A Waco UPF-7 still needs a few hundred feet of runway to take off and land. It's even worse at my home field's 6840 foot MSL elevation. A plane that might need only 600 feet to takeoff or land at sea level could easily need 2000+ feet to operate at our altitude. Our runway isn't all that wide, either (60 feet). We do have a very small dirt runway that's nearly perpendicular to the main one, but you could still end up with a strong crosswind component.

The problem was those old planes were designed to operate on grass fields where you could land in any direction you want, so a crosswind landing really wasn't necessary. Grass also gave a little if the tires slipped on touchdown. That doesn't happen on concrete or asphault. Even a small crosswind component can make for a trickly taildragger landing on pavement.

A Waco UPF-7 is a beautiful plane. There's something fundamentally right about an open cockpit biplane powered by a radial engine, complete with the control stick in your right hand and the throttle in your left. I think that's how God intended for man to fly. However, there would be a lot of days when you couldn't fly it here. Between the crosswinds and the cold, it wouldn't fly very often in the winter. Like those cute little Mazda Miatas, some vehicles are better suited to softer climates than what we have here in Colorado.