I met the owner of Billy Bob's Customs, Rod, today. There has been some concern from the aviation community that we might loose the Elma airport since he moved his custom car business there and is have drag races on the airstrip.
This airport has been in a state a neglect for a long time. Rod has patched the asphalt, cleaned out the grass growing from the cracks, keeps the grass mowed, and things are just generally much better there. He assures me that the airport is not getting shut down due to his operations. It was a good visit and I would encourage anyone to stop by and tell him how much better things look there. The grass even looks safe for landing now (that's all I'll say on that because I'm not sure if it's legal to land on the grass, so I didn't do that of course)

I've landed on the grass there, to the right of 25 between the runup area and the turnoff. Miscalculated the available length the first time, then landed long and almost over-ran the turnoff & went into the blackberries. Whew!

The airport has been pretty rundown looking ever since I can remember, I'm glad to hear that someone is sprucing it up now. The last café owner seemed to have a pretty good operation going, but for whatever reason it closed (again). It'd be nice if they got a café or snack bar going, esp since Lana's out at Hoquiam closed.

hotrod180 wrote:I've landed on the grass there, to the right of 25 between the runup area and the turnoff. Miscalculated the available length the first time, then landed long and almost over-ran the turnoff & went into the blackberries. Whew!

The airport has been pretty rundown looking ever since I can remember, I'm glad to hear that someone is sprucing it up now. The last café owner seemed to have a pretty good operation going, but for whatever reason it closed (again). It'd be nice if they got a café or snack bar going, esp since Lana's out at Hoquiam closed.

I learned the hard way how mean PNW blackberry bushes can be--not good things to run into with bare arms!

Cary