ORIGINAL: cjmdjm
So last summer I taught myself to fly RC airplanes. I started on a parkzone Ember (3 channel, fully proportional, great little plane by the way). It is nearly crashproof because its so slow and lightweight, so I didn't need an instructor. After a month or so of flying almost everyday, I could do precision landings, loops, and just about every maneuver the little plane itself was capable of. So then I decided it was time to move to bigger things. The whole reason I decided to learn to fly RC in the first place was because a relative had given me an old hangar 9 alpha trainer, 40 size nitro plane, which I wanted to fly.
With all my practice on the Ember, I was actually able to fly the Alpha without much trouble. Except for one thing. On landing, I always broke the front landing gear off. Even though my landings usually looked quite smooth, the front landing gear would still break. I would fix it, and go fly again. Of course, with the exception of the first time, this can be explained by my shoddy repair work.
CJ: (may I use that - OK I hope as I hunt and peck very slowly. [
] )
Let's get back to basics. You are flying a trainer of the .40 etc. size. When the engine is running it pushes accelerated air flow over the horizontal stabilizer. That helps, however as the aircraft slows, more airflow is required to hold the nose up as any aircraft balanced for manual control will be aerodynamically nose heavy. You can demonstrate this to yourself by flying straight and level at reduced power. As you hold level flight, keep slowly reducing the throttle. You will notice that you are constantly increasing back pressure on the elevator stick to keep it there. As you get back to a somewhat landing idle, relax the back pressure and watch what happens. As the nose drops, increase the throttle and fly the aircraft as if you were doing a go-around. Hold whatever is needed to keep STRAIGHT flight straight out at an estimated climb angle of 10-15* up.
Now when you start your landing approach, get back to a rather slow speed, and set an attitude that you think proper. Adjustments will come. Use your throttle to control the climb/descents and the elevator for airspeed. This will take some time to learn, but once you get it down, you will like it. Of course sometimes you have to coordinate the two, but keep using the method. It works, both small and 1:1 scale.
As you get a few feet off the ground, throttle all the way back. What happens? The reduction of airflow reduces the negative lift on bottom of Stab/Elevator and the S/E is no longer loading the wing into its current angle-of-attack, loses lift and - kerswap - the nose gear hits. As you bring back the throttle, you will have to gently increase the back pressure on the elevator. Now if you can, use the rudder to control the wing level, however if you do the natural thing and use the ailerons, DO NOT relax that back pressure.
Please note my use of "PRESSURE". Regardless of the current engineering world's efforts to change things, an airplane is a very gentle thing and loving pressure will make it perform well.
After touchdown, gently lower the nose to the runway. On grass, as someone else stated, hold back elevator to unload the nose wheel. On hard surface, you may wish to hold the nose down. Place the ailerons for turn into the wind, just as if you were taking a flying lesson in a Cessna 150. That is a good check that your ailerons are working properly along with the elevator. Throttle during taxi and steering checks the rest.
CATS - Controls, Antenna, Trim, Switches.
So I am mostly concerned with the first landing. Since it is a trainer, you would think the alpha trainer would be built to take the hard landings student pilots would inevitably put on it. Is it normal for the nose gear to break off even on a mildly hard landing? Do student pilots regularly break the nose gear off 40 size trainers while learning to land? Because if not, then I suspect my problems were because the plane was 5 or 6 years old and the balsa was weak from having some fuel spilled on it.
I suspect your problem was more in the technique area. Once I was instructing an airline pilot. He kept doing as you. I ask him if he let go of the yolk just before touchdown in his airliner. He caught right on and in three more tries he has forever been a great lander.
Im asking because I am considering buying a new alpha trainer (I did eventually crash the old one, when the radio battery died in flight, i think. 5 year old battery too). But I would like to know that I will be able to land the new alpha, ie, that a new alpha trainer can usually take a mildly hard landing without losing its nose gear.
Don't land hard. leave those for us old guys!
A few other questions, too. I usually landed with throttle at idle. However, this usually resulted in fairly high speed landings, the plane would have needed a long runway, if the nose gear hadnt broken and prevented it from rolling. Is it normal to land at idle, or do people usually kill the engine on final? Because I noticed killing the engine usually produced much more reasonable landing speeds. Then again maybe my idle was set to high.
Too much engine power or too high idle will not assist you. In addition using an 11-4/5 rather than the proverbial 10-6 for a .40 will help landings.
Also, what was actually one of the hardest parts of transitioning from the ember was the takeoff roll. The plane would start to pull hard to the left at high speed and throttle. But if I trimmed this out, then it would pull to the right at low speed. (May have gotten left and right reversed there, dont remember). I konw P-factor can cause this, but the tendency seemed very strong to be P-factor alone. Is this normal? I had the luxury of a wide runway, but it seems like it would be very difficult to take off from a narrow runway due to this.
Thanks for you help!
Covered by others, but on grass, Hold just a tad of up for a trike gear, slowly advance power as you steer with RUDDER/nosewheel, then as speed is building, no elevator until looking like flying, SLIGHT back pressure, continue with RUDDER control, and as airplane lifts off, you need to relax back pressure, because with increased speed, elevator is more effective and nose continues to rotate to higher pitch attitude, resulting in a torque/p-factor left - I don't care what you call it but it needs RIGHT Rudder until stabilized climb and ailerons are more effective without adverse yaw. Sorry to get technical however I do tire of watching so many destroy models of all kinds because they do not pay attention to the basics or argue over terms.
Congrats on the self taught initial flying. Ain't easy that way.