Short and Soft Field with Travis
Aircraft:Cessna 172L – N19688
Length of Flight: 1.5 Hrs – Dual
Total Flight Hours to Date: 54.4 Hrs
Altitude: 2000 Feet
Route: Whiteman Pattern
Cost: $180.75
Click to download the Google Earth Tour file (Google Earth Help)
I spent all day working on short and soft field takeoffs and landings with Travis. Let’s say you have a runway that is shorter than you actually need and there’s a 50ft tree at the end of the runway. Like taking off in the country or after you had to make an emergency landing somewhere and now need to get out of there. But there’s this 50ft tree sitting at the end of the runway or road or whatever you landed on…how do you do it?
Well you do the short field takeoff. You put the flaps down 10 degrees then you park yourself as far back as you can on the “runway” and hold the brakes. Then you hit the throttle and when the engine is at full RPM and all your engine gauges are good you release the brakes. When you get to rotation speed (which is the specified takeoff speed for that aircrarft) you pull back to the maximum climb angle, careful not to pull back to far and stall the airplane. Then when you’ve cleared the 50ft object (tree) you can go for a normal climb rate. It’s kind of a rush because you climb really fast then you level it off for a second to get the airspeed up and raise the flaps.
A short field landing is where you pick a spot on the runway and have to touch down within 200ft at or beyond that spot. You do this one with the 50ft tree situation again and a short runway. As if you had to clear a 50ft tree then land on a short runway. Also fun.
Soft field takeoffs and landings are similar but during takeoff you are pulling back on the yoke the whole time to get the nose wheel off the ground as soon as possible so it doesn’t dig into the soft surface (hence the name). In case you’re taking off or landing in a pasture or something like that where the ground might be soft. So while you’re pulling back you have the flaps down 10 degrees to help with lift and as soon as the main wheels leave the ground you push forward to build up airspeed staying very close to the ground. You do this because you’re taking off as a slower than normal airspeed. The plane just barely wants to fly but you want to get off the soft field as soon as you can so you don’t dig it in. Then when you’ve built up enough airspeed to fly normally you start your climb out. This one is really cool because you just skimming along the runway right after you takeoff. Harder than it sounds because you’ve got to keep the plane only 20-30ft off the ground which isn’t much when you’re trying to control this airplane which barely wants to fly.
And soft field landings are similar in that you want to keep the nose off the ground for as long as you can and just before you touch down you add a little power to make the plane float a little bit for that oh so soft landing.
The taking off part of these two was no problem, it’s the landings that I need to work on. On both of these you’re really fine tuning your landing ability to precisely land where you want or have the main wheels just lightly touch when you land. I need more practice.