ORIGINAL: Villa
I assume you are landing with the engine stopped and that you try to land as slow as possible without stalling. Just before touchdown, at what angle is the prop, as seen from the front like, when you start the engine? You are looking for it to be horizontal at that point. The wind will be trying to turn the prop in the same direction that it was running at, but engine compression should stop it in the horizontal position. You should be able to decide if the prop must be moved a little clockwise or a little counterclockwise. Just make a little sketch and figure it out yourself. Some people may have convinced you that this plane is easy to fly. It is cheap, but making a smooth landing with it may be very difficult, since the plane does not have a conventional air foil. I probably would be breaking props on it, and I have SPADS in which I have never broken a prop in say 5 years. Occasionally I have discarded a prop because it had dug into the dirt hundreds of times and had a lot of small nicks in the tip. My SPAD Bi-Plane, as an example, will slow down to a stall and then gently kiss the ground because it will fly all of the way. In two years it has never made a bad landing and never broken a prop. The Gnat simply stops flying and drops, and the point at which it does this is hard to determine. Others will contradict me 100%. You decide.
OK, as I suspected it has allot to do with being a gnat. I've had 5 flights, two of them I was able to trim it out and fly 7-8 min. this is not an easy to fly plane very pitch sensitive but fun. I did try to set the prop horizontal as it hit compression. Its an OS .15LA. on the bench the prop would stop and bounce back. I wasnt thinking bout the air flow while flying may keep it pushed against compression??? Not much chance to flare this plane at touchdown. Like Villa said, it just stops flying and drops..
Sooo, I guess my question is this. I'm looking at building a battle axe type of plane. ( 1st attempt at foam wing cutting next weekend) I'm hoping that with a real wing ? I'll be able to put this plane down without landing gear? without breaking the prop ?
I killed the gnat yesterday! Last flight of the day (haha) I had the elevator on high rates. New that was a mistake as soon as it left my hand. to busy trying to fly I couldnt reach for the duel rate switch! Dropping the throttle would have helped, in hindsight. but it got all the way to the other side of the sand pits and planted nose first into the wet sand. Bent the aluminum U channel at a 90 degrees. mounted the engine on a stand, flushed with fuel to clean out any sand and it started right up. I'll build another gnat with improvements but now I'm moving onto cutting a foam wing . see how that flys. gotta be better than a gnat!
Steve