Ahhhhh,
My dream. I never want to retire, just have a small place, sell fuel, tie downs, some hangar space, whatever. Neighbors, they can make or brake you, all two faced for the most part. Jealous, who knows, I had a scenic flight service for a short time, had fed, state, town, and property owner approval. worked great for a while, let the neighbor's kid get his grubs all over my cyclic, daddy drank beer as i talked with him. I operated sat and sun afternoons, four hours each day, low traffic, a real hit in the making and did ok for a short while, then this neighbot and an adjoining one sued me, the town, and the property owner and that was the end of that. it was a great spot for a small helicopter serice, already polluted with tourists and I was never able to recover from losing that spot and i couldn't afford the insurance any more, had to sell the ship, and then got into gyros. I'm looking for a spot, I want at least 2,000' so other planes can land also. There is three strips all in the same geographical area that I'm interested in but I don't think they are for sale. I do know that if you start a private operation and no one complains (unless there are local ordinances already in place like in Stow, Ma.) and you fly for a while, have some visitors, be nice to people who ask, then you may have some positive success. Land owner's rights is a big thing in New Hampshire where I live. Usually, if you don' thave a reason to be there it's get off my property, Mass too. Sometimes doing what appears to be the right thing just doesn't work, so if there are no local ordinances saying you can't have an airstrip, then they cannot just make one up to stop you, maybe a court injunction but other than that just do it. If no one complains you're in, No ipso-facto laws are allowed, unconstitutional I believe, in Mass anyway. I have a RAF ready to test flight soon, I will use asphalt where I originally flew. If you do get a place i suggest you make the tunway/taxi area as smooth as possible, like a golf green. The RAF rotor system is sensitive enough that the factory flight manual states that the rotor must be spinning at least 140 rpm to taxi on anything but asphalt. So good luck, don't be in too much of a hurry be nice to the feds and the state, neighbors often move away and when they move to a place that has a real airport next door, they complain anyway. Screw em.