I rarely contribute tips because it seems to me that no one really cares to try them. This one is a little bit different in that it will greatly improve your flying experience, specifically your landings, so much so that I feel compelled to share.

A little background first. For most of my 35+ years of flying, I have been able to land planes of all sorts very, very smoothly with no ballooning or porpoising in the final stages of the approach and touchdown. You know what I am talking about. Even the slightest elevator input now seems to be just a little too much when you are really trying to keep everything really, really smooth; even when using exponential rates. For the last several years though I have had difficulty keeping those landing approaches/touchdowns completely smooth. Think about what the trend has been with servos over the last few years—stronger, yet lightning fast.

Last fall at a jet meet I complimented one of the pilots that I know quite well on how smooth and graceful all of his landings were. We had a conversation about how no matter how hard I try, I always seem to get a little bit of ballooning on landing (Aviation Design Scorpion). He shared with me his secret which I am now putting out for the benefit of anyone who will try it for themselves. His secret is that he uses the servo slow function on his transmitter to slow down the elevator servo even when using exponential rates. Now, this approach had never occurred to me but it made all kind of sense. Unless you are flying some wildly aerobatic plane, who needs a lightning fast elevator?

I couldn’t argue with the success I observed him having so I decided to try it for myself with just a small amount of servo slow added. OMG what a different airplane it was to land. Unbelievable the difference it made! Next flight I slowed the elevator down a little bit more and was quite pleased with the result. Now I am getting compliments on the smoothness of my landings. I now use this technique on every airplane I own with similar great results!

I expect there will be plenty of unbelievers who scoff at the idea of slowing the elevator servo down and will never even try this but, I am telling you, you need to at least try it. If you don’t like it, just change it back!