Korija – Achtung, Skyhawk!

By me
All photos me too, copyrighted

Speed is a tricky thing; not because it can kill you, but because it’ll complicate your life far more than it need be. Take my case for instance: for a bit of change, I recently swapped the 120 km/h SF-25 Falke motor glider for the 140 km/h Fly Synthesis Texan ultralight. Just 20 kph in it, that’s all; barely even noticeable on the sort of the distances common to continental Croatia… but I immediately started planning long(er) range flights like there was no tomorrow 🤨 (OK, much improved payload + better take off & climb performance + the ability to make a 180 turn in under 10 meters + more space inside had a lot to do with it as well… but mostly speeeeeeed).

Enticed by the prospect of finally visiting places that were beyond my physical (dis)comfort range on the Falke, it didn’t take long for my sights to land on two of Croatia’s 159 former cropdusting airfields that are still in use today: Korija near the town of Virovitica, and Čađavica near not-too-far-away Slatina (not the one in Romania). The problem, however, was that the Texan has a blue-tinted canopy and no convenient hatch to stick a camera out of (not to mention the wing is quite far forward, so the view down sucks), which meant Falke-style aerial reconnaissance was out of the picture (heh). Didn’t have my drone on me either, so a mix of ground shots and videos of the approach & landing was a self-selecting solution. Wasn’t expecting much in the way of quality as a consequence… but the end results actually came out quite solid – and, critically, good enough to use for another Cropdusting Airfields piece!

(spoiler alert: due to thermal turbulence on both flights, and the need to conserve fuel due to the Texan’s higher 100 HP burn, I ended up cruising at 125 km/h on average… so yeah, speeeeeeed)

*Cropdusting strips are a vibe in themselves…*

*Korija (red) and Čađavica (green) with most of continental Croatia for scale. About 150-170 km in the realities of Croatian airspace from the Texan’s base at Mlinski kamen near Petrinja*

Korija • RWY 01/19 • 600 x 20 m • very smooth & comfy

As it stands today, Korija sports a fairly unremarkable grass runway, whose only “claim to fame” is a noticeable 1% upslope in the RWY 01 direction. However, back in its heyday, it was essentially a 1200 x 150 m open field (whose outlines remain visible to this day), on which you could land wherever took your fancy.

Pocket history: served as a major base for cropdusting operations on behalf of PIK Virovitica (mostly with An-2s); opened sometime in the early 70s and operated until the run-up to the 1991 Homeland War; for many years afterward left mostly unattended (except for occasional mowing); and finally refreshed and reopened by the AK Virovitica flying club in the summer of 2024. It is currently registered as a “semi-private” runway (i.e. used solely by the club and aircraft based there, though PPR is possible), so it doesn’t have an ICAO Location Indicator… yet.

Is flat. Located at the heart of the region of Podravina – named after, and defined by, the river Drava – Korija is effectively the start point of the densest part of the whole PA cropdusting airstrip network. Of the 159 runways in total, 51 can be found in the 120 km between here and the confluence of the Drava and Danube (today’s border between Croatia and Serbia) – including also Čađavica, about 40 km E-SE of Korija as the crow flies

While the field itself doesn’t really have any vices (except for an abundance thermal turbulence, but it is hardly unique in that respect), if you wanted to be a good neighbor you’d definitely need to mind the **village** of Korija, located just 350 m off the RWY 19 end (and whose houses and church spire are faintly visible in the photo). Having shot a few touch and goes here as well, I certainly did put the Texan’s outstanding low speed maneuverability to good use on the upwind and crosswind legs!

On the other end, you have a fairly clear run, the first obstacles being the village of Golo Brdo and the foothills of the Bilogora mountain range some 1.3 km away. The only issue I can think of here are lorries on the dirt road running parallel with the runway, kicking up dust as they make their way to and from an under-construction express road about 800 meters out

Čađavica • RWY 02/20 • 470 x 15 m • half length OK, half length marginal

If, however, you found Korija too normal and conventional for your taste, don’t worry – I still got you covered 💪. On the face of it, Čađavica’s backstory pretty much mirrors that of Korija: built sometime in the late 70s… used by IPK Slatina and IPK Osijek (albeit primarily by PZL Dromaders)… abandoned in 1991… and left to rot for 30-odd years until the local government awarded an operator’s concession to a local father-son duo, who eventually brought it back to life in 2021. Same legal status, no ICAO Location Indicator.

What does stand out however – even by the standards of these strips – is its current configuration. Back in the olden PA days, Čađavica had a very comfy 620 x 15 m paved runway, with a large 150 x 25 m paved apron adjacent to the RWY 20 end; this would have been considered borderline luxurious at the time, and second only to Mirkovac near Osijek, whose 700 x 17 m runway with an apron at each end made it the queen of the network.

It’s 21st century incarnation though would see the runway shortened to 470 m – or the distance available from the RWY 02 threshold to the beginning of the apron. However, a pre-landing inspection pass also revealed that:

the first 200 m of RWY 02 were not in the best of shapes, with an uneven surface and lots of cracks – and while usable if need be, I personally wouldn’t venture there at speed without chunkier tires and a greater prop clearance than is available on the Texan
the final 200 m before the apron in the RWY 02 direction were surprisingly smooth, despite their visual appearance; pulled off a textbook greaser there
there’s a… hmm… “sub-optimal” earthen berm 20-ish m from the RWY 02 threshold; after climbing it on foot, I’d call it at about 5 m high… doesn’t sound like much, but clearing it on landing with a sufficient margin does mean that most of the threshold is unusable (even if it were in a good state to begin with)