Stock paddocks - Take-Offs and Landings

[turboplanner]

Once you finish your Nav qualifications and start flying cross country, inevitably there's be a destination where you'll be operating out of a paddock.

In Planning cases where corrupt developers want to make 700% buying farmland and selling it for houses they describe these paddocks to the Tribunals as "vacant", but they almost never are, so they need a different assessment to an Airport or town Airfield, where your usual expectation is that the surface will be clear and free of obstructions including people.

 

Stock, wild animals

These represent a reasonably foreseeable risk, so as a property owner or pilot you qualify for a duty of care.

All animals jink when chased by predators and become unpredictable if scared.

So the best solution is to clear the entire paddock of stock or wild animals; a particular issue for pilots taking-off is the time it takes from clearing stock to going through pre-flight checks, runups (which may stir them up), and taxying to the take-off point and even the first stage of take-off.  Sheep particularly will have enough time to get back to their favourite grass spot - on your TO path.

 

A property owner who flies can usually read stock and animals, and there won't be the same risk, but what you have to be aware of if he says "I've got a few sheep on it, but they won't be a problem" means they won't be a problem for someone who can read sheep. I've seen city drivers on a country road where someone was droving a big mob of cattle drive through with the horn blaring at 60 km/hr risking a write off and others idling through the mob without disturbing one.

 

Kangaroos are particularly hard to see in a dry paddock and will lay down under trees in the middle of the day, so that's where you need to look for them, or they'll hear the engine and explode out in any direction; that's why they represent most of the road kill.

 

Emus will run beside you trying to out run you; they will be running at about 25 kts and can jink at 90 degrees at full run so the time to brake or turn is early.

 

If you decide to risk operating in the paddock with sheep, cattle or horses you need to mitigate the risk by getting them far enough away from the runway line that they can't possibly make it back until you've stopped or left. Buzzing them on the way in is a good way of getting them stirred up and likely to run in any direction without notice.

 

Walking quietly around the paddock until they all come together in a mob, then walking towards the opposite direction you want them to move in, will see them walk quietly away from you; that starts when they are about 45 degrees to the side of you; less than that will see a persistent few escaping. If they start turning to the left, you alter course to the left and they'll start to move right and vice versa, but you have to walk them without whistling or yelling if you want them to settle where you left them.  Horses are particularly skittish which is why you see thoroughbred owners spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on white planking to their fences....and they won't want to see flyers anywhere near the area.

 

This predictability changes if the property owner has been feeding the stock; they'll come running straight for the aircraft.

If there are deer in the paddock, they are completely unpredictable.

 

Property owners know the temperament of their bulls; we don't so one hazard with cattle is a bull protecting his cows and coming straight for you; run fast, jink often, hurdle the nearest fence or gate if you don't want to lose the family jewels on the barb.

 

Surface

I had a CFI once who would only approve a paddock landing if we could drive across a paddock at lift-off speed 100 km/hr.

I've had a few property owners in the car say "Are you CRAZY!", but that's about what you'll be doing in a hopeful take-off and the last thing you want is the aircraft hitting the bank of a depression, bottoming the struts and then being thrown into the air mains first and nose down without flying speed.

 

A paddock surface is variable by season/storms/rainfall and grass height varies substantially depending on whether there are stock in it.

Long grass with visible lumps all over the paddock could be hiding substantial fallen tree limbs, or the harrows the property owners son left there when he got bogged at the start of winter.

 

Airfields are usually mown to about lawn height so a person who's done his/her training may not have given much consideration to take off and landing differences between bitumen, gravel and grass, but on farm properties it's a measure of the owner's skill to maximise grass height, so the Coefficient of Resistance is MUCH greater, and you have to make allowance for it in your performance calculations, and you have to factor in whether it's wet or dry. I came into a paddock once which had knee high rye grass. Rye grass is a slender, stalky grass and the day was dry so I didn't notice much difference in landing to a 

normal airfield landing. The next morning I loaded three more people and it had been raining. In the preflight I made an allowance and set a go/no go lift off point to abort if necessary. I opened the throttle and thought I'd left the brakes on, so my focus went instantly to that go/no go strainer post in the paddock; the aircraft was as slow as a slug, but I held the throttle open watching the post like a hawk. When speed had increased and the wings got some lift, just getting the weight off the wheels allowed the aircraft to accelerate faster and I was off the ground before the post, but that experience was a good lesson to me about assessing paddocks.

 

Water is a factor in some low lying paddocks. Ephemeral swamps will sometimes form in the wet months then dry out, but when association with clay soils, particularly black soil plains, crab holes will forms. I was checking the Booligal Pub airstrip one day with the thought of flying up from Melbourne and staying overnight in the pub. I walked up to the touch down point and there was a crab hole about 300 mm diameter and knee deep. A nose wheel in one of those would ruin your day and pocket.

 

Cultivator rows need special attention and it's usually better to operate crosswind but along the rows.  The nose of a Jab was broken off and the engine dropped on the ground in one operation cross-rows a couple of years ago. I'm mindful of a Canola grower telling me recently that his Canola rows were flat, so it would certainly pay to talk to the property owner.

 

Dimensions

The days of a property owner saying "She's half a mile long" and finding yourself coming up to the boundary fence at speed are over; now you can check the dimensions of a paddock, trees, swamp, rocks etc using the Google Earth ruler.

 

Disclaimer

I mentioned at the start there was a duty of care triggered in paddock landings, so these are only a few points I've raised, and by no means the definitive "how to understand an animal" text. Property owners with 50 years experience with stock are still taken to hospital with broken ribs etc. because they misjudged and animal, so paddocks aren't for you unless you are professionally trained for them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[onetrack]

Excellent "write-up", Turbo. I just might add, paddock conditions can vary enormously within a short distance as soil profile changes. Depth and type of of topsoil makes a big difference to conditions, and grass over 100mm high can hide anything.

Even long established paddocks still hide rocks and stumps.

As they say in the movies and live media, "never work with children or animals" - they are both as unpredictable and skittish as each other, and both react in unexpected ways. You hang onto little kids around moving vehicles and machinery - accordingly, loose domesticated animals need to be restrained. If I was in an aircraft, I'd ensure any horse in a paddock being used as an airstrip was securely tied up before attempting a takeoff.

[peterg]

If you want good info (not opinions) about landing/takeoff in areas not specifically designed for that purpose go to those with lots of practical experience - glider pilots.

 

Gliding training info has very good info based on experience and research about outlandings (and retrieval) - eg canola (stubble OK) and cotton can be a shocker for gliders and other A/C (nose over), SWER lines are a killer, horses are unpredictable and should be avoided etc

[facthunter]

Cotton is a shocker alright and grass can hide many things. Like tree branches stumps springs(water) and rocks.  maybe even a set of discs or a ripper. I landed where the hay feed vehicle had spread  straw because it's been used  by wheeled vehicles in a very rocky paddock. There's NO guaranteed outcome there Just the best judgement for a good one with no injury. This is an unplanned thing not where you get advice from some local, which as pointed out, can be Wildy inaccurate but you can survey it for yourself from the Air if you've planned properly.

      Recommendation LAND before the fuel runs right out. It gives a far more precise touchdown point and threshold speed. Your low stall speed is very much a factor in how dangerous this is.  Nev

[Old Koreelah]

Good thread and good advice. Ground smoothness is damned hard to judge from altitude, even when it’s chewed down during a drought. Even a smooth-looking pasture can be ruff as guts; tussocks are big bumps. Turb’s line about driving across a paddock at speed is good advice.

I know farmers who fly; the prefer to land on roads.

[turboplanner]

5 hours ago, Old Koreelah said:

Good thread and good advice. Ground smoothness is damned hard to judge from altitude, even when it’s chewed down during a drought. Even a smooth-looking pasture can be ruff as guts; tussocks are big bumps. Turb’s line about driving across a paddock at speed is good advice.

I know farmers who fly; the prefer to land on roads.

There's a big difference between Forced and Precautionary Landings and Take-Offs and Landings in Normal Operations.

In the first two something has gone wrong and you don't have a choice; you're going to have to pick the best paddock from the air regardless of whether its rough or has stock in it, and the Preautionary has a slight edge because your are making the first circuit at 500', the second at 300' and the third at 200'. In both Forced and Precautionary you're going to be writing off the undercarrieage or doing a ground loop in preference to having a bad injury or fatal.

 

In Normal Operations, I never go into a paddock without first assessing it from the ground, because the aim is zero damage to the aircraft.