In article
,
Hamish Reid wrote:

In article ,
Matt Whiting wrote:

Orval Fairbairn wrote:
[...]


Yesterday I witnessed a Baron pilot land nosewheel first, porpoise a
couple of times and eventually get control. Several of us there expected
to see the nosewheel fold and the Baron slide down the runway. Talk
about poor technique!

Your accounts got me to wondering ... how many of you all have actually
seen an airplane nose-over on a grass strip? I've been flying since
1978 at two airports that had grass strips (one had only grass until
just last year). I've NEVER seen an incident on a grass strip period,
let alone one that occurred because of failure to use short-field
technique. [...]

I've seen a grass strip nose-over -- in fact, it occured at Frazier
Lake, the grass strip Orval mentioned early in his post (about the only
conveniently-located trustworthy grass strip around here in the Bay
Area). Not sure what caused it, but I saw it happen from the air, which
was quite a sobering sight, despite the fact that the plane didn't look
too damaged from 2000' up. It doesn't appear to have been put into the
NTSB database, so I guess it was considered a fairly minor incident.

Hamish

We used to "X" out the runway during winter (rainy season) at Frazier
Lake. This did not stop some boneheads from attempting to use the sod,
however. I can remember a number of times that some nonmember left
furrows in the runway. I don't recall, however, very many noseovers,
however.

My extreme soft field experience was at Eustis, FL (X55), Mid-Florida
Airport. I think that I left some furrows there! It was WET!