Comments on: Watch Where You Land

By: admin

admin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:41:04 +0000

Sally Guthrie (af...@yfn.ysu.edu) wrote:

: About that time, a Cessna 152 was landing on the grass at the far
: side of the runway. "Strange," I thought. Suddenly, he bounced up
: about 50 feet, came down again on the nose gear, and flipped over
: onto his top.

[stuff deleted]

: The moral to the story: If you are going to practice on the grass
: where people don't usually land, it would probably be a good idea
: to check it out first.

That goes for take-offs as well as landings. One of the flight instructors
at Guelph Air Park decided to demonstrate a soft-field takeoff to a student.
The demonstration was conducted on the grass beside the runway. This grass
is often used by the classic aircraft that operate out of the airpark, but
this time, the ground was wet and *soft*. As the C172 accelerated, the
wheels began to dig into the soft soil, and eventually the prop struck the
ground. No one was hurt, and after an expensive inspection and prop repair,
not to mention down-time, the aircraft is back in operation.

The moral to the story: same as above.
--
Niels Ejvind Andersen eande...@mach2.wlu.ca / 70511.2...@compuserve.com
Information Systems Phone: (519) 884-1970 x2760
Wilfrid Laurier University Fax: (519) 886-9351
Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5 Canada ... VFR NC4

By: admin

admin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:41:00 +0000

On reading Sally's post about watching a plane "bend" when landing in
the grass for practice......let me relate another "tale of woe".

A flying club in the area with 3 full ifr singles in which they take
great pride had just overhauled the engine on their C-182 and were proud
of the "Black Max" three bladed prop that was also added to the A/C.

Several days after the plane was back in service a member had landed at
night at a cross country destination and, on seeing he'd missed a
turnoff from the runway to the taxi way and not wanting to go the long
distance to the next turnoff, and with the parallel taxiway lights
visible temptingly close, decided to taxi off thru the grass, at night,
at a strange field, to get to the taxi way.

The ditch was 8 feet deep.

3 weeks, $18,000 later....the plane's flying .....again.

Nuff said.

Jeff Dunkle

By: admin

admin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:40:59 +0000

In response to the question about whether the grass where the
Cessna 152 incident occurred --- no, that is not a designated
grass runway.

Sally

-------
Sally A. Guthrie PP-ASEL
Ph.D.-to-be (a bezillion hours to go)
U.T. Communications
guthr...@utkvx.utk.edu
----------

By: admin

admin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:40:58 +0000

Was that designated as a grass runway, or just some random grass that
looked promissing? At W66 we've got a grass runway to the right of
Runway 6. People don't normally use it, but it is usable (sometimes
people park their planes on it, not realizing it's a runway). However,
I can't believe someone would land on some random piece of grass that
wasn't supposed to be a runway. There's a lot of random stuff next
to runways (windsocks, glide path indicators, lights, fences) that
generally you would like to avoid in addition to a surface that's
not really usualble for tricycle landing gear.

-Ron