Lesson 27: Grass field take-off and landings

Kentmorr Grass Airstrip: about five nautical miles south of bay bridge airport. This would be my first time seeing a grass runway and landing on one. When my instructor pointed out the wind sock I couldn’t believe that I was looking at a runway as it looked just like a farm field or a grass lawn. This runway has houses along the edge with hangars as garages. It would be really awesome to live on a runway, get up in the morning and roll your plane out of the hangar attached to your house onto the runway and take-off for work. Once I had the runway in sight, I had to get down to traffic pattern altitude (TPA). As I came in to land, I had to overfly the runway to get a good look at the condition of the turf to locate potentially moist areas as well as large divots or ruts. The second time around I flared the nose and the main gear touched down and I remembered to hold the nose wheel off the ground until the plane slowed enough to drop the nose down naturally. WOW it was a bumpy ride. I had to keep full back pressure on the stick the entire time just in case we hit a bump. This will hold most of the weight of the plane off of the nose wheel since it would be the most vulnerable to breaking if the plane ran into a ditch or rut. We taxied around for take-off. Ten degrees of flaps, full back pressure on the stick, and immediate take-off once lined up with the runway. The minute the plane hopped off the ground I had to dip the nose back down and establish a level flight about five feet above the ground until the plane reached a 60kt climb. I did this a few times until I had it down. The most difficult part about landing on a grass runway is knowing if the grass turf is safe for landing as well as keeping the plane moving during taxi as it is hard or sometimes impossible to get the plane moving again in the soft turf. The wonderful thing is, the airports that I can now land at are endless!