Jicarilla Apache Nation Airport in Dulce NM

reply to post by firepilot


Spooky strip?
Is there a link, I would like to know more.

Thanks

I was flying my Cessna 337 from Tucumcari to Durango a couple of months ago and the weather was bad. When it got really bad, I decided to land somewhere and let the weather blow over. I consulted the charts, and my Garmin GPS, and landed at the closest public airport, Jicarilla Apache Nation Airport. It is quite isolated, I could not get any cell signal there, which was bad for me as that meant that I couldn't consult the weather service, so I had to just look up at the sky to decide when I should continue my trip. I was on the ground there for about 2 1/2 hours. There is a fence and a locked gate, but it's not a high fence to keep out people, more of a cattle fence. There is a small hanger there, a couple of not too big fuel tanks, nothing unusual. There was truly no one and nothing much around.

As one goes higher, an aircraft needs a longer strip to take off and land because of the thinner air. At sea level, I can get by with 2500 feet of runway in the 337, but at Jicarilla, I used almost all of the runway. My plane is a 1974 model and doesn't have anti lock brakes. It was raining and the runway was wet so I was afraid to apply too much brake after I touched down at about 100 knots indicated air speed and when I finally stopped I was very near the end of the strip.

I can only tell you that I could see nothing unusual there.

Thanks, Max

The runway there is mostly used for fighting forest fires in the area. During the Fire season you will see much more activity around that area. During any forest fires in that area it is like a Beehive with activity. The hanger that I operated the Helicopter fleet was right in town by the old now closed down runway...

Nothing is out of the ordinary there......

7500 feet is not especially long. The airport where I learned to fly was 9200 feet. Little bitty burg in the middle of nowhere.

You want runways way out in the boonies. airplane noise grates on the nerves of non participants.

Elevation 7618 feet. Thin air up there. hard to take off in thin air, you need a lot of runway.

flightaware.com...

7500 feet long at 7600 feet up would not look especially long if you were landing a firefighting bird up there.

I used to fly a C-54 (DC-4) Firefighting aircraft out of a strip lower elevation than that, and we would use up every bit of runway. I swear we would see the end up the runway going under the nose before the main gear lifted off.

I did once though see an aircraft doing aerobatics over Angel fire NM in summer, that field is 8300 ft high.

instead of looking at miltary aircraft MINIMUM take off / landing requirements - why not look at the RECCOMENDED runway dimensions for civilian short / medium haul aircraft , executive jets etc

you will find that the dimensions are consistant with other regional airstrips - and that all have a large inbuilt ` saftey margin ` to accomodate brake fade / failure , no furl landing etc etc

the DOD figures for NINIMUM landing area you cite - are the absolute minimum - with zero room for error - they are only used in emergencies - not as the std