Having said that, we normally head north or southwest to different muni's for real intensive pattern work. There are a decent amount of farm strips in our area although most of them are private; some are on the sectionals, some aren't and the ones that are, only about half of them are still used.
On Tuesday afternoon my instructor and I had planned to fly at about 6pm to let the weather cool off and the wind die down. It was about 445 and I was about to leave work so I checked the weather and looked at the sectional for our planned flight. I noticed a little private strip about 4 miles north of our intended destination. I pulled it up on Google Maps and although it looked a touch forgotten, it was close enough to where we were headed, I figured it was worth a shot to quickly locate the owner. I jumped on the county GIS and got the owner's name, an 84 year old lady named Ms. Colwell. I white-paged her number, called her up and explained to her why I was calling....
She was surprisingly with it to be 84. After about 30 seconds she knew exactly what I was asking and ecstatically told me that I was more than welcome to land anytime and that I should bring a rod for the bass pond. She went on to tell me that her late husband had an old Champ he used to fly out of the field although he never had a pilot's license. She said that strip was his pride and joy. She let me know that the windsock had dry-rotted but made sure I knew to come in from the east because of a ditch and the corn. She went on to tell me that they have had Stearman's and Birddogs come in and even hosted a few fly-ins. Although no one had landed on the field in about two years, she made her son keep it mowed. I could tell me calling her brought back fond memories of her husband and his love for flying, and for that I was thankful to have picked up the phone.
Needless to say, I was STOKED at this point! We buzzed up to the muni, shot a few landings to get dialed in and went on up to Ms. Colwell's field for a look. An encroaching corn field made the approach end narrower. It had about 1,800' usable, decently high trees on one side, two perpendicular farm ditches which necked the usable width down to about 40' in two places with the rest of the runway about 70' if I had to guess. It took a couple passes to get the setup right but with the help of my instructor we finally worked the airplane on in.
I snapped a couple pics as the sun was starting to set, hopped back in and blasted out. It was great fun and also nice to have an instructor who is willing to regularly interject real-world off pavement instruction with primary training. I'm by no means a guy on the "airline track" and because of that he is trying to tailor my instruction to my intended goal of off-airport competency. I feel really fortunate to have that type of resource in North Carolina. In Montana, Idaho, or Alaska, I know plenty of those guys exist, but where I am, not so much.
All in all, it was a pretty awesome way to end the day. I have about 6-7 more private strips within about 50 miles of my home airport that I'm going to be cold calling soon. Hopefully the friendly trend continues. Until next time....
