Airfield Hiding in "Plane" Sight

an article by Murray Wardell

Do you want Onions with that land-out?

“Why didn’t you land on the airfield on the other side of the fence, instead of the onion paddock?”, said the farmer to the pilot when I went on an out-landing retrieve. “Because the pilot wants to have a hang-over smell of smashed onions through the undercarriage gear for the rest of the season”, I thought !

Landing next to an unrecognised airstrip is easy enough to do, but you can minimise this occurrence with a bit of thought and preparation.

Have you ever found a place to land, been distracted and then been unable to quickly locate it again? It happened to me one day when cloud cover come over and the ground definition completely changed. I eventually relocated the paddock again, but not without some unnecessary stress created by myself. Sound familiar?

Whenever I have a situation like this, I use the experience to learn. I make myself a better pilot by creating a strategy to avoid the situation again. Now when I find a land-out place I mark it with a geographical reference - I say aloud to myself something like, “My land-out paddock is 5 paddocks west of the corner of that forest block”. Once I have established a geographical reference for a land-out place, I can locate it quickly EVERY TIME in a few seconds regardless of what the visibility is.

Now let’s apply this technique to reliably locate PUKS Pukekawa Air Strip 7 Km north of Orton Corner. If you are flying down the west side of Hamilton airspace, then you’ll be flying past this airstrip. It’s a privately owned strip with a hangar at the northern end.

Its location is obvious when you know where and how to look. Why there is trouble locating it is because it’s surrounded by large paddocks that distract the eye. Look at the aerial view in Fig 1 above. I have landed twice in the big paddock “C” to the west. I have yet to land on the airstrip itself. The first time I landed in paddock “C”, I didn’t know that Pukekawa airstrip was just over the road. The second time I opted to land in paddock “C” rather than the airstrip, as I felt it was a safer option from where I was in the air.

All things being equal, I would prefer to land on an airstrip rather than in the surrounding paddocks.

Location Steps:

1. Locate Hampton Downs racecourse and then go N.W. to locate Meremere Drag strip.

2. Go across the Waikato River the same distance as the Meremere Drag strip is from the river and there is Pukekawa Airstrip, running roughly NW / SE between the 2 big paddocks.

[Alternatively use, Hampton Downs and Meremere Drag Strip as reference points].

3. Currently there is a white limestone road on the eastern side of the strip which (currently) makes it easy to identify.

Never assume that any particular out-landing place will be available on any particular day or time. Knowing where land-out options are in advance is an advantage, but have to be assessed at the time. As you build up your own mental picture of the geography and the land-out options that you fly over locally and beyond you will find that cross-country flying becomes less of a stress. You can use Google Earth as I have to simulate what a landing approach will look like at ANY out-landing place.