Hello BCPers,
I wanted to introduce myself and StripScout, apologies for the lack of brevity in advance. If you make it to the bottom you get yourself a nice prize.

Me: I grew up in Las Vegas next to what was then McCarran airport in a neighborhood that no longer exists. As a boy, I would ride my bike over to the fence line for my daily dose of Jet A fumes. We couldnt afford most things in life and I have no aviators in my family so that meant it was a spectator sport for me. When the towers fell, I joined the Marine Corps at age 16 (left after i finished high school) and went into the infantry (3/1 Raiders and MARSOC). This afforded me the opportunity to ride along as cargo in Blackhawks, Seahawks, 46's, 47's, 53's, C130's, and C17's but thankfully never any of those tilt rotor contraptions. Fast forward to 2018 and I was finally in a position to get my PPL and had just started a family. One took precedence over the other so I am still a low time aspiring backcountry flyer.

The Plane: I fly a Zenith 750 Cruzer with an 0235, some call it ugly, I call it fugly. I have flattened the prop for 2700 ish RPM at climb out, removed the wheel pants, and put VGs on it. I actually love just cruising around in it and have started piecing together some parts to put bigger tires on it in the pursuit of rougher strips.

The App: If you are all still awake, here is where is gets exciting. As I have tried to learn about backcountry strips near me and realized I dont know what I dont know, I decided to create an app that looks at everything I had/have questions about. It looks at the pilot, the plane, the terrain, the weather and quite a bit more. Basically, I built it to answer what am I getting myself into if I go to X strip?

Here are a few of the core features and where you all come in:
Strip database 16000 and counting anyone can use the database and add their favorite strips to it
Strip condition report for each unpaved strip. Has the snow melted? Do animals frequent the strip? Anyone can update the condition.
Weather predition modeling utilizing surrounding known stations, terrain modeling, and wind data
A 3D approach model showing terrain surrounding the strip for visualizing approach and departure

Now for your prize, not only is the app and its core features free to download but early adopters get a year of free subscription for all the pro features and there are NO ads on either version. It is available on the web and apple app store. I am awaiting google approval to launch it for android as well.

Check it out and let me know what you think. I am not Boeing and I can iterate quickly to suite the community's taste. Tell me what sucks and what you wish it had and I will make it so.

https://www.instagram.com/stripscout/

https://stripscout.org/

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/stripscout/id6761083645

I mentioned StripScout a couple days ago.

Now we’re opening **FREE premium access** to a small group of pilot users.

This is early access — not a polished rollout.

We’re looking for pilots who want to:
→ Find remote airstrips faster, in one place
→ Help shape how this platform evolves
→ Get ahead of everyone else still piecing this together manually

If you’ve ever thought, “I wish I knew about that strip sooner”… this is that moment.

We’re keeping this group intentionally small.

If you want in:
https://stripscout.org

Re: Introducing StripScout (free) — six-month update

Hey all — OP here with an update, since a few of you kicked the tires back in April.

StripScout is still free, still built by me on nights and weekends around a day job and a Zenith 750 that keeps demanding bigger tires. What's new since spring:

- The strip database is past 16,000 strips across all 50 states, and pilots have been filing field reports — surface conditions, obstacles, photos. That's the part I care about most. An app is only as good as its data.
- Added offline flight packs (for when you're past cell range, which is most of the places we land), ForeFlight/KML/GPX export, and a mission planner for multi-leg trips.
- Fixed a pile of bugs, including the strip detail pages on the website, which were broken for a while. My bad.

The core app is free and stays free. There's a Pro tier ($4.99/mo) that pays the server bills — strip-specific weather, go/no-go analysis, that kind of thing. No ads, no selling your data. Full disclosure since it's my app.

Honest ask: if you've flown with it, I'd rather hear what's broken than what works. And if your home strip's data looks thin, a field report takes two minutes and helps the next pilot.

stripscout.org — iOS, Android, web.

Fly safe,
Lawrence (Ojai, CA)

Interested and sent a PM