Church Farm, Oxon
CHURCH FARM: Private airstrip (Generally known as SHOTTESWELL but also BANBURY)
Pictures by the author
Note: After landing we realised we had actually parked at the eastern end of runway 09/27. I then asked my friend and fellow pilot Guy Browning to quickly move Charlie Lima next to the hangar.
Operated by: 1970s to 1990s: Mr F Spencer DFC & Bar
Location: Just E of A41 (now B4100), 3nm N of Banbury
Period of operation: 1970s to present day?
Runways: 1990: 15/33 853 grass 09/27 365 grass
2001: 15/33 853x18 grass 09/27 400x18 grass
(Pretty much the same as in 1997)
NOTES: One of few private strips where prior permission to land wasn’t required. Sadly Mr Spencer passed away a few years ago but I well remember speaking to him when asking permission to land on his airfield on the 29th of June 1996. (I always believe in phoning ahead before landing anywhere before departing whether or not permission is required) and he was most welcoming. When we landed nobody was to be seen, (a common enough occurrence at many private airfields/farm strips), which is a shame because I really would liked to have met him because of his distinguished flying career. I did speak to his son later and he told me he intended keeping their airfield open in memory of his father and I do hope this remains the case.
In the mid 1970s two aircraft were based here it seems; Auster J/1 Autocrat G-AJEE and the Cessna 170B G-BCLS
A WARNING
As mentioned elsewhere in this Guide information published in some Pilot Flight Guides is often inaccurate – sometimes dangerously so, because pilots very often have only this information readily at hand. The AAIB report EW/C2007/09/07 concerning a fatal accident at SHOTTESWELL draws attention to this finding that in a 2004 guide the runways are listed as 15/33 853 metres and 09/27 400 metres. Even more misleading was that these figures were given as TORA, (Take-Off Run Available), which is usually not the same as runway length and often a much shorter distance.
In a 2007 guide the runways were listed as 15/33 853 metres, (TORA 700 metres in each direction), whereas 09/27 had become 07/25 350 metres. The AAIB measured the runway as being 302 metres – with a 18 to 22ft high hedge at the western end! They did mention that a small 28 metre grass “extension” outside the hangar could be used by some smaller and/or STOL aircraft, but, this was then a hedge-to-hedge distance.
Incredibly, in another 2007 guide runway 09/27 was listed as being 853 metres long, obviously confusing it with runway 15/33. It is well known that private pilots under traing usually fly from airfields with relatively long runways are usually rather poor at judging short runway lengths and therefore prone to making basic performance miscalculations. For these pilots especially reliance on the information given in flight guides can be critical.
SOMETHING OF A SURPRISE?
After re-learning how to fly from a farm strip, the perceptions of how to operate an aircraft were transformed. For example I was then taught that a Cessna 172 was a very capable short strip aircraft, when two-up with half tanks. And later still, when in New Zealand, a country full of people capable of rational thought, I found that typically they bolted a 180hp engine onto 172s, rather than the typical 150/160hp versions found elsewhere - and by heck did that transform the type. Which begs the question of course - why hasn't everyone else done this?
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