Many years ago I had agreed to fly a friend to Lambert at
St. Louis so he could get back to the Marines at Camp
Pendelton. In those days you could land and taxi to the
main airline terminal [Gate 28 if I remember correctly].
The door was open and you just walked into the concourse,
handed your ticket to the gate agent and departed on the
airline.
On the flight from Springfield to St. Louis my friend wanted
to stop at Litchfield to see his grandmother. It had snowed
the night before about 10 inches of fresh powder. The winds
was strong directly down the grass strip and 90 degrees to
the paved surface which was covered with black ice [it
always seems to have a little freezing rain before the snow
begins in Illinois.] I told my friend that we would not
land if the grass strip was not "safe to land on" and I
tried to raise the Unicom, but they were not answering.
I did a low pass at about 25 feet just to the right of the
center of the wide grass strip. The wind had blown the
surface smooth and the tips of the grass were sticking out
of the snow. As a 100 hour private pilot I knew that meant
the snow was blown off the grass and it would be safe to
land. So I setup a soft field landing, which became a very
interesting show, it seems the airport had not be mowed in
recent memory and the grass was at least a foot long. Full
power in the Beech Musketeer Super, full back elevator and a
lot of rudder kept use moving and we cleared the runway
after making a turn that was like a plow turn in a seaplane.
A good inspection showed no damage to the airplane and it
was placed in the heated hanger while my friend went to see
his granny. Obviously, the grass runway was not useable
for take-off.
I walked the paved runway which was 90 degree crosswind at
about 10 mph. There was some evaporation of the ice and I
decided to make a take-off on the dry portion of the runway,
that worked out just fine.

Looking back, I should have connected the dots, no answer on
the radio, unknown date for the mowing, I should have
by-passed the landing and gone to Lambert.


--
James H. Macklin
ATP,CFI,A&P

wrote in message
ups.com...
|
|
| How about some facts, because now you look stupid.
Pilots have reported
| that the thrust reversers failed to deploy. That will
be easily
| verifiable with the black box. If they don't pop out
10,000 feet
| wouldn't have been enough runway in that weather.
|
|
| The calculated landing distances in all the jets I have
flown are based
| on the thrust reversers not deploying. The thrust
reversers are just
| icing ..on...the....oooh, bad analogy.
|
| The landing distance charts sometimes have notes
indicating additional
| runway requirements for other than dry runways, but are
not all
| inclusive to include worse than fair braking action.
|
| The FAR's for 135 and 121 operators have requirements for
longer runway
| availability when the runway is other than dry.
|
| I have had the pleasure(sic) of landing on a 5000 foot
runway covered
| with black ice after receiving a field condition report
that the runway
| was clear. It was an uncontrolled field and the line
personel just
| looked out the window and saw black-top, hence the report.
After
| deploying lift dump, which pretty much committed me to
landing with
| 5000 feet, and maximum braking (Hawker with no thrust
reversers
| installed), I stopped in 4970 feet. I was lucky. If I had
been given
| the correct field condition of clear ice and braking
action of nil, I
| would have diverted to another airport.
|
| G. Lee
|