Is it legal to land a small plane on a dirt road?

Answer 1

It all depends on the road and who owns it. Is it a small dirt road on private property? Do you have permission from (or are) the owner? Is it safe? Well, actually, that last part really doesn't matter too much from a legal point of view. There are rules about how close you can fly and low you can fly to obstacles such as buildings, cars, pedestrians and so on in FAR 91.119. If you observe those regs and land on the private dirt road away from civilization, you should be fine, even if a sheriff happened to see you coming down.

If the road is a public road, there actually is still no FAA regulation that says you can't land on it, save the restrictions above. That said, your aircraft does not conform to any of the road regulations, so an officer could ticket and impound your airplane for breaking these regulations if he wanted to.

In practice, I have landed in some remote areas of Montana, Wisconsin and Idaho on small dirt roads, and in some instances even on paved state highways in my J-3 Cub. They are areas I know very well, and I certainly take all precautions to check for pedestrian and auto traffic. I'm still taking the chance that the wrong person will happen to see me and report me to the wrong authorities. I've been doing this for 40+ years, and have only had a couple visits from sheriffs. They were both simply curious, and were cordial. And yes, I offered to take them up. Both declined. However, there's no guarantee. I certainly got a slight feeling of dread both times I saw them pull up. They had the power to make my life miserable.

Obviously, in an emergency, all bets are off. Land where you need to as safely as you can, but for any pilot, that's a given. So, that should give you a pretty good idea of what you're legally allowed to do. I'm always one for bending and breaking rules though, so take my personal experiences/choices with that grain of salt.