Simviation Forums

How long and wide should a runway be for say, a Cessna or other single engine aircraft?
Grass Strip maybe?

Good rule of thumb for most light singles is 2000 feet long. Without obstacles at either end, less might be OK.  That's my usual requirement in RL or the sim with anything other than a real STOL bird like a Maule or Super Cub, or a slow vintage type.
 But the bare minimum possible? Well, looking at a manual for a 1969 Cessna 172K, at max gross, at sea level, with no wind,no flaps, you'll roll about 865 feet and be at 50 feet AGL 1525 on takeoff, and need 1250 feet on landing to clear a 50-foot obstacle, with a 520-foot ground roll. So technically, you could make do with a lot less. I base my choice on having a nice margin for safety more than anything else.
As far as the width goes: how good are your crosswind landings?;D
 In real life, the shortest, narrowest runway I've ever used with a C172 was probably Aeroflex-Andover (12N), which is 50 feet wide and 1981 feet long, with a pond at either end. Never had any trouble there..I can easily land and get stopped halfway down that runway, and never used the whole thing for takeoff. With nothing but flat water at either end, I can even start the flare over the water and plop it down right on the end of the runway...
50 feet wide and about 2000 feet long is about the average "small" runway in real life, but there are some smaller, especially grass and dirt strips.
 Things are different in the sim, of course- not quite like RL. Best way to answer your question is find a short narrow runway and try it out.

We were talking about this stuff at the hangar the other day. It started with soft-field landing stories and all the "what ifs" when it comes to emergency, off-field landings. Everything from farm fields, to football fields, to someone's back yard.

The club elder (24,000 hours), as you can imagine, has done and seen just about everything.... including, landing a Piper Tomahawk on the WIDTH (150') of our home airport's runway.. in a 30-40 knot crosswind (headwind when landing on the width  ;)  ). Considering that a T-Hawks ground-speed at flare/stall would be barely 10 knots flying into that wind.. we HAD to believe him.