by Jeff Pardo

We see some version of this at least once a month: Some hapless owner runs his nice little retractable into a ditch alongside a turf runway that looked both long enough and smooth enough from pattern altitude. The fine point detail the pilot missed was that the grass was coated in early-morning frost; when he tapped the brakes, he lost it.

That’s not to say turf and retractables don’t mix, but it’s fair to say grass runway ops involve greater—or at least different—risks than flying off a long, dry piece of pavement. Operating from what is generally referred to as a soft field evokes a certain nostalgia, but the…