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Circular Runways?

xj220

Will fly for food.
pilot
Contributor
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-39284294

I saw this clip and thought it was interesting but it raises a lot of questions. I'm all about thinking out of the box and trying new things but I think this might be stretching it a bit. First, you have to take off and land on a banked track NASCAR style. It's a very wide circle though but the banking would have to be very shallow or graduated due to wingtips and low slung motors.

My biggest question is how do you deal with instrument approaches? Can you do a CATIII into this? Cool concept but I question the feasibility of it.
 

Griz882

Frightening children with the Griz-O-Copter!
pilot
Contributor
Although not exactly the same thing, but using the Way Back Machine I see that when my father was in the V-5 program just learning to fly at Pensacola (circa 1942) Chevalier Field was a giant circle. He noted that the most accidents he saw were here, where field procedures could get confusing and at times morning take-offs were a bit like the wild west.

Chevalier_FL_WW2.jpg

For those of you hairy-chested old guys who graduated from AOCS (like me) The barracks, school house, and parade field would be to the viewers left, just off the edge of the image.
 

Uncle Fester

Robot Pimp
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
Circular airfields were apparently very common configurations in the early days of aviation, when taking off directly into the wind was a requirement.

Rockwell Army Airfield in 1924, before it was consolidated with NAS San Diego and became NASNI:

lossy-page1-1920px-Naval_Air_Station%2C_Aerial_View_Showing_Development%2C_September_10%2C_1924_-_Height_3500_feet_-_NARA_-_295437.tif.jpg
 

Gatordev

Well-Known Member
pilot
Site Admin
Contributor
Chevalier Field was a giant circle.

That might just top the Saufley course rules in confusionness.

Rockwell Army Airfield in 1924, before it was consolidated with NAS San Diego and became NASNI:

So what am I seeing there? Is that what became NASNI proper? That looks like the CNAF tower, but obviously there's just water and not a bunch of homes "off-base."
 

Gatordev

Well-Known Member
pilot
Site Admin
Contributor
Interesting. That's a lot of fill! Also interesting to see the soundings by the training centers which now have a bunch of moorings and docks for boats.
 

nittany03

Recovering NFO. Herder of Programmers.
pilot
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
Interesting. That's a lot of fill! Also interesting to see the soundings by the training centers which now have a bunch of moorings and docks for boats.
Bet 32nd Street was still a shithole.
 

sevenhelmet

Low calorie attack from the Heartland
pilot
No. Just no.

Circular fields were common in the early days of aviation because aircraft didn't require a long distance to take off, and grass fields were sufficiently weight bearing for the tail wheel craft of the day. This concept is completely different, and it's bonkers.

I strongly suspect you'll find that trying to land a modern aircraft on a ring-shaped runway would result in serious safety issues; e.g. keeping a large mass moving in a straight line is much easier, thanks to Sir Isaac Newton. Cantilevering a turn doesn't make it behave like a straightaway. How do you transition from straight flight (e.g. approach) to curvilinear, banked (e.g. NASCAR) motion during the most critical phase of flight safely and repeatably? Any issues with brakes, steering, flight controls, or inclement weather (e.g. wet or icy "runway") would cause problems, just for a start. A computer might be able to fly the airplane better than me (debatable...) but even the best computer can't solve all those problems- they reside in the physical world.

Furthermore, traffic throughput at busy airports would not be increased, at least not without a severe detriment to safety (e.g. having more than one airplane on your ring at a time?) In fact, quite the opposite would be true.

Finally, what's the need? Oh, you don't have enough real-estate for a straight, 8000' runway? Odds are, you don't need to service aircraft that require one. Not to mention in terms of square acreage, you're not really saving anything, so there goes your property value theory. It's also far easier to build aircraft which can perform off shorter and/or unimproved runways than try to make them take off and land in a circle because you think it's different and cool. In addition to bush planes, we also have cars, trains, boats, and Amazon drones. None of which would require a special design for a unique system which doesn't exist anywhere else.

This is a solution looking for a problem, and will create more problems than it solves. My $0.02.
 
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Flash

SEVAL/ECMO
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
Circular airfields were apparently very common configurations in the early days of aviation, when taking off directly into the wind was a requirement.

Rockwell Army Airfield in 1924, before it was consolidated with NAS San Diego and became NASNI:

lossy-page1-1920px-Naval_Air_Station%2C_Aerial_View_Showing_Development%2C_September_10%2C_1924_-_Height_3500_feet_-_NARA_-_295437.tif.jpg

Doesn't look like a circle to me, just a big field.
 

xj220

Will fly for food.
pilot
Contributor
I think someone saw a traffic circle and though why don't we do it for airplanes.
 
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