On Sat, 15 Sep 2007 11:39:27 -0600, Newps wrote:



wrote:



That's the direction of my thinking so this incident it may not be a
simple density altitude problem. I hope I never have a problem like
this guy. The worst experience I had was a 500m grass runway in a
Warrior with 3 people (not too heavy) and half fuel. I was used to
grass but this was about 8" and the fence looked quite close on
take-off :-( After that I was over water. Made me think more about
soft-field take-off which I now practice frequently even with a 6000ft
runway!

A soft field may not be the best takeoff strategy there. Was it soft or
was it short or both? Also it's very common that when launching over
water you better have a healthy margin above the stall as downdrafts are
common.

Short and long grass (500m = 1640ft).
I realised on the take-off run I was not gaining speed as fast as I
expected, due to the long grass. At that time I hadn't initially
appreciated the drag with very long grass and should have pulled the
nose up much more agressively sooner. Training on hard runways is
quite different to real life situations! It was over ten years ago but
a lesson remembered :-)