PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Landing on grass rather than the hard stuff
Old 7th Jan 2009, 15:51
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WeeMan18
 
Join Date: May 2005
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The handling of the aircraft is type specific and comes with practice but here are a few top tips:

Virtually all grass strips are undulating to some degree which increases the likelihood of the aircraft bouncing. Handling the aeroplane in a way that would yield a greaser of a landing on tarmac, may still result in bounces on grass - if you still have some speed and lift on, a fairly small bump can launch you back into the air. (Taildraggers are more prone to bouncing than others). If you do bounce, hold the attitude and let it settle back on. If you pitch forward to try to 'encourage' it back onto the ground you may break the nosewheel off!

If the bounces are BIG or their amplitude is increasing go around. If you don't you are likely to end up hitting the ground hard either by flying the nosewheel onto the ground or by running out of airspeed and stalling too far above the runway.

All the time you're flaring or bouncing, you don't have weight on the wheels and your not slowing down effectively. If you're using a short strip you need to land in the right place and get the brakes on. If you don't and the end hedge is looking critical go around and get it right next time as I recently had to on a bumpy 350m strip in a bounce-happy taildragger.

As mentioned be aware of takeoff performance issues on grass. One trap is that you may well be able to land at a strip that you cannot safely take off from.

Take care taxying from grass onto concrete and vice versa. There is normally a lip that can lead to prop strikes. Take it slowly and at 45 deg or perpendicular in twins. If a grass runway has white concrete markings embedded into it you may want to land so as not to run over them at speed. You don't have to land on the centreline.

At farm strips or small airfields you should probably inspect the runway before use. It is not unknown for holes to be dug, animals to be present, agricultural machinery to be left about, long grass or waterlogging.

Two notable grass strips I've used recently are Fishburn which is perched on the top of a convex hill with significant slope either side of the brow (you can only see a fraction of the runway when you're on it, so you want to be very sure that there isn't a tractor cutting grass over the brow) and Stoke which has a billiard table surface but is fairly short, curved and with big obstructions adjacent to the runway.
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