Information with questions related to the runway of this airport for more than one year. But somehow I still haven't even bothered to see if everything is as they write in articles and notes about this place. Correcting my gap.
In the African country Gambia, the United States at the end of the 20th century. built an airport that is capable of receiving aircraft of any tonnage - Banjul Yundum. NASA sympathized with the project, tk. this airport was planned to be used as an alternate landing point for space shuttles (until the closure of this program). Here is a summary of this runway:
Map link goo.gl/maps/9Zxed6qEaqSES98x5
The conversation is about these two sections of the runway, which either turned out to be superfluous (the builders overdid it), or they did not use it from something more ancient, because there is no need for such a runway length. If the first, then any such construction is strictly according to the project. Or the project was changed during the construction itself.
Promotional video:
It was and is. The unused northwestern part is still visible, as well as the southeastern part.
If it were just cleared soil, it would overgrow over the years. But this has not happened in decades. It means that there is a stone base.
Photos from the place. Yes, there is some oddity.
Many at the Yundum airfield runway see the following picture:
Nazca Plateau in South America.
But if you google it for "runway", you can see many examples that will be very similar to the Yundum runway:
Those. it is safe to say that the runways of modern aerodromes are designed and built with a margin for unforeseen, force majeure cases of improper takeoff or landing. Failure of brakes and reverse of aircraft engines is possible - it will roll longer on the strip until the reverse of serviceable engines stops it.
Equipment may fail and some aircraft will have to land blindly without instruments. Either one of the newbies makes a mistake and you need to have enough runway for the plane to take off.
Normal, regular landing and takeoff can be interfered with by weather conditions.
Therefore, many runways are lengthened, but these parts are not used. It happens that the joints between concrete segments or slabs are overgrown with grass (there is no asphalt there) and it looks like something ancient on which a modern runway was built.
I don't know who was the first to see something strange and mysterious at the Yundum airfield. But why did he not see similar oddities at other airports - that's a mystery!
Author: sibved