Knots2U and Grass Strips

[nworth]

Man, I have the itch to take my nice new plane out to some of the grass strips nearby. But, with the nice fancy paint job I am concerned about those tightly fitted Knots2U wheel pants getting chewed up. Anybody had any experience with landing on grass with the pants and/or how much trouble it is to remove and replace them?

[BOCmike]

I am a new 260se owner with a short (1200') grass strip. I have only landed here a dozen times or so. I have no problems with the wheel pants thus far. My strip is not a golf course either! Just a pasture that i have mowed.

mike

[LEVON HOPKINS]

NWORTH Grass just be sure it will not touch your lycoming powered prop or that it will not slow that continental power prop down....overhaul of crank I believe is required.

I'd walk any grass strip prior to landing to check the height and the thickness if it is high and thick as some of mine and dry you want believe what an "arrester" you get and if it has less than three cuts since sprouting and is "rye" think slime as in "slick as grass." Grass Handling Systems Corporation Levon

[Todd Peterson]

For many, many years I have flown a 260SE off grass, gravel and dirt strips with the standard tires and wheel pants. Never have I had a problem. The only time having wheel pants concerns me is if the surface is very rough, soft, snowy or slushy. With any of these conditions present I take the wheel pants off and everything works just fine.

To me one of the big advantages of the HD landing gear with the oversized tires is that on rough strips the tires really reduce the shock that is transmitted to the airframe. In addition it quite naturally takes a bigger hole to swallow a bigger tire which is another definite advantage. I also find the propeller benefits greatly from the increased tip clearance. I was satisfied with the standard HD landing gear with its 8.00x6 mains with 6.00x6 nose wheel on the Wrens I flew. In many cases I flew the Wren into and out of some truly horrific places and the landing gear handled it well. Except for the really soft, dry and very narrow river bed in the bottom of a canyon that I got stuck in during a customer demo flight (but that's another story). With all that said my observation is the 29 inch Alaskan Bushwheels with an 8.50x6 nose wheel moved the airplane into a completely new catagory. While still having a very good cruise speed the Bushwheels allow me to go into and out of areas that I would have passed on with the standard oversize tires. It is the best landing gear combination I have ever flown with for off field work.

[kwmoore]

Except for the really soft, dry and very narrow river bed in the bottom of a canyon that I got stuck in during a customer demo flight (but that's another story).
Which you simply must tell all of us! :p

[nworth]

I am wanting to take my standard wheels/pants into well maintained Florida (meaning good drainage) strips. Nothing with high grass or big holes. Certainly not stream beds!

Just wanted to make sure that the pants wouldn't get messed up. Sounds like it's fine.

[Todd Peterson]

I don't think Norm will have any trouble at all with a grass runway. I guarantee you that once you touch down on nice grass you will be forever hooked. There is nothing better than landing on soft grass. You just never want to go back to pavement.

The event that got me stuck in sand was a demo flight in Arizona with a Wren in the early 1980's. I had a gentleman from Alaska that I was giving a ride and out in the middle of nowhere he looked down and asked me if I could land the Wren in about three hundred feet of that dry river bed. Looking at the river bed and always up to a challenge I said "you bet". Of course I had never seen this river bed before but I thought it possible. The landing went well with a very short roll out. I continued to taxi a little way before we both noticed the sides of the river canyon quickly closing in. It became obvious in short order we would not be able to turn around and extract ourselves from what had become a rather nasty spot. I applied brake and a lot of power to reverse course and as the Wren started to turn around the inside tire just screwed itself down into the sand. By the time we had completed about three quarters of the turn the inside tire (8.50x6) was buried about half way up in this very soft sand. I shut the engine down and we got out to survey the problem. Both my passenger and I got some tree branches and started digging the tire out. After about twenty minutes we got the Wren free and not wanting to do this all over again at the other end just departed in the opposite direction of the landing.

While the demo flight turned out to be more work than either of us had expected we joked about it all the way home. It just seems like those that fly out of truly rough, back country sites have a bond. It's hard to explain but it's there and we both enjoyed the flight.

[n2099x]

I land on grass strips often and have never had a problem. But yesterday there were several piles of cow shit on the runway, no problem just makes a mess, plane was dirty anyway. When the other end came into view they were all over so I dodged as many as possible, then the Alsakan Bushwheels came into mind as the ride got rough because they were frozen soild. Still didn't hurt my wheel pants. Mine are Horton though don't know about the knots2u pants.

Glen :cool: