the way I land...

first you need to know the stall speed of the airplane. not how fast it looks to you on the ground but how it feels and behaves at that speed. practice pretty high.. slow it down while making shallow s turns. notice how the response slows down as the plane looses speed? pay attention to this. note the feel when the plane drops. this is the speed you want reach as the wheels touch the ground.


now come into the downwind and throttle back till you get to about 20-30mph above that speed, judge it by feel, not your eyes because you cant see the airspeed, only "feel" it.

turn your base maintaining this speed. where you turn is dependent on the field and the plane, on our field a "hot" plane needs to come in over the trees, a floater can turn before the tree line. a trainer can be relatively short and low.

when you turn final drop the speed to about 10-15mph above the stall speed, this is were its tricky because you need to line everything up and keep enough speed to prevent the stall.

as you descend keep that speed until you get to about 5 feet then gentle flair and bring the plane to a few inches above the ground.

as the plane slows feed up elevator to keep that few inches above the ground, as you do this it will slow the plane down more and more as the drag from the increased angle of attack takes effect. If you put the plane on the ground now the plane will keep more speed because the wings will stay at a low AoA and not produce as much drag.

when the tail wheel and main gear are even stop feeding the elevator and hold it. (on a trike gear when you got about 5-10 degrees of pitch) the plane will settle on all three at once for a three point landing.

the trick is keeping the plane at those few inches, you need to be smooth on the elevator and not overshooting/undershooting the flare. (its better to flare a bit high and let it come down then to bounce it due to too little flare.)

with a little practice you should be able to get the flare to where you hold it so low you cant tell if the wheels are touching until they start spinning

good luck and practice practice practice. spend a few tanks doing nothing but touch and goes, if the wind is calm do a T&G, turn around and do one the other way over and over.