Jaffrey, NH — KAFN
Between our Thursday meetings, blizzard and I snuck out of town for lunch in Jaffrey, NH. It has an adorable little barely-manned airport, with a runway that isn’t that short, but a lot shorter than I’m used to.
You can’t tell very well from the picture, but runway 34 is actually uphill, and changes angle in the middle. Exciting!
We were pretty sure there was an ice cream store (”parlor”? am I using that correctly?), so that was our trumped-up excuse for being there, but about a hundred yards off the left side of that photo is a nice little take-away restaurant with ample outdoor seating. Pretty tasty! I recommend it highly; follow the ice cream cone trail spray-painted on the asphalt.
I’m sure all of the families with young children appreciated the two go-arounds that it took before I finally put the plane down on the numbers. No surprise, perhaps, given that it’s half the width of the most narrow runway I’ve ever used. I think I’ll spend some time at Norwood this week, getting more familiar with how everything looks on a narrow runway (although even Norwood is 50% wider than Jaffrey).
Merlin83b said,
October 3, 2006 @ 06:45
How short is shorter than you’re used to? Flying a Warrior, you shouldn’t need a lot more than 1500ft :)
phik said,
October 3, 2006 @ 11:53
Oh — there is no question that 3,000 feet is plenty of runway for a Warrior. Indeed, we used about half that.
It’s just that I’m used to the sight picture presented to me by my home base, the luxurious 7,000′ long, 150′ wide Hanscom field. They spoil us rotten at Hanscom.
My go-arounds were all about the visual, I think: having a hard time telling how high I was over a runway that was both shorter and, I think more importantly, much narrower (50′ paved) than my norm…