BalsaBob

My Feedback: (24)

We have been using indoor/outdoor carpet in 12' widths. We get about 5-8 years of use out of a segment depending on its quality and/or manufacurer. The segments are held down with 12 inch nails/spikes. Bob

FILE IFR

Hi Bob,

Where and what club is that one?

BalsaBob

My Feedback: (24)

Hi Mike, Its the 107RC Club. In the marsh between Revere and Lynn, off of Rte 107. I've flown my old Kangaroo there, and still fly the R54 there .... as long as the wind is right. Much of the rug is in need of repair .... we have ordered some replecement segments. Bob

daveopam

My Feedback: (9)

BUMP, Any updates on seaming with roofing emulsion?

David

Larry3215

My Feedback: (2)

Not yet. The Henry's 902 I want to use isnt a stock item here in the North West so I had to special order a 5 gal can. I am beginning to suspect the guy I ordered it through has dropped the ball.

As soon as I get it in I will do some test seams and post results here for sure.

daveopam

My Feedback: (9)

Thanks Larry.

larrysogla

This is a very interesting thread. As I never knew before reading this thread that fabric was being used as a runway covering. Here in Los Angeles/Southern California we have the Santa Ana winds(hot gusting desert winds roaring down the mountains and hills) that have been clocked at gusting speeds up to 85 MPH. The Santa Ana winds come up several times a year and if the runway is not paved or green grass......it will be blown away or whipped into a dust storm if packed dirt runway. The Santa Ana winds have toppled 18 wheeler trucks on the Interstate 15 in the Rancho Cucamonga area where the Cajon Pass canyon form a 10 mile high speed wind funnel. I learn something new everyday. Glad to have the internet as it is a great source of new information. Thanks guys for this very interesting thread.
God Bless y'all, always
larry

Larry3215

My Feedback: (2)

As long as the edges and any seams are attached to the ground well enough it wont be blowing away.

Our field has been down for about 7 years and we have had 50+ mph winds with no damage. We buried the outer perimeter of our fabric all the way around the runway in addition to using large nails every foot or so, so wind cant get under an edge. We also stapled the seams fairly often - every few inches IIRC - down into the ground.

Thats the way many clubs have done it. It works well

Larry3215

My Feedback: (2)

Just to up-date you guys - my tests with the Henry's products failed. The stuff doesnt set up hard enough to hold the seams on hot days.

We are now looking at a possible option of sewing the seams. Im trying to find what thread is recomended at the moment.

Luchnia

My Feedback: (21)

I am not sure if it was you or not that stated that the nails/spikes tend to lift up and damage the planes? Why not put an adhesive type sealer on the nail head to the cloth? I would think this would keep the nails from lifting up and also you could make this reasonably smooth. You could even glue a thin polymer (depending on the material used) patch right over the nail head after sealing the nail to the fabric. Just a thought that came to mind that might be helpful.

da Rock

Why is it you want to seam the stuff?

We started out with one sheet for the little electrics. The edges were simply stapled all around. They stay down if there are enough staples.

When that one sheet proved to everyone how useful it is for electrics, we paralleled the existing sheet with a matching one. Since just stapling down worked so well to hold down the 1st sheet, we didn't even consider doing anything different or special for the addition. We laid the new addition slightly over the existing one's side, pulled the pins from the existing side, laid the new edge over the old edge and used new pins through them both. If you think about it, the new fabric is being held down exactly like the old was, and the old stayed down through a couple of hurricanes.

We used new pins because it was faster. Cleaning up the old ones works too.

Larry3215

My Feedback: (2)

We have a poor soil mix that makes the staples iffy. We used staples in the initial build of our runway too. Our runway is about 48 feet wide so we have three seams about 350 feet long. Works out to around 3000 staples [X(]

The problem - and why we are looking for other options - is our soil mix.

At one end of the runway the soil is largely made up of rocks. Many of them fist sized or larger. Its very very dificult to get a staple to go in the ground at all. That soil type gradually changes over the length of the runway to almost pure sand. On the sandy end the staples will not stay in the ground and work up over time.

So for us, the staples are not a perfect solution.

We have a club member with a heavy duty sewing machine he is willing to let us use to try sewing the seams.

After some Googling I found that the recomended thread is a hi strength polyester, nylon or kevlar. Ive also found the recomended stitch pattern and other details.

If the sewing machine is up to it, I think it will work very well.

We have some scraps of material left and we are going to try some test seams and see how it goes.

Its going to be a LOT of sewing though. I think we will end up running the seams across the runway instead of length wise. That still means around 1000 lineal feet of seam to sew. That means we will need about 4000 feet of thread! Im no sewing expert but Im guessing we could sew somewhere between 5 and 10 feet per minute. That works out to somewhere between 3 and 7 hours of sewing time.

Counting set up and BS time, thats 1 to 3 days work

Larry3215

My Feedback: (2)

Yup - that is one of our options if we decide not to do the sewing. We are hoping the 'patch' over the top of the staple will keep it down.

errece

Hi,

Does antbody know a company that sells these geotextiles in Canada? or please post some other companies in USA (emails and/or phone numbers)

Thank you

Larry3215

My Feedback: (2)

These are a couple of the major manufacturors of fabrics in the US. Im sure they probably have dealers in Canada. They have been good about getting back to me when I e-mailed them.

http://www.tencate.com/smartsite.dws?id=2752

Mirafi is the brand name of one of the fabrics we are considering - 315ST. Tencate is the maker.

USFabrics is I think a distributor. They handle a number of different fabrics as well.

http://www.usfabricsinc.com/products...otextile.shtml

Propex is another big manufacturor. They make the Petromat as well as several woven fabrics including the 500X and600X woven fabrics.

http://www.sind.com/product.aspx?ID=2201