{"id":5178,"date":"2019-04-18T16:20:58","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T23:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=5178"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:51","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:51","slug":"229-the-dirt-runway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/229-the-dirt-runway\/","title":{"rendered":"#229 The Dirt Runway"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There are some of you who have never put an airplane onto a dirt or grass strip.\u00a0 You would be amazed at how many rated pilots have NEVER landed on dirt or grass.\u00a0 Trust me, I get this all the time.\u00a0 A Tailwheel Endorsement or Master Class applicant will declare to me, \u201cthat was the first time I\u2019ve ever landed on dirt!\u201d.\u00a0 It\u2019s really to those that I\u2019m aiming this little article:\u00a0 The most forgiving terrain you can ever put an airplane on is dirt or grass.\u00a0 For one thing, the surface itself is incredibly forgiving.\u00a0 The tires of your airplane will not be \u201cgrabbed\u201d by a paved surface, so the heading of your aircraft will be a lot easier to maintain.<\/h3>\n

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The Tailwheel Town Cessna 140 landing on a dirt runway. (photo by Bert Garrison).<\/strong><\/p>\n

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For all of you who are concerned with \u201crules\u201d, you should know that at a normal airport, there are very few \u201clegal\u201d dirt runways.\u00a0 One that I use all the time, is not a recognized runway.\u00a0 It is simply the area to one side of a paved runway.\u00a0 So we announce its matching paved runway on the CTAF when we call our position in the pattern.\u00a0 I guess that while we\u2019re on the subject of legalities, we should point out that simultaneous operations on an unrecognized runway are not allowed.\u00a0 I know of one legal grass runway which sits alongside a paved runway.\u00a0 Although those of us who use them both refer to them as \u201cRight\u201d and \u201cLeft\u201d, simultaneous operations are still not permitted, although we often disregard that rule if we trust the other guy!<\/h3>\n

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You don\u2019t know what\u2019s hiding in the grass to one side of that grass runway, so don\u2019t be allowing the airplane to head into it!\u00a0 There could be big ol\u2019 rocks!\u00a0 Keep that plane right smack in the center to avoid those embarrassing collisions!\u00a0Probably the most common mishap is to hit a runway light when you should be rolling out between them if you\u2019re planning to leave the dirt and taxi back on the pavement.<\/h3>\n

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This brings up what may very well be the most important challenge to the pilot just starting to use a dirt or grass runway.\u00a0 You see, most pilots don\u2019t know how to put the airplane exactly where they want it.\u00a0But that is what they will need to do in order to keep the airplane from wandering into the deeper grass which might be hiding rocks or to avoid a big ol\u2019 hole right smack dab in the middle of the runway.\u00a0 You see, landing on the runway isn\u2019t always good enough!<\/h3>\n

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And I\u2019ll close with one of the most useful characteristics of a grass or dirt runway:\u00a0 It\u2019s the fact that it\u2019s normally very safe to do a landing to a full touchdown while in a forward slip to one.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever had a student who would do that.\u00a0Mine do.\u00a0 I try to teach that completeness to every Master Class graduate and to my two current students.\u00a0 The grass runway is forgiving enough that it will not grab your tailwheel, giving you the completeness that we\u2019d all like to get out of a forward slip.<\/h3>\n

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Happy Swooping<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

Brian<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“You would be amazed at how many rated pilots have NEVER landed on dirt or grass.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[35,38,67,100],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}