Preparation for the Backcountry

As I sit here writing this in my High Sierra Fly-in sweatshirt, a couple of years and a thousand hours after the fact, I’m really enjoying remembering how this all came to be. There was a lot of “advice” people gave me before playing in the backcountry, some great, some worthless, and a lot are “old wives tales” that can neither be proven or outright rejected.

5 things you should master (in order) before you go play:

Since everyone is looking for a bulleted list of “the things” I figured I would start this out in typical bullet-blog fashion. Also a note to anytone out there, I am not a flight instructor, as in can not and am not giving you guidance on how to fly your plane. These are my observations as an engineer and enthusiast, and if you are considering venturing out into the wild, please approach and discuss with your fight instructor. Feel free to go over these bullets :)

1) Airspeed on Approach

So the fastest way to get yourself into trouble in the backcountry, or landing anywhere for that matter, is to not have control over your airspeed on approach. It’s also easy to Monday morning desktop quarterback someone else’s landing and say “they came in too fast”. Although ultimately your “over the fence speed” will determine a lot about your landing, the subtly is in the training and preparation that got you to that point.

You will hear a lot of people say “you need to come in slow when you are landing short”, and what that really translates to, is you need to come in slower than you practiced in your primary training. The first step in all of this is do you know what the published short field approach speed is for your aircraft? Like really know? for sure? I say that as when I slow my Skylane down to say 60kts on final I have had a few instructors (doing my instrument training) give a “holy sh**” and reach for the controls… a quick slap to their hands, I reach back to my POH and tell them to look up this, the actual published for my airplane short field procedure. And guess what, that slow backcountry crazy airspeed is literally in the book. Now, just because it’s published, doesn’t’ mean you trained at speeds like that. I’ve heard of instructors having skyhawks coming it at 80kts on final… and as one would expect floating the rest of the way down the runway. That won’t cut it, read your book, write that number on the back of your hand, and get ready to go flying.

The other key aspect of the landing is controlling your airspeed. I’m not going to say my air speed indicator is seemingly locked on 60 during approach, of course not, but it’s rare if it varies more than a knot or two. This is more than just watching the needle and adjusting pitch. This is being tuned into what the aircraft is telling you through all your senses and reacting accordingly. Small gust lifts your nose? push it down, not just enough to correct the attitude, but enough to correct the airspeed change. Wing comes up? Ease it back down, and adjust power pitch as necessary because your were turning for a second (were’t you?) and probably dropped ever so slightly in the glideslope. Making these small corrections fluidly with the motion of the aircraft is the only way to actually control your airspeed as needed… and there is only one way to get good at this. Practice.

How much maneuvering have you actually done at your aircraft’s short field approach speed? If your primary training was like mine, hardly any. We do a fair amount of hanging off the prop slow flight, but that’s different. For this my recommendation (again, not an instructor) is to get the plane up at a safe altitude, and in a safe place, do your clearing turns, then set up the plane for an approach. Slow it down, engine at approach power, nose down, capture your final approach speed, and trim. At this point in smooth air the aircraft should be fairly stable. Remember, this is a published number, that means someone flight tested this number and in agreement with those certifying it found that the aircraft had no unusual performances or unpublished behaviors at this speed. It should be stable, and you should be comfortable. Do some maneuvers, remember you’re at altitude so these aren’t ground ref, turn 90 deg as you would in the traffic pattern. Practice keeping the ball centered, and increasing the steepness of the turn. The aircraft will slow down as you do, are you pitching to hold that airspeed? Once you’ve mastered this, can you find a place with small hills (not real mountains, but enough to disturb the air a little). Those controls are soft, get used to using as much as you need to get the desired effect. It took me a while to get used to giving full aileron or rudder with he aircraft slow, but if that’s what you need, then that’s what you do. Can you do the same maneuvers at altitude with some air disturbances without the needle moving off your target airspeed? Good, now try slowing it down like this on final in the traffic pattern (as described in your POH), I think you’ll be happy with the results.

Doing this practice alone will make all of your landings more consistent, and greatly shorten the amount of runway you use. For me, I got comfortable with this speed, and it’s now my every day speed. Doing this, my “normal” landing uses up 935ft of runway, with a roll out of about 750ft. That’s enough to get you into a lot of places, and it all starts with a stabilized approach at the published short field approach speed.

Quick caveat I do actually approach slightly slower than this, as I am rarely coming into a short field at gross. 55-58kts has worked really well for me in this specific aircraft. If there is an unusual wind, or if I have an extra person and stuff onborad I will hold at 60kts.

2) Spot your Landing

Ok, so now that you’ve mastered holding your approach airspeed, it’s time to figure out what ground you eat up in the flare. There is a lot of discussion about landing “behind the curve” and flaring with the engine… That is a thing, an advanced thing, and not what I’m going to talk about. My POH says it can get stopped in 600ft using a published short field procedure, there aren’t a lot of strips shorter than that, so I don’t need to go all extracurricular to get it in. I do however need to transition from flying to on the brakes stopping on time, and the first step in that, is knowing what that time is.

This all gets messy with different airspeeds, hence why I put managing your airspeed at the top of the list. The next variable is wind speed, but you can’t do much about that just yet, so hang on.

So in the graphic above of KSBP (my home airport), I know if I round my aircraft out at about the tip of the last displaced threshold arrow (not the chevrons at the threshold) the aircraft will slow, and i’ll be in the landing attitude at about the numbers. Even with my slow and steep approach that eats up 350ft! If I add variability to this, I might be +/- 100ft, so I can use up about half the distance I need in the roll out, in the flare. This is easy to practice at your home airport: First take note of where you begin your flare, then instead try to get the aircraft ready to flare at this time (sounds like chicken and egg, but now you do the roostering and set up the situation to happen when you want it to, not when it happens to happen). At this point you should be able to get a rough idea if you flare here then you will touchdown there. That’s not where it ends, and no it’s not time to break out the tape measure to show me how short it is.

The problem with the backcountry is you’re not going to have all this level pavement and markings for which to gauge your landing. The sight picture is going to be unusual, un-level, and likely irregular. So instead of getting exact with your sight picture, it’s time to take your flying on a trip. Practice the short field approach at a variety of airports.

By the numbers discussed above, making the first turnoff at Catalina Island, some 1,300ft past the threshold, should be no sweat… right? Except Imagine flaring over the edge of a cliff, and how are you expected to gauge where to flare anyway?

Although this is a paved runway, gauging that approach can be a challenge, and admittedly the first time I landed Catalina, there was some hard braking to make that first turn off. But that’s the point. Slowly try more challenging places to get into with the familiar markings and get used to that sight picture. Try a published grass strip is available, or a dry-lakebed with tons of room to work out your flare and landing distance should things get sideways.

Getting the sight picture for your aiming point and touchdown location worked out becomes a lot more critical when the runway gets short, the braking surface becomes poor and there seem to always be trees or a mountain at the end. Take advantage of the variety of strange and challenging published strips you have available and get a good feeling for the sight picture so you know (almost) exactly when you are going to be able to touchdown and hit the brakes.

3) Hold the Centerline

Remember back in your primary training, your instructor might have been yelling at you about holding the centerline? I do, and she was right, don’t be lazy.

Sounds easy, but I assure you it’s not. Consider that you are moving slower, so the crosswind or gust condition has a larger effect on your aircraft’’s position or track to the glide slope. You are actively moving the controls more than you would normally, holding that airspeed, another factor to hold can be overwhelming. And let’s face it, where you normally fly if you are 50ft off center line, the runway is likely enormous enough it doesn’t matter.

There are runways like 28U pictured to the right that are mere inches wide than your main landing gear. Consider that just after touchdown you are slowing down, controls are becoming less effective… particularly the rudder. Sidestep that runway just enough to be dragging one wheel through the tall grass will impart a yaw moment on the aircraft, and if you don’t have enough airspeed to correct it you might be going along for the ride.

When I approached this one I could literally hear my primary flight instructor telling me to “not give up the centerline”. You should coach yourself on this every time. Avoid the casual complacency afforded by large oversize runways. Hold that line, don’t be lazy.

4) Weather and Pre-flight Planning

So the first three are things you need to do in preparation for consideration of taking a backcountry trip, but this one is different, how comfortable ar you with getting the weather? When you are local or flying cross country from real airports, you have a lot of services available to you, both aviation and human related. Need to heel the plane on the ground for an extra day due to weather? no big deal, extend your hotel stay a night and look up a good restaurant. Once you venture off pavement, you might only have what you brought with you, an extra night might be a rough one if you’re out of food, and if you’re low on water, you might not be on your game to go flying. If you’re thinking about a weekend camping trip, how comfortable are you with outlook forecasts? Off pavement requires a little different planning, and here are my thought on where those differences are. I won’t go over the weather “stuff” you learned in your primary training, all of that is still true, but there are some things to consider:

Are you going to have service(s) cell or otherwise, where you’re going? In this weekend situation, you might be relying on 3 day old information to make your departure decision. One thing to consider is weather forecasts are usually right, just not usually right on time. If you’re looking at a forecast with weather coming and going, it’s best to write down (or print up) what you expect over the whole weekend, and track when it actually happened. i.e. you’re hoping for an early departure on Sunday, right after the rain stops. On Saturday night it was supposed to get overcast at 8pm, but actually clouded over at 11pm… that departure is likely to move by a few hours, but you would only know this ahead of time if you had written down the weather between your arriving and departing flights, and kept track of when it changed. Likewise know and keep with you the weather after your intended departure, as if you had to push a half, or whole day, it’s good to have some picture of what’s in store for your ride home.

Conditions, Conditions, Conditions. In the backcountry by definition you are off pavement, which means the weather has a greater impact on aircraft operations than it does on the paved runway. Not only is wet grass harder to stop on the day you try to arrive, if it had been raining for the week before it might be too soft to land on or completely under water. Depending on what the surface is, and how it was prepared, a little wetness might make it completely un-landable. In the case of dry lakebeds that otherwise seem like great training spots, wet weather in the proceeding months may make it unsuitable to put down on.

Neat Weather Trick: I learned this at HSF 2019, I was trying to figure out where to go on a daytrip from the lakebed that wouldn’t be too bumpy for a guest. I had my IPad out, but with no cell service on the lakebed, what’s the point… well… ADSB. With all the cool planes flying about in the patter and around the area, I simply turned on my aircraft’s master while on the ground, linked up my IPad with the transponder, and just like that I had real time weather being relayed from aircraft airborne that could ping either directly or by daisy chain a ground based antenna in Reno. You’re an aviator, use all resources to your advantage.

5) Performance Planning

This last one is just a rehash of what you learned in your primary training, but with one exception, keep a diary. Yes, I will reiterate again that the POH is the authority on where to start when considering a go/no-go decision, however your experience and judgement plays a lot into it.

One time I was taking off out of a 1400’ long dirst strip, DA was about 7500 ft, and the plane was 3/4 loaded. Doing the quick math in the POH I should be able to get airborne in 1250ft… considering a “dry grass runway"… but this is sand, and thankfully there’s no obstacle at the end. Will I make it? The way I approach this sissue is to keep a diary of “weird sh**” I’ve done with the aircraft, and what the results were. It stays in the airplane next to the POH and is just a list of where I was, what the conditions were, and what the results were. A quick refresher that reminded me that my specific aircraft had taken off in hard packed sand, and it was quicker than published. And that the takeoff roll is often shorter than the short field performance suggested for a given weight. I had remarked taking off from this strip a prior trip was uneventful (although it was cooler and more lightly loaded) and only took 1/3 of the strip to lift off. So using that, I went for it, and lifted off about a little more than 1/2 way down the runway.

So my advice is know where your POH is and how to use it, then augment it by writing down your experiences which equates to the what the combination of you and your aircraft are capable of. Because honestly, that’s the important part. You need to be comfortable with what you’re doing. And if you push it closer than what you are comfortable with, having that note of where your personal limit is will help you in future decisions.

Training’s Done! ? ??

Just because you’ve completed these 5 steps written by a non-CFI who has a lot of cool picture of his airplane in weird places, doesn’t mean your done training. Pictured above is the tracks of my flights in 2017 and 2018 at my home airport, and you can see, I spend a bit of time in the pattern. It’s not necessary by rule (I fly enough to always be current), but it is by proficiency. Just because you’re current doesn’t mean you are proficient, and the punishment for not being on your game in the backcountry is often absolute.