Monday, February 4, 2008

LANDING AN AIRPLANE - for beginners

Most new pilots comfortable with flying circuits/figure 8's but faces problems of landing the aircraft. First, make-up your mind that you are only good to land if you achieve a good final approach; if the approach is all dodgy, you are going to open the throttle fully and go round again. If all going well and nothing much can go wrong, infact, if you chopped the throttle and did nothing more, in all proability it had go down without damage on it. So the important thing is don't over control. Don't rush but smooth things out with a little up elevator but remember:-

TOO LITTLE IS SAFER THAN TOO MUCH,
TOO LATE IS SAFER THAN TOO SOON....

As you aligned the aircraft with your landing strip in it's nose down gliding attitude, with a little of throttle, which we now chop. Keep it straight and let it come on down. At about three feet off the ground gently ease on a little up elevator. If the nose lift easily, it's too fast-- hold the stick where it is and wait. If the nose reluctant or doesn't want to come up, it is close to stalling speed and you can add more up.

BUT REMEMBER--if you use too little elevator, nothing much can go wrong. If you use too much and balloon it, you can do a lot of damage. In a perfect landing, it touches down just on the stall, main wheels first -- we don't need a perfect landing, but just a safe one!

When it touches, let the stick go to neutral. If there's a little bounce, do nothing and let it sort it out itself. If there's a big bounce, let say more than three feet high, bang open the throttle and climb away but not too steeply.

When it comes to rest, taxi it down the landing strip then bring it back to you slowly and away from the spinning propeller. Use the throttle trim or throttle cut from the TX to stop the motor or engine. Now you still have your airplane in ONE PIECE!

Happy landings......

No comments:

No Paypal account? Easy Online Pay.... Sign-up here....

Sign up for PayPal and start accepting credit card payments instantly.