Transform Your Flight Sim Experience
with In-Depth Tracking & Analysis
Track every flight, analyse your performance,
and master your flying skills with My FS Flights
Get 10 flights free every month!
Tracked and analysed flights over miles
Alta Sierra Airport is a small, community-operated private airstrip serving the Alta Sierra residential development south of Grass Valley in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California. With a single hard runway and no instrument approach, it is a strictly day-use field where visiting pilots must secure prior permission and a briefing from a resident before arriving.
Alta Sierra Airport (09CL) is a private single-runway airfield tied to the Alta Sierra residential community near Grass Valley, California. It is looked after by the local homeowners' association rather than a commercial operator, giving it the character of a close-knit fly-in neighbourhood strip rather than a public aerodrome. For simulator pilots it offers a compact, terrain-influenced approach into a genuinely private field, with no ILS and a runway just over half a mile long.
The airfield lies at Grass Valley, Nevada County, California, at an elevation of 2241 feet, roughly six miles south of the town of Grass Valley itself on a small plot of land of about 54 acres. No specific controlled airspace detail is given, and the field should be treated as an uncontrolled, non-towered strip surrounded by the wooded, hilly terrain typical of the Sierra foothills.
Alta Sierra has a single physical runway, 01/19, of hard surface construction and 2836 feet in length. There is no ILS or other instrument approach aid associated with the field.
The airfield uses the common traffic advisory frequency 122.9 MHz. There is no air traffic control service; pilots operate on a self-announce basis on this frequency.
Traffic is flown left-hand at a pattern altitude of 3100 feet MSL, which equates to 800 feet AGL. The pattern should be flown so that the whole runway can be seen from the aircraft, and so that anyone on the runway can see the aircraft in the air. Arriving traffic should fly an upwind leg to the northeast, or make a circling left-hand turn overhead the field before joining downwind. Operations are approved for day use only, defined as the period between sunrise and sunset.
The field sits about six miles south of the town of Grass Valley, which serves as the principal reference point for locating the airport from the air; no additional published visual reporting points are noted.
Alta Sierra Airport is managed by the Alta Sierra Airport Owners Association as a private facility for the surrounding residential community. Any visiting pilot must obtain specific permission and a thorough briefing on local operating rules from an owner or member of the community before landing, and operations are restricted to daylight hours only.
