A soft field landing is a landing technique that allows an aircraft's wings to support its weight for as long as possible, reducing the risk of the wheels sinking into soft surfaces. This can help prevent the aircraft from getting stuck in mud or other soft materials.
To make a great soft field landing, you need to start with a stabilized approach. Being stabilized ensures that you touch down where you want, and that you transfer your aircraft's weight from the wings to the wheels as gently as possible.
• Try to communicate with someone on the ground prior to departure to assess rwy conditions. • Ensure runway is long enough to accommodate the landing and be ready to go around if the field is too soft. • Consider a flyby to confirm field’s condition. Ensure no rocks or obstructions exist. Ensure your rollout will be in alignment to the terrain’s grain if such is present (“don’t flip the bird”). If unsure, consider diverting to another field.
• Fly your traffic pattern the same as per normal landings.• Establish the recommended approach, landing configuration and airspeed.
• Ensure you’re in a stable approach or go around. • Touch down in a nose-high attitude bleeding as much speed as possible under a minimum safe airspeed. • Keep some power in the flare to avoid touching down too firmly - kiss that ground as gently as you possibly can (as you enter ground effect, it's OK to use a small amount of power to level off and make sure you touch down as slow as possible, tthough power isn't necessary). • Keep the weight off the wheels for as long as possible.
• Use full flaps and leave them full on rollout to keep weight on the wings but recognize when flaps are to be retracted so lift doesn’t force you into too long of a roll - rwys haven’t infinite lengths. • Touch down with both wing wheels at the same time as to distribute the weight evenly over both, thus avoiding a wheel to sink in and get into a potential ground loop and potential a/c flip. • Since your main gear are much stronger than the nose wheel, you want to keep the nose off the soft/rough surface until your plane has slowed down to a safer speed. By maintaining back pressure on the yoke, you can hold the nose off until you've reached that safer speed. Your nose wheel will thank you.
The technique calls for maximum flaps utilization for high drag and as slow of a flight as possible. Approach under power as called by the POH’s section under soft field landings. In absence of the POH, pilot should pursue a speed not more than 1.3 Vso. The use of full flaps will enable steeper approaches to the aiming point, which is particularly useful when clearing obstacles. Speed must respect the needs for a stabilized approach. After touchdown, the pilot applies as much wheel braking as possible and up-elevator to counter the pitch-over moment caused by braking and to reduce the chance of a prop strike. Flaps are sometimes retracted to allow better braking performance by reducing lift on the wings. Spoilers may also be deployed if the aircraft is equipped with them.
Common Problems With Soft Field Landings
Soft field landings can take some practice before you get comfortable with them. Here are some of the more common problems you'll want to consider before you head out to the airplane to start practicing them: • Too fast of a descent rate, causing a hard touchdown• Too much airspeed, causing excessive float • Unstabilized approach, making it hard to touch down smoothly • Allowing the nose wheel to touch down early, causing excessive stress on the nose wheelAnd as usual… none of these recommendations are substitutes for adequate instruction with your CFI/CFII
