Dont know if this has been discussed before, but thought I'd share:

It's pretty hard to go out and walk the local (towered) field to get a sense for takeoff and landing distances, but I had an idea tonight that might be useful to you all: use google pedometer to estimate the distances (http://www.trails.com/googlemap.aspx).

I just tried it and found out that our first taxiway is about 1,300 feet, almost the exact distance I've been thinking about for a strip that I want to get in to, so now I at least have a practicing reference. I tested it out on some known field lengths, and it seems pretty darn accurate.

Don't get yourself killed by being over confident with it, but thought you all might like a way to measure that BC strip or gravel bar you've been eyeing from the comfort of your pajamas!

Google Earth has a measuring tool as well.

Hah. Funny - as soon as I posted, I realized that might be the case. Never could get google earth to work on my computer for some reason.

Google Earth is way better than nothing at all. And is VERY helpful when you are sizing up a strip for future use if you can't get your feet on that ground.
The obvious advantage to walking a primitive strip is you can just measure the part that is in good enough shape to use-and where it begins and ends. Sometimes the 'run out' ends can be good only at a walking taxi speed. Just an example.
Obstacles (50' ?)are another example....
Gopher holes?
Large ruts?
Mud?
Washouts?
Large rocks or limbs left by the backwoods Pius? (environmental holier-than-thous)
To name 'a few'.....

Many considerations,
lc

skiermanmike wrote:Hah. Funny - as soon as I posted, I realized that might be the case. Never could get google earth to work on my computer for some reason.

Try going to the Google Earth loading page and try to load an older version of the program. The newest version of Google Earth, for some reason is not compatible with some operating systems. I found this to be true on an older version of Windows. Loaded the next older version of Earth and it works just fine.

And, yes, the Earth measuring tool works very well for a good starting point.

MTV

I use google earth for measuring all sorts of things like the sizes of buildings, hiking distances, airstrip lengths, etc. It's accurate down to a foot or two if the image has high enough resolution.

Another fun tool in g.e. is the flight simulator. At 50% throttle and 20 degrees flaps, its performance is depressingly similar to my 172 with the mighty O-300 on a hot day. It's a nice way to check out approaches and departures from mountain strips, or just kill some time when you're bored on a rainy day. On my laptop, I set g.e.'s anisotropic filtering to high and antialiasing off for best 3d resolution and speed.

You don't even need Google Earth, you can measure stuff in Google Maps:

Runway lights are generally all installed at the same spacing, runway numbers are sized into categories depending on the runway size... lots of standard stuff to use as a reference

You can overfly an airstrip or landing site at 70 mph groundspeed-- you travel 100 feet per second. I have also used the overhead photo's in the Washington State Aviation airport guide to calculate the lengths of grass strips, distance between taxiways etc by scaling off the known runway lenths. Reagrding walking proposed landing sites, a guy I know & me walked off a grasy field next to his airport. Obviously (to me) rough, he told me that it oughta be just fine to land on. I told him to go drive his pickup across it at about 50, & tell me that it'd be fine to land on after he re-caged his eyeballs.