Blog – Short Field Work 26/02/2022

Its been a month since my last post due to unseasonal weather so I was chomping at the bit to get airborne and do some short field work.

The day was a mild northerly of around 8kts as we took off from RWY16@NZPP climbed to 1500ft and set course for Otaki strip to practice short field take-offs and landings.

On arrival at Otaki I commenced a standard overhead join and landed at the strip for the first time.

The owner of the strip is an awesome guy and very open to us training pilots. So after a bit of a chat it was back in the aircraft to try a shot field take off.

I taxied to the very end of the runway, straightened up, and applied the brakes. Once that was set I set full power and then released the brakes and started down the strip. At 55kts and well before our abort point, the aircraft lifted off. Climb out is at Vx or “best angle of climb” 62kts to clear any obstacles. Once at 200ft it was clean up and pitch down to Vy “Best climb speed” at 70kts and start a standard circuit pattern.

We did this three more times, each time working out any wrinkles in the process.

After 3 take off and landings it was time to climb up to 1000ft and make tracks down the coast for a great short field landing on RWY16@NZPP. Pity its the wrong technique for landing on seal, but my instructor was still impressed.

All in all I was very pleased that even with the break, I didn’t loose my muscle memory and flew fairly well. There is always things to improve on and next time I will work on those.

Hopefully I won’t have to wait another month of week-ends to find out.

Happy days!

Aircraft: ZK-KAZ (Cessna 172SP Skyhawk)
Total Time: 1.1
Landings: 4
Go-arounds: 0
Visual Approaches: 4
Instrument Time: 0.0

Until next time….

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Blog – Short Field Work 26/02/2022