Rules For Rural Landing Strips

[RobbieBott]

Hello I an a complete newbie to flying drones, and actually haven't flown my drone yet. In preparation I've been trying to look up all the rules and regulations for my area, I live in a rural area away from the city.
The B4UFLY app shows I have 2 "airports" with in 5 miles of my home and gives me a warning for flying.
The DJI map does not show these landing strips, and has no errors with take off.
This is an arial shot of one of the strips, as you can see is a grass strip just like the other one. They are used maybe a couple times a year for crop dusters.



However the B4UFLY app shows this:





These are private "airports". Landing strips by my definition, which have no traffic control and no radio frequency.
Do I have to find the owners of these and contact them every time I want to fly?

 

[2nckayakers]

The rules are you contact every airport, helipad, or landing strip. I don't have one anywhere near where I have flown regularly, but if this is somewhere you are going to be flying frequently, why not go find out who owns the strips and introduce yourself, and talk to them about where you are flying. You might find out the strip isn't active even though it is on a chart. If it is active the person might tell you when they typically fly and what patters they fly around their strip so you can at least be aware of how close they might fly to where you are flying.

 

[AMann]

The rules are you contact every airport, helipad, or landing strip. I don't have one anywhere near where I have flown regularly, but if this is somewhere you are going to be flying frequently, why not go find out who owns the strips and introduce yourself, and talk to them about where you are flying. You might find out the strip isn't active even though it is on a chart. If it is active the person might tell you when they typically fly and what patters they fly around their strip so you can at least be aware of how close they might fly to where you are flying.

I agree- did the same in my area and the owner said his FAA permit was no longer valid due to zoning changes in his once rural neighborhood, but the FAA still had it shown as a active airstrip. Nice guy, I may have encouraged him to buy a drone also, he loved trying to fly mine over his field.

 

[RobbieBott]

I’ve tried the contact numbers provided by the FAA and one does not answer and the other does not accept incoming calls. I went to each strip and there is no one there and the neighbors don’t know how to get in contact with the owners... so is this due diligence or is there more?

 

[AMann]

I’ve tried the contact numbers provided by the FAA and one does not answer and the other does not accept incoming calls. I went to each strip and there is no one there and the neighbors don’t know how to get in contact with the owners... so is this due diligence or is there more?

That sounds good enough to me, maybe keep a good record of your efforts, date, time, flight records, etc. I doubt they announce departures and arrivals on their CTAF/Unicom channels, but if you have an airband radio, it wouldn’t hurt if you monitor it while you are flying within their 5-mile area.

 

[Asgard]

"so is this due diligence or is there more?"
Yes, stay well away from the approaches and don't overfly

 

[FoxhallGH]

The problem with the 'hardly used' strips, is that cross-country pilots will have them marked on their maps as emergency strips in case of problems. So although you may not have scheduled traffic, and it would be EXTREMELY rare that it needed to be used as an emergency strip, you could get a light aircraft turning up and wanting to land ASAP.
Just remember where you are and as above - keep away from the approaches where an a/c would be coming into wind to land.