Short-field and soft-field takeoffs and landings

What this lesson is for: teaching short-field and soft-field takeoffs and landings from the right seat, and being able to explain what each technique is actually protecting against.

All four are simulated on a normal runway, and that is the trap. A short-field landing onto plenty of pavement has no consequences, so a Student learns the shape of the technique and none of the discipline. Supplying the missing consequence is your job today, and you do it by holding the standard as though the runway ended where you said it did.

Read:

• FAA-S-ACS-25, tasks AI.VII.C, AI.VII.D, AI.VII.E, and AI.VII.F, in full. Write down the touchdown point tolerances.
• FAA-H-8083-3C, the takeoffs and landings chapter, the short and soft field sections.
• standards/MANEUVER-LESSON-SHAPE.md, addition 2.

Deliverable: Three things. First, write the preflight ground lesson you will teach on short and soft field operations. This is one of your seventeen P3 plans, covering a short-field or soft-field operation. Second, work out today's takeoff and landing distances from the approved material of the airplane you will fly, for the actual conditions, and bring the working. Third, write in one sentence each what the short-field technique protects against and what the soft-field technique protects against. You will say both without notes.

This is the misconception, and it is nearly universal.

Learn the "protecting against" row so you can say it without notes. Everything else in each technique follows from it, and a Student taught the procedure without the reason will apply the right technique to the wrong runway for years.

1. What each technique protects against, and why that decides every step.
2. The short-field takeoff: configuration, distance available, the obstacle.
3. Airspeed discipline on the short-field climb, and what fast and slow each cost.
4. The short-field landing: aim point and touchdown point, which are not the same thing.
5. Braking and directional control after touchdown.
6. The soft-field takeoff: weight off early, ground effect, then accelerate.
7. The soft-field landing: power in the flare, and the nosewheel afterward.
8. The abort decision, and where on the runway it is made.
9. Getting performance data out of the airplane's own approved material, every time.
10. Supplying the consequence that a simulated short field does not have.

Bring today's distances, worked from the manual of the airplane you are flying, for today's conditions. Not from a study guide. Not from the airplane you did your commercial in.

You will be asked to point at the page. These four tasks are the ones where your Students will genuinely need a number, and this is the habit that decides whether they get a real one.

A simulated emergency is coming. You will not be told when.

The scenario: the rejected takeoff. You teach, before the flight, the point on the runway by which the airplane must be flying and what happens if it is not. Then, in flight, a takeoff underperforms and that point arrives.

The decision is made on the ground and executed without reconsideration. A pilot who reevaluates an abort at the abort point has already spent the runway they needed to stop in.

That is the same structure as the go-around gate from lesson 34, at a different moment. Notice the similarity before somebody points it out.

1. Teach your preflight ground lesson, including what each technique protects against.
2. Present today's distance data from the airplane's approved material.
3. Demonstrate short-field and soft-field takeoffs and landings from the right seat, narrating.
4. Talk your instructor through all four, holding the touchdown point standard.
5. Teach the abort point, and abort when it arrives.
6. Take the airplane at the threshold, out loud, three-way.
7. Critique, self-critique, then listen.

1. You deliver the preflight ground lesson on short and soft field operations, covering all seven items of the brief, and state what each technique protects against, without notes, before describing how either is flown.
2. You present takeoff and landing distance figures for today's actual conditions, worked from the approved material of the airplane being flown, and can say where in that document each figure came from.
3. You fly short-field and soft-field takeoffs and landings to commercial pilot tolerances from the right seat while narrating continuously, touching down at or beyond the agreed point and within the tolerance the current task specifies.
4. You distinguish the aim point from the touchdown point in what you teach and in the corrections you give.
5. You correct a soft-field landing in which the nosewheel is lowered early, naming the surface as the reason rather than the technique.
6. You keep power in through the soft-field flare and teach why it is there.
7. You teach the abort point as a decision made before the takeoff roll, and call the abort at that point without reconsidering it.
8. You hold the Simulated Student to the touchdown point standard, naming a landing beyond it as a failure of the approach rather than of the braking.
9. You take the flight controls using the three-way exchange, out loud, in both directions, including at least once when the airplane was not offered.
10. You deliver a critique naming the error, its probable cause, and the correction for at least two of the errors flown.
11. You deliver a self-critique before hearing the instructor's.

Standard 1 predicts everything else. Lead with the procedure rather than the purpose and you will teach it that way for years.

Falling short does not block lesson 36. No proficiency gate. It triggers the visibility rule in policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md.

• Treating short and soft as two settings of one technique.
• Performance numbers from a study guide. First finding of the day, every time.
• Using aim point and touchdown point as though they were the same.
• Fixing a long touchdown with brakes. The approach was the error.
• Climbing fast on the short-field climb because it feels safer. Fast clears less.
• Lowering the nosewheel straight after a soft-field touchdown. The most common error in this batch, and it is what breaks nosewheels.
• Closing the throttle in the soft-field flare.
• Rotating late on the soft-field takeoff, then climbing straight out of ground effect.
• Reconsidering the abort at the abort point.
• Accepting a touchdown well long because the runway is long.

Every trigger below is checkable in one second, on purpose.

• The airplane is not airborne by the agreed abort point and the throttle has not been closed.
• Airspeed reaches 1.1 Vso on final without correction applied.
• The airplane is not on the runway centerline extended below 200 ft AGL.
• The airplane floats past the midpoint of the runway and no go-around has been started.
• The nose is pushed forward in the flare or in a balloon.
• Heavy braking is applied on a simulated short-field rollout instead of a go-around being flown.
• Bank exceeds 30 degrees below 500 ft AGL.
• Either of us is unclear about who is flying the airplane.

The braking item is specific to today. A Student who has landed long on a real short field does not have a braking problem, they have a landing problem, and letting the braking appear to work teaches the wrong reflex.

Lesson 34's go-around gate applies unchanged, all six criteria and 500 ft AGL. It is not repeated here because it has not changed, and you are expected to still have it.

Positive exchange of controls, both directions, every time, practiced under load in the pattern.

Four slots, all currently empty: VS-35-1 Exemplar on AI.VII.F, VS-35-2 Error on AI.VII.F, VS-35-3 Error on AI.VII.D, VS-35-4 Error on AI.VII.C.

This lesson is complete and deliverable whether or not its Video Slots are filled.