ORIGINAL: dolsen
Our mowed landing area at the club is only about 35ft wide(it's just a small patch of land along a farmers corn field). I am trying to keep the size within reason but also trying to keep the cost down. The area beyond the landing strip is reasonable smooth just tall grass so if I rolled off the strip it really would be no big deal.
My club's field is in the middle of a corn field. Watch out for the "corn thermal". Once the corn gets up about 6'+ tall, any breeze is going to create a rolling/looping effect in the air. You will most likely encounter this about 30' from the edge of the corn and about 10' above the corn.
The wind is flowing flat over the top of the corn. It hits the edge of the corn by the runway and the wind drops down to the ground and (depending which way the wind is blowing) will roll up over the top of the corn in a looping type motion. If you hit it, you will literally have no control of the plane if you are doing a normal landing approach. I have found that either a hot approach OR (not really recommended) diving at the field and pulling out below the top of the corn will usually get you through this effect with minimal problems. I lost 2 planes to this - one into the end of our storage building and the other into the end of our circa 1940 steam roller (we use it for rolling our field a couple of times a year).