyBoy said:
Out here there's always a Golf Course and Fairgrounds next to the airport.
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The fairground+airport combo has something to do with how railroad land was allocated. If you go back to the early abstracts, you will find that parcel labeled as 'county grounds', land the raiload had to put aside for the development of public facilities.
 
Bob Noel said:
wanna bet?
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Okay you're right. They just hear the things that you don't want them to. Like your wild parties. But ask them what Old Fred did when he backed the Olds in to the pool, they won't know a damn thing.
 
When I took my SODA flight(blind in one eye) out of KLEW Auburn-Lewiston, Maine the examiner at one point asked, "What's that ground area at 3 o'clock?"
"Gravel pit three miles away, three trucks, one bulldozer, and one track-mounted shovel."
He knew I had no problem with depth perception. At KIWI Wiscasset, Maine(my base) there used to be Maine Yankee Atomic Power Plant(now decommissioned and dismantled) right beside the runways. It was impossible to not find the airport because that huge white reactor dome, on a clear day, could be seen from incredible distances.

HR
 
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