mvallyman

My Feedback: (32)

Our club has a runway that is covered in a heavy black fabric, kind of like weed blocker. We are getting ready to recover the runway (its 7 years old now) and we have no records of where we bought it and what qualities it has that we need to look for.

I would like to hear from clubs that have simalar runways and information on how their fabric is holding up and if they have tried glued seems.

Thanks, Greg

42etus

My Feedback: (2)

Ask the powers to be at a nearby paper mill if you can have the fabric mat that they use in the paper making process. This is a wear item for them and must be replaced periodicaly. They're typically around 30ft wide and several hundred feet long. It makes excellent runways. They are usually glad to get rid of it, but you may need to get on a waiting list.
Paul

vicman

My Feedback: (10)

We use the black stuff found in furniture. It's about 12' wide and we use some 9' wonkin staples to anchor it into the ground. It's been in place for about 8 years but has been repaired once a year. Prop strikes are the biggest problem.

KitBuilder

I beleve ours the kind of stuff fire hoses are mode of but its about 15ft wide. It does get cut from props but it's pretty good. Not sure where they got it from.

dignlivn

Have you checked with a Wholesale Nursery supplier ??

Bob

mvallyman

My Feedback: (32)

Bob,
We know where to buy the stuff. Our Question is, is it the same stuff we have and will it last? One of the club members mainly involved with our first runway has passed and we have no previous records.

I am asking about other clubs runways in case they are using a fabric that is lasting and staying tight.

da Rock

Funny you should ask. 3 of us put down the rest of our PetroMat last Wednesday. It's the stuff used to reinforce asphalt paving. We bought a leftover roll from a local paver. The club was only interested in doing a small portion of our grass runway for use by the guys flying little electrics.

I think the PetroMat name is what it's called.

It isn't heavy at all compared to what's been described above. It's pinned along the edges and tightens up excellently the first sunny day.

It is a woven fabric, but the fabric is like nylon or polyester. shiny, black, synthetic. It isn't thick, but against dirt, stands up to running deer hooves, and running coyote toenails. (Got the pictures to prove it.) Patching is supposed to be done with silicon "glue". We ran two widths side-by-side and used the same pins to make the seam, overlapping the latest strip over the earlier one.

It's not needed patching yet.

ktreadway

Geo -Tech Fabric used for under roads and erosion protection.

daveopam

My Feedback: (9)

We put a our second one down what will be two years ago in July. The first one was down 8 years. We had erosion problems or it will still be down. We gave it to another club who trimmed it and put it down on their new field.I think a 15 year life span would be about right. Ours is Pro-Pex. We never had trouble with it staying tight. Just the oposite , it will stretch as tight as a drum sfter the first sunny day.

David

mvallyman

My Feedback: (32)

David,

This is what I wanted to hear. Someone that has been using it for years and knows it works, lasts.

I looked up Pro-Pex and they sell about eight different fabric products. Do you know which one your using on your runway?
Greg

captjckirk

Our Club has used the Petro Mat for the past several years with good success. Last Spring we replaced it with the same material, and gave the old mat to a club that was flooded out. They have put it down and it turned out fine, so it does have good life. Our club has two flying fields, one with Petro-mat and one with grass. We are going to put down a 25 foot by 175 foot Petro-mat runway for the electric flyers this summer at our grass field. We are sold on it.

mvallyman

My Feedback: (32)

captjckirk,

Thanks for your reply. I have looked on the website for Petro Mat and they have 3 kinds, 4597, 4598 and 4599, do you know what one you have?
Also, Our present fabric is laid on compacted dirt and stapled at the seems and perimeter. Is this how yours is installed?

Thank you, Greg

mvallyman

My Feedback: (32)

E-mail Reply from captjckirk

Greg, we have a staple every 3" and a 12" spike every 18" around the outside. I don't think the spike is needed. It's just that we had them from the first time the runway was put down. So when we redid the runway 18 months ago we reused them. The Pro-Pex we used comes on a 15'x300' roll. Five of these gave us the 43'x500' we were after.

Here is a pic with the product number we used. Also a few pics of the stapled edges and seams. My computer is still acting up. If you could post these on RCU that would be great.

mvallyman

My Feedback: (32)

David,
Thank you so much for all the info, pictures and promptness. I will be taking this info to our meeting Thursday with a few other members about getting our runway done this year.

Sorry to hear about your computer acting up, hope you get it all straitened out soon.

Greg

captjckirk

I erred, the material we used was GEOTEX 315ST made by PROPEX. Each strip is 12' 6" wide X approx. 358 ft long. Runway is 4 strips wide overlapped about 6", so runway is about 48' wide. Stapled all around all the edges. Staples are 6/2/6 11 ga., we used 8000 staples. Before putting the material down we used the mower to scalp the grass down, then laid the fabric. It has worked very well for us, even with the severe weather we have here in Iowa.

daveopam

My Feedback: (9)

Greg, thanks for posting the pics. It only took 55 minutes for my computer to boot up and send two emails.[:@] When I am at work everything is fine. I just don't have my pictures on the work computer and the flash drive is in the lock box.

David

MasterAlex

Captn

Where did you guys purchase?

-MA

mvallyman

My Feedback: (32)

Masteralex,

I have the # for Jim at the CO. office for Propex , 303 520 3238. He was helpful and was also able to give me the name and # for a Dist. near me.

captn,
I gave the model # you showed me to my dist and he said "that club must have a lot of bucks" as it costs twice as much as the 315ST. I got an est. for 315ST as it is close to what we now have. The 315ST is $400.00 per roll.

I did finally find out what we have on our runway, it's called 500X about the same price as the 315ST but the 315ST is supposed to be a bit better. 315ST comes in rolls of 12.5 ft. X 360 ft.

Larry3215

My Feedback: (2)

I have the data sheets for all the different fabrics we've been looking at. I'll post them later if anyone else is interested. There looks to be a wide range in the UV tollerance as well as strength and porosity.

Larry

da Rock

Interested? Yes, absolutely.

captjckirk

mvalleyman, the fabric is now called Geotex600X, we paid $485.00 per roll 12 1/2' wide x 360' long. The staples are $42.00 per 1,000, we purchased it from Quick Supply Co. in Des Moines, Iowa. Don't know if they are national or not. Hope this helps.

Larry3215

My Feedback: (2)

Hi Guys,

Our club (I'm in the same club with mvalleyman) has decided to go with a fabric called Geotex 315ST made by Propex. We based that decision in a combination of UV resistance, strength, cost, availability and how much water it passed. This one - 315ST - seemed to have the best combination of those factors.

There are other fabrics with better UV resistance or more strength but they cost a whole lot more.

By the way - the Petromat products have the lowest UV rating but you have to look at the spec carefully to spot that. They all list the rating as a %. Most of these are 70% BUT some of the tests are only run for 150 hours and some for 500 hours. So you need to look to see how long the test was run to be sure that the 70% is really a good number or not. The best I found was 90% after 500 hours - but those are the $$ fabrics. Petromat was 70% at 150 hours and most of the others are 70% at 500 hours. Quite a bit better.

Ive attached PDF files for all the fabrics we looked at and I'll post the web pages where I found the data as well.

Note that I have changed the extensions to .TXT so you will have to change them all back to .PDF so you can open them.

Propex: 315ST

http://www.geotextile.com/

The 315ST is a Woven Geotextile so look under that section. You can also find the Petromat products on the same site under the Petromat name - they are made buy the same company.

Here are the web pages for the other ones we looked at.

http://www.contech-cpi.com/ess/26

The 500X and 600X are made by Mirafi.

http://www.tencate.com/smartsite.dws...FRk_awodaksSug

There is one other thing we are going to try on our runway. We would really like to NOT have the nails or staples out in the middle of the runway. The trick is how do you hold the seams together against the shrinking of the fabric?

I have done quite a bit of searching and it looks like most all the Geotextile fabrics are made from Polypropylene. That is a plastic that has the same characteristic as teflon - almost nothing will stick to it or bond to it.

I have found several industrial epoxies made just for bonding the poly products but they cost upwards of $50 per ounce!! There are some other industrial glues but so far all of them either are either extremely $$ and/or they require clamping for several hours or they require industrial heat guns to work. None of that is practical when we have almost 1100 lineal feet of seams to work with.

Here is a web site that explains why the poly is so hard to bond and one $$ solution.

http://www.stealth316.com/2-dp8005.htm

Im going to try a product made by Henry's that is a permanent bonding agent for roofing layers. Its a replacement for hot tar roofing. Its relatively thin and can be rolled on, but it sets up hard and is relatively UV stable. Its called Henry's HE902 PBA. Ive attached its data sheet as well. Its about $75 per 5 gal bucket in Washington state.

In theory - it will seep into the holes in the fabric of the two layers at the seam, then set up hard and form a strong mechanical bond.

Im going to get a bucket of the stuff and do some tests on some of our left over fabric - we have the 500X on our runway now. Im going to make up some test seams with a 6", 12", 18" and 24" over laps. AFter they sit in the sun for a while, Im going to do my best to pull the seams apart.

I'll let you guys know how the tests turns out.

It sure would be nice to have smooth seams with no staples!

Larry

Larry3215

My Feedback: (2)

hmmmmm - re-naming the files with .jpg looks to have been a bad idea. I'll change them to .txt

You will have to save them to your desktop and rename the files to open them.

daveopam

My Feedback: (9)

Larry, it sounds like your on the right track. As far as the staples in the runway. We ran the top of the staples North to South just like the runway. In 10 years we never had any problems with this. They are actually sunk in a little so the planes glide right across them. I don't think your seaming idea is a bad one by any means. I just don't know what you are going to gain. A few years ago there was a club in NM that used a roofing emulsion to seam their runway. I am sure the post is still here on RCU someplace. There was some contact info in the post if you can find it. It would be interesting to see how their seam held up.
I found this. maybe you can tell if this is the same product you are refering to.

http://www.laaeromodelers.org/galler...ex_runway.html

David

Larry3215

My Feedback: (2)

Thanks for that link David. The proceedure they used is pretty much what everyone is doing that Ive found so far.

The problem we have is that our soil conditions are such that we either cant get a staple into the ground at all - rocks and hard pan - or the staple wont stay in because that area is just loose sand. Our runway is in an old gravel pit so its either tooooo soft or full of rocks. We used mostly large 12" long nails on the first go round and they tend to lift up and that causes major damage to planes.

I'll do a search here on RCU for that post you mentioned that talks about the roofing emulsion.

The product Im going to try is similar to the one mentioned in that link except the Henry's stuff I want to try sets up harder. Im hopeing it will make a strong enough seam that we wont need any staples or nails.

If that doesnt work, plan B is to go back over the tops of the staples/nails with a second layer of fabric and glue to try to keep them from popping back up.