chatteris incident

[skua]

“A pilot who crashed his plane when landing at Chatteris Airfield has blamed his accident on several 18’ telephone poles erected around a field on the approach to the runway. But farmer Robin Gowler, who put up the poles, is unrepentant, claiming they deter pilots from making low passes over his tractor”.

Quote from this week’s Farmers Weekly.

Anybody know the background to this incident, or the GPS co-ordinates of this nutter’s farm?

[Kermit 180]

18 foot high poles? Just how close are these poles to the runway threshold, and if theyve been there for a while why was the threshold not displaced accordingly?

As for low flying aircraft, what does the farmer expect if his paddock is at the end of an airfield?

:confused:

[ 11 July 2001: Message edited by: Kermit 180 ]

[Mr moto]

Don't let it have been the Beaver!

Any details?

[Cusco]

Chatteris is mainly a Microlight/Parachute centre airfield and has a large number (can't remember exactly how many and I can't find my airfield plate) of grass runways with varying orientations. They are all pretty short. G-OWIN, the parachute centre's Islander has no problems but when I planned to fly in in my Arrow to watch my daughter do a charity sky dive I decided they were all a bit tight and went by car.

I've seen these poles: IIRC they are at the threshold of the longest runway and as they are on the farmers property they are quite legal.

Don't know what type of A/c crashed but he could just have run out of runway, having been forced to use a shorter runway.

The farmer adjacent to Crowfield in Suffolk did a similar thing by stacking hay bales at the end of their runway a few years ago.

There are some real t*ssers out there, but perhaps the farmer was just p*ssed off by the constant sound of the drop a/c staggering to 10000ft every half hour all day all weekend.

His farm was there long before the airstrip.

Happy flying

Cusco