I've been interested in airparks since the days my father would bundle the family into the car and drive an hour or more to look at lots on runways, then return home and talk about what life would be like if we could move there. Never happened, but 20-some years, a PPL, and an airplane later, I'm the one scrolling the internet daydreaming about airpark listings around the country or building a backyard runway. I know we have several POA members who are airpark residents. I haven't seen any recent (eg. post remote-work shift) and more comprehensive surveys regarding what pilots are looking for in an airpark home and where/how they're interested in living. So, I spent an afternoon creating one, and refined it after some input from early respondents. It's anonymous and doesn't ask for any personal information beyond "are you a pilot", but steps through questions about location, airport, airpark, and home preferences, among other related items. This is a curiosity project for me -- I'm not selling the data, website ads, etc. I'd be happy to share the responses with interested folks, once enough are collected to be useful. I've shared this in a couple spots online where I'm a participant (not interested in spamming folks), and so far have ~80 responses. Got 10 minutes to think about sharing a home with your plane? I'd love your thoughts. airparksurvey.com (MC, please remove with my apologies if not appropriate)
Sure it is. I did it. One of the best thought out surveys I ever took. The questions actually made sense.
The question pertained to night flying, unless you don't require lights of any sort to land/take off at night.
Appreciate the positive reactions! I looked at this and the form logic does appear to require at least ONE of the lighting checkboxes to be checked (I wrongly assumed that it would allow you to check zero options if you did not need them)...to contain the cases where lighting is unimportant to a pilot, I've added a checkbox for "None - lighting is not a requirement".
Did the survey but just thought of something else, it would be nice to have an approach or 2. I have to file to another airport and cancel if/when I break out.
I interpreted the question about an alternate to cover that. Few air parks are going to be able to support an approach.
But I don't fly at night, so I don't require ANY lighting... but that isn't an option, and an answer is required.
Lol, yeah I don't think going into a pitch black runway with nothing but a landing light will be on my to-do list.
Ope! That's an oversight, approaches should have been included in the airport services & amenities section. I've added it; I'll have to include that in the results with an asterisk since the first batch of responses didn't have the opportunity to select it. Probably only applies to the public airport/through-the-fence access scenario, unless the association dues are set REALLY steep.
An approach would be a development cost, I don’t think there’s a reoccurring cost. Another thing for the planning stage is trees on the approaches. If the runway goes out close to the property line neighbor’s trees can grow into a problem (pun intended). KHFD’s instrument approaches are NA at night because the city doesn’t like the airport and won’t allow them to cut the trees.
