ORIGINAL: InTheLift
I am finding that I am landing long on the runway...the plane will float for quite a while just off the runway. Need to adjust my approach a little, but progress seems to be in a forward direction![8D]
Your plane carries too much kinetic or speed energy.
Practice slow, very slow flight, high, very high first.
You will learn more than one critical thing about that plane.
High AOA is your friend, as long as you keep it below the critical value (around 10 degrees) at which the lift will disappear drastically (wing stall).
Important principles:
Lift = Weight of the plane (for level flight).
Lift < Weight of the plane (during descending approach).
Lift directly depends on AOA.
Lift quadratically depends on speed (This is what was happening to your plane just before touch down: dropping from certain height just to bounce back).
The mentioned flare is just the gradual manner to transforming lift mainly from speed into lift mainly from AOA.