Club Homepage Forums Classified Ads Buy & Sell - Airplanes Only 1000' grass runway with 800 overrun: 100hp or 150hp, both STOL, much difference?

Update on the runway and airplane dilemma. These were our options:

1- We could buy a helicopter again and forget about any darn runway. Thought about it for a few weeks last month but insurance is through the roof now, not like when I had my R22 many years ago.

2- We could buy a really STOL aircraft and leave the runway as it is. That would be selfish because not everybody could come visit us. Plus it would limit my airplane choices and the really STOL ones out there are more expensive.

3- We can spend around $15k to extend the runway then see how much money we have left over and buy the best airplane we can get for that money.

Today we finally went with #3 and tomorrow morning they're going to cut down a whole mess of 100' trees making a nice safe and comfortable 150' wide path between the 2 farms. That connects the 800' overrun with the main 1000' runway. This had to be done anyway.

Also we had about 9 acres with 50' to 75' trees on the approach side that we were just going to cut down to make the approach easier and be able to use the entire 1000' to land. Well now we're getting everything pulled out and that gives us 650' more for takeoffs and landings before the beginning of the original 1000' runway.

So for the first phase we'll end up with a 1650' runway with a 50' obstacle on the north side (approach because 99% of the time the wind is from the south here) with an 800' overrun.

We figure if we're not in the air by the time we've eaten up 1650' then something is pretty wrong and we should have pulled the power already and use the overrun to stop, however we've decided to do Phase 2 which will turn the overrun into an extension of the runway so we'll end up with a 2440' x 25' wide runway with no obstacles on the departure side by the time it's all said and done.

Anthony sold his 150 and now we don't have the pressure of rushing to go buy it so now we'll have time to research with all the options open to us : 150, 150/150, 152, 172, PA28-140, PA28-180, tailwheel, trigear, whatever we can afford after we decide which model.