Landing on a soft field? Here's how to make a perfect touchdown, every time.

How Soft Field Landings Are Different

Soft field landings are pretty much the same as normal landings, until you cross the runway threshold. That's where you need to put your soft field landing technique into place.

So what are the steps of a good soft field landing? We'll break it down into three phases: approach to landing, touchdown, and rollout.

Approach To Landing

To make a great soft field landing, you need to start with a stabilized approach. Being stabilized ensures that you touch down where you want, and that you transfer your aircraft's weight from the wings to the wheels as gently as possible.

You should fly your traffic pattern the same as a normal landing. The Airplane Flying Handbook recommends flying your final approach with full flaps at 1.3 Vso, unless your POH recommends a different configuration and speed.

The difference between a normal and soft field landing really comes into play once you cross the threshold. That's because as you get close to touchdown, you want to hold the aircraft 1-2 feet off the runway in ground effect.

By holding your plane off the runway, you dissipate your forward speed, and allow your wheels to touch down at a slower speed. And by doing that, you reduce the nose-over force on your aircraft when it touches down.

Touchdown

Next up is the most important moment: touchdown. As you enter ground effect, it's OK to use a small amount of power to level off and make sure you touch down as slow as possible (though power isn't necessary).

Your goal is to fly the airplane to the ground, with your wings supporting the weight of the aircraft as long as possible. Making that happen in a low-wing vs. high-wing aircraft can vary significantly. Low-wing aircraft will have a more pronounced ground effect, because the wing is closer to the ground. It may take a little more power manipulation to keep a high-wing aircraft in ground effect as you get close to touchdown.

After your main wheels touch down gently, you want to slowly remove power, if you had any in, and hold the nose wheel off the runway.

Rollout

Since your main gear are much stronger than the nose wheel, you want to keep the nose off the soft/rough surface until your plane has slowed down to a safer speed. By maintaining back pressure on the yoke, you can hold the nose off until you've reached that safer speed. Your nose wheel will thank you.

You also want to be very gentle on the brakes. On many soft field landings, because of the soft surface, you don't need to use brakes at all. If you're too aggressive on the brakes, your nose wheel tends to touch down earlier and harder than you want.

Once you've touched the nose down, you'll want to maintain back pressure (typically full back pressure) as you continue your rollout and taxi, minimizing weight on the nose. Keep the back pressure in until you've reached a harder surface, or when you've stopped to park.

Common Problems With Soft Field Landings

Soft field landings can take some practice before you get comfortable with them. Here are some of the more common problems you'll want to consider before you head out to the airplane to start practicing them:

• Too fast of a descent rate, causing a hard touchdown
• Too much airspeed, causing excessive float
• Unstabilized approach, making it hard to touch down smoothly
• Allowing the nose wheel to touch down early, causing excessive stress on the nose wheel

Putting It All Together

Fly a stabilized approach, hold the aircraft in ground effect for a soft, slow touchdown, and keep the nose wheel off the ground as long as possible. Follow those steps, and you'll have a perfect soft-field landing.

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