You want me to do what now?

I’ve done many a simulated soft field takeoff. Usually if I’m doing circuits Bob’ll throw something in there to break up the monotony a bit.  The “hold it in ground effect” bit always freaks me out a minor bit. It doesn’t feel quite right but I love that moment where the plane decides that basically it’s gonna fly no matter what and it just seems to zoom right up underneath you!

To be truthful though I’ve always regarded the soft field practice as a bit of an academic exercise. When you sign the rental agreement for a plane from the flight school, it specifically forbids you from taking it onto gravel or grass surfaces, for insurance reasons I believe. So I didn’t really think it was of that much real life relevance to me at this moment.

Apparently Bob isn’t covered by the same restrictions I am! Seriously I honestly didn’t think that we were going to land. We did a high and low level inspection of the surface. I managed to spot that the surface was OK but failed miserably to spot the errant wind sock. Eventually we figured out which runway we needed and I set us up for an approach. Even at this point I really wasn’t sure that we were going to land. I figured we’d do a late overshoot. I listened to Bob’s guidance and finally got the hint that he wanted me to bring her down. Just to confirm I asked “I’m sorry you want me to do what now?”

The landing was ok, the approach a bit wonky, not helped by the fact that grass strips don’t exactly stand out from the surrounding fields. I completely lost sight of the airport on the base leg. I ended up high and had to slip it down on final.

Grass surfaces certainly fee different, on landing I barely needed to touch the brakes to bring us to a stop, even given the short runway length. Conversely on takeoff, it seemed to take forever to accelerate up to even shortfield rotate speed. I remember doing my usual airspeed check on the takeoff run and looking at the engine RPM at least twice to convince myself that we were generating enough power. It sure as hell didn’t feel like it and keeping back pressure on the control column takes a lot of muscle power. My puny arms are suffering now!

Fun even if it was completely unexpected!