When do airports not appear on sectionals?

Jim_R

Jim_R

Pattern Altitude
PoA Supporter
Joined
Feb 17, 2010
Messages
2,117
Display Name
Display name:
Jim
This weekend I went to the Karnack-Uncertain metroplex in NE Texas for catfish. While navigating there via Google Maps, I noticed "Fly n Fish Lodge Airport" prominently displayed on the map, so on the way home, we drove by to see what that was all about.

Turns out, the lodge itself was all about to fall down, and clearly had been defunct for decades. The condition of the strip was harder to determine, though it was clearly not heavily used. It looked like the place might have an interesting history, so I did some Googling when I got home, and didn't learn much, but during the process I came across something I hadn't seen before.

Looking at the Google Maps satellite view, it turns out there's an airport just a couple miles north of the Fly n Fish strip. Pavement looks a little suspect, but there's at least one nice new hangar on the strip. (Bing maps shows a better view of the hangar, and also seems to show remnants of where the runway used to extend to the SSE, but has since been overgrown by trees, much like the northern extension of the Fly n Fish runway...in fact, the two runways came fairly close to intersecting!)

But it is not mentioned at all on the sectional for that area.

This is the first time I've seen such a clearly-recognizable runway--something that obviously is or was an airport--not marked at all on a sectional.

Is this common and I just didn't know it? Or is it as unusual as I think it is for there to be a paved runway on the ground and no mention on the map?

Here's the Google maps and sectionals for what I'm talking about:

Fly n Fish (zoomed in): http://goo.gl/K6vFiK
Fly n Fish and mystery airport (FnF at bottom-right, ma at top center): http://goo.gl/DK5BmF
Mystery airport (zoomed in): http://goo.gl/hij3cP
Bing maps view of mystery airport with hangar clearly visible: http://binged.it/1khh1hH

And here's the sectional: http://goo.gl/XgOJUR

Thoughts?
 
Last edited:
If someone does not wish to have their field charted, they need not. There is no licensure or permission for an airport like this at the FAA level.
 
And every once in a while you'll find this comment in Airnav listings:

"OWNER DESIRES ARPT NOT BE CHARTED."

That one is in the Hill Country of Texas (and despite the request, I believe it appears on the sectional).
 
Have you checked Freemans little and abandoned airport directory ?
 
I overflew a new airport frequently - first, saw the land cleared, then watched as it was paved. A real jetport, long, wide runway, paved in concrete, 4-light PAPI both ends, large clearway. After very large hangars were built, I started looking for it to appear on charts, which it has not.

It still, however, shows up in the 430 database on the "nearest" page and (as it works out) has GPS precision approaches to both ends.

Turns out that the owner is a big dog in the oil business, commutes daily between the airport at the ranch and Dallas for work; most days, in a King Air 200, but also on occasion, a Falcon three-holer or a G-V (or maybe a 650, I forget).

G_d bless hard work and success!
 
There's a ton of private airstrips all over Arizona and New Mexico that are not charted. One of them even has a 12,000 ft long 150 ft wide concrete runway and an AWOS. Most, however, are disused ranch fields. Flying around you can see overgrown runways all over the place. Some of them have airplanes captured by Google, like the "Fly-In Ranch" near Santa Fe.

My airplane was based on an uncharted airstrip, which was in AirNav and SkyVector, just like every other one discussed in this thread. When I trucked it out, there was another airplane in the barn and a project car. I imagine it's what you find at most of those places.

One interesting/annoying trick in NM is that often you see an extended mark on the ground that looks like a runway, but actually is some kind of horse excercises thing. You can identify it by looking for a particluar stall-like structure that it always has on the side. One in Magdalena is particularly deceptive because it's surrounded by utility wires, and one more power line going across. Trying on land on it is going to end poorly. I have no clue why these "runways" are used. I thought that normally horses excercise on a racetrack, and we have tons of racetracks, too.
 
Last edited:
Might end poorly anyway.
Buildings look occupied and in good shape.
Landing without prior knowledge and permission might get you greeted at the end of a 12 gauge.
Be careful if you plan on buzzing the field or doing T&Gs
 
Gotcha...apparently this (uncharted airfields) is more common than I thought.

Re: the abandoned/little-known airfields site, I did do a cursory search, but might not have used the right keywords...when I get more time I'll try again, but I suspect there's nothing there. I wish there were, because the only reference I found to the history of the Fly n Fish was in a 2003 TX Parks & Wildlife magazine article, and it only had a few sentences about it, but it sounded like there was the potential for a whole lot more to that story.

I'm particularly intrigued about how these two runways ended up so close to each other in an area with such a small population. Uncertain is a town of ~100ish folks, and yet there are two apparently independent runways within ~2000' or so of each other?

I expect the story goes something like, "Well, ol' Beer Smith," (yes, that was really his name, according to the TP&W article, but the rest of this imagined conversation is indeed imagined) "He builds this here runway and a fancy fishing lodge, and starts inviting people to come stay at his place and fish off his pier. Now, Tibodeaux Joe in the camp around the next slew, he thinks that's a great idea and asks Beer for permission to keep a plane there, but Beer doesn't like the way ol' Joe treated Beer's sister back in junior high school, so he says, 'Heck no!' So Joe gets a few of his moneyed friends from down the road in Jefferson to loan him a few bucks in exchange for some hangar space at his field, and he off and builds his own dang runway, right up against Beer's! Now ain't that a hoot?" :)
 
Jim_R said:
Re: the abandoned/little-known airfields site, I did do a cursory search, but might not have used the right keywords...when I get more time I'll try again, but I suspect there's nothing there. I wish there were, because the only reference I found to the history of the Fly n Fish was in a 2003 TX Parks & Wildlife magazine article, and it only had a few sentences about it, but it sounded like there was the potential for a whole lot more to that story.
Click to expand...

This is the site for TX:

http://www.airfields-freeman.com/TX/Airfields_TX.htm

If you find information about the strip, you can also submit it to Paul Freeman for inclusion on the site. He also appreciates a couple of $$ for the bandwith.
 
Yes, I have made donations to Mr. Freeman in the past, and will likely do so again in the future. I didn't mean to imply that I couldn't find Mr. Freeman's site...I meant that I had done some targeted Google searches like "fly fish site:www.airfields-freeman.com" and "uncertain site:www.airfields-freeman.com" with no luck. There are dozens of sub-sites covering Texas, and sometimes airports aren't in the sub-site you might expect, so when I get more time I'll go manually hunt through those pages to make sure I'm not missing something, but I think I've done enough Googling that I'd find it if it were in there...I've found plenty of other pages from his site that way.

About the only notable info I've found on the Fly n Fish field is this:
At breakfast the next morning I meet Pud and Bobby Harper, who will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary this year. Pud Harper's father, Beer Smith, operated the Fly 'n Fish on Caddo Lake in the early 1950s. "He looked like a long-necked beer bottle when he played football in high school," Pud tells me, "so they called him 'Beerbottle' and later just 'Beer.'" As I finish my omelet, the Harpers entertain me with stories of Caddo Lake in the 1940s and '50s.

The Fly 'n Fish was "a 20-room motel that had a large dining area downstairs," Pud tells me. "Upstairs it had a ballroom with a stage that could be lowered or raised. On the other end of that was a bar. People would fly their private planes in, and we had a hanger where they could leave them. Across the street, he built a huge pier that's still there." Beer Smith was responsible for the town being incorporated in 1961.
Click to expand...

For the other airport, I've learned that it was once owned (and probably originally built) by a local independent oil man, Sammy Vaughan III. Unfortunately, he and four buddies perished in a crash while taking off from that strip in poor weather. http://goo.gl/2ScgjC

Not sure what happened to it after that.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top