NCBrit

The mat we used is a nylon material used in nurseries. It has lines woven into it to enable consistent placement of potted plants etc. It was about $250 per roll. The rolls are 15' wide and 300' long, so we used two rolls. One of our memebers sells industrial sewing machines, so he stitched the two rolls together prior to installation. We hold it down with landscaping staples.

In hindsight stitching the two pieces together was unnecessaty. Stapling along the join would have worked fine. When we first installed it, we assumed that it would need to be tight so we stretched it out quite a lot. This turned out to be a mistake because the sun will cause the material to tighten up. This year the seam pulled apart because it got too tight. We have also made repairs to it along the way which you can see in the picture.

Prop strikes will often bounce off without a problem. The ones that hit hard and fast tend to tear it, but a small patch glued down will soon fix any small holes.

We plan to replace it next year with the same or a smiliar material. We hope that avoiding the mistakes we made initially will help it last a bit longer. Next year will be our third year with this runway.