Every now and then I hear someone at the field mention that they crashed during a landing because “THE WIND GOT THEM”. This looks like a strong downdraft pushed the plane into the ground. That ever happen to you? Since I always insist on determining the cause of every one of my crashes, I kept questioning that “THE WIND GOT ME” reason, since I used it also. Then I realized that these types of crashes always happened when the plane was very far away, or when I was landing at a much different angle to myself than usual.

I am now convinced that these types of crashes are due to the wing stalling. Yes, stalling. The plane falls straight down because the wing lost lift. And the reason is that the plane is so far away and almost coming toward you, that you have lost your ability to estimate the air speed. So it stalls and crashes. My answer is to land the plane directly in front of you as much as possible, going right to left, or left to right, only. In that location you will be better able to judge the air speed of the plane, and how far off the ground it is. Use the throttle and the elevator during the full length of the landing approach to position the plane to touch down near to “in front of you”. Throttle extends the landing point, while elevator shortens the landing point. I usually hold a little throttle during the landing and only go to idle in the last foot or two of elevation. Please give this idea some thought. I would appreciate hearing any input on this.

I generally shoot for a couple of feet past the start of the runway. For me it is the easiest to control that way. As the plane is coming towards me I will see if either wing starts to drop off, (stall) and easier for me to line up. I also have the whole runway to use. I generally cut to idle on the the final approach turn and add throttle as needed to keep the glide path good. I guess everyone has his/her own routine that they are comfortable with.

I also like to aim for just past the start of the runway.. I like to come in under light power and chop the thottle right before the threshold. The speed generally doesnt matter unless I came in way too hot to begin with. I will place the wheels of the plane at about 6-10 inches above the runway and begin adding elevator enough that it doesnt begin to gain but also doesnt get down too early.. after a short period of that, I will let the plane settle down to a couple inches and then keep adding elevator until I am happy at which point I slightly relax the elevator and set the wheels down gently, then watch the nice short roll out..

Living in Oklahoma we have to pretty much get really good at flying in wind, or we get very few flying days. I have flown a bunch of times in gusty winds that throw the plane around a lot, like you mention in your question. I don't think there is any "magic spot" to land that is better than another. What I think is more important is simply practice, practice, practice. IMHO it's really more a matter of being able to react quickly to the changes caused by a gust of wind. The more you practice the more it becomes second nature to react to changes in the plane as it lands.<div>
</div><div>As to where I land when I fly?? It changes depending on the plane I am flying and the mood I'm in. A lot of times when I am flying I will pick different areas of the runway and try to land there. By changing the "spot" I am shooting for I think it improves my skills at landing as I have to adapt to different aspects of view, aiming for a different landing location, and varying conditions. I think it makes me better. Another thing that helps me out is something a buddy and I do. We like to fly together and we will shoot formation landings. In doing this we try to land at the same time on the runway. What we do is we divide the runway and we each try to land on our half of the runway. this really makes me work for a landing because now I have half of the runway that I'm used to. It's a ton of fun to do this and I think it really helps me improve as well. And yes, we both realize that eventually we are going to hit each other when we do this. We accept that risk. Knock on wood, we've been doing this for about 6 or 7 years now and we've never tried to occupy the same point in space that the same time yet!!!! </div><div>
</div><div>But to boil it down, I think that practice is the key to consistent landings!!! </div><div>
</div><div>Ken </div>

Awesome! My dad and Ido that with our planes sometimes!.. we haven't hit on the ground yet but we have slapped wings before flying in formation.. was a good laugh!!

One way to judge airspeed when flying towards yourself is to note how much elevator you are holding. The more elevator the slower your airspeed.<div>
</div><div>Most R/C pilots don't land correctly; they fly the model into the ground and wonder why it bounces. The key is to hold the model just off the runway by steadily increasing elevator input. Ideally, you run out of elevator and stall just as the wheels touch down. No bounce.</div><div>
</div><div>Crossswind? No problem. Lower the upwind wing slightly to prevent gusts from causing an uncommanded roll. Keep the model tracking coincident with the runway with gentle rudder input.</div>

Like Ken said, It will be different for different aircraft. There is no one way to land unless you break it down to the old addage, "any landing you can walk away from..." or in our case " any landing you still have a flyable plane after..." My biplanes come in at neer their slowest flying speed and are rolling wheels in the grass before the throttle is dropped to idle. My Funtana on the other hand will glide and float so long I land it much like Nathan describes. I had a Seagull Extra 300 75 size that I was so afraid of tip stall that I landed that plane faster than most people fly theirs at.

I have different techniques for different planes. The Bipe and P-47 I keep power on until they just about touch the ground, the 4 * you can coast in from a way out, the Astro Hog is heavy, and I use the grass to brake it in. I try to bring them down to about 2 ft off the runway within 50' of the threshold, and fly them in from there. Some days, the wind is not my friend, most of the time I am on the lookout for crosswind turbulance that flips a wing up in the final moments before I can stick it to the runway.

Ken, I love to fly in formation with my friend, and it seems that whenever we fly together, we could not hit each other if we tried, but if one tries to avoid hitting others, that is when midairs happen )))))))

The point that I am trying to emphasize is that the human body ability to estimate the safe air speed of a model decreases drastically the closer the plane is to flying directly toward you. Many believe that your depth perception will help you. If you google Depth Perception you will find that it is about 17 feet. Yes, feet. When the plane is landing near to directly in front of you, left to right or right to left, you have the best view to help you estimate the safe air speed. I have stalled it into the ground HARD many times in my 39 years of flying RC, and have noticed that this usually happens when the plane is very far from me; the angle between my line if sight and the plane path is very small.

I need help with my landings. I get your point Villa, I'm going to try it a lot. I think most of my trouble is tall grass and ME.

I'm going to put in a runway maybe. It will be 200' long. How wide shall I make it? I only fly high wing 35-45" wingspan electric planes right now.

Make it as wide as you can. If you don't use it all, no big deal. Sometimes people here use the full width (100+ feet) on windy days, or when they are just cutting their teeth. If you make it wide enough, you can use it for take offs on days where the wind doesn't line up with the runway, a crosswind.

I CAN make it as wide as I want , but space is a premium because what I don't use is used for corn or beans. If dirt works out ok I will end up having very tall trees at one end and the crop on the other end. Along the other sides would be the crop and opposite would be my lawn.

I can imagine that dealing with corn is going to be much worse than beans because of the height. I know the tall trees are hard to deal with if I want to approach from that direction.

You made me have another idea: I don't think I would make 100' wide , but I could make an L shaped runway (2 of them really at 90 degrees from each other) That way I can land in any one of 4 directions. Maybe that would allow me to keep the width down to a minimum. Ha, the North/south one could be 600 ' long.

I was taught by a pattern pilot and was taught that landing and take off was part of the score. My wheels touch ground close to where they lifted off on take off, about ten feet to my side and about 10 feet in front of me. Wind doesn't factor into it. I don't do a lot of that thinking stuff when I fly, it just happens?? It may have something to do with what Ken mentioned, that pracitce stuff?

just keep practicing, and dont let a lil wind scare you, its like honing a knife, it will keep you thumb eye coordination razor sharp and ready to react to the wind......the day you fly in lil or no wind, all that practice will pay off and you'll appreciate those days a lot more....if you're not happy with an approach you can always go around...ive seen too many disasters that could have been avoided if they would have only gone around.
remember to flair and if you find yourself running out of elevator it might be nose heavy

There are just 3 rules which will guarantee that you always make the perfect landing.

















Unfortunately, no-one knows what they are!



.

Well, since you didn't specify those three rules, I'll do it for you.

Rule #1: Practice.
Rule #2: More practice
Rule #3: Even more practice.

Hmmm.. seems I've read this somewhere before.. (see pretty much all of the above posts).

Nothing succeeds like success. The more you practice your approach and landing techniques the more you will learn about your plane and the better you will be. This means practice during all conditions.

As Gray Beard said, pattern scores you on both the take off and landing. That's where I started practicing my landings, was as I was learning the basics of the Sportsman Category of Pattern flying. Although I don't compete, I took a lot away from all those drills my instructor gave me and, even today, run my first tank of fuel doing nothing but honing up on my approaches and landings as well as doing some "emergency" procedures.. ie: climb high somewhere in the sky and drop the throttle to idle and bring it in to a good clean approach to landing.. apply power on final, go around, and do it again somwhere else in the sky.

All this does two things: It keeps you sharp in your approaches and gets you in tune to when (not if.. it will happen to us all) that engine quits.

CGr.

Guvar, put a wind sock out in the area you want to put your runway and watch it for a while (weeks, months) and cut your runway in the same direction as the prevailing winds in your area.

That's exactly what one of my clubs in Calif. did. The runway was perfect for the prevailing wind directions. Then during the turn of the season the wind would come in from the opposite direction. I was both shocked and amazed at how many people couldn't land from right to left. You do tend to get into a habit. One day I took a pilot that couldn't take off or land in what he thought of as the wrong direction across to the other side of the runway, problem solved.

Touch and Go's are helpful.
I don't know why, but I really enjoy them - the hint is to practise them on days where the wind keeps you from any sort of precision flying, such as pattern aerobatics. I was initially hesitant to fly in windy weather, entirely because of worries on the landing approach and takeoff, but a few days of non-stop touch and go's in gusting conditions eliminated this!

As for the original question - it sounds like the real problem isn't because the pilots are loosing perception on their groundspeed, but because they are landing at an odd angle. A proper crosswind landing, with either a low wing for a "kickout" style approach or crabbing will keep your aircraft under control and at a safer attitude. Maybe it's just me, but flying towards the pilots and spectators sounds a bit scary.

You are so right. At first, I had difficulty making right turns, of all things. But doing repeated figure eights cured me of that problem. BUT, what I DID do one day was somewhat embarassing... I started out flying my good old trusty Skylark 70. I took off, the take off seemed long, but what the heck.. I flew around and then set up for a landing. The darned landing was long too, but I managed to get it on the ground.

My answer to that was it was because I hadn't been out at the field in a couple months and I was just getting back into the groove so my timing was off and my approach was a tad rusty.

I did this a few times and noted that I just had to reduce throttle a bit sooner.

Well, after I landed for the, oh, 5th time, I was discussing something with one of the instuctors when he said "Hey.. good deal practicing downwind landings.. you never know when you will really need to do that".

Well, I believe he was being nice.. rather than saying "Hey idiot, why don't you land into the wind?"

So, I smiled, thanked him for his astute observation, and turned the thing around and began to take off and land INTO THE DARNED WIND!!!!

What was more embarassing was that I was staring right at the darned wind sock!!! [X(]

CGr.

I learned to fly at a field that had a runway on a knoll at the top of a hill.  You flew in level and the ground met your wheels at the highest spot.  In addition, there was a tree-line and a dirt road just behind it.  Between the wind eddys and the heat off the road followed by a down-draft from the cooler trees and swirling wind rolling across the knoll it was a notorious spot for those that liked a long and low approach.  Funny thing is the calm days were worse because you didn't have the headwind to reduce your speed over ground.

I'll add to the discussion that landings ate like hammers: you need different styles for different jobs.  Yes, a trainer is throttle dependant for elevation and, ideally, you run out of air and throttle at the same instant with a level elevator.  Not so sport models.  Or most biplanes.  I land most of my low-wing sporty models as good or better with a dead stick than I do a powered landing.  And with biplanes yopu geep up more power and fly them into the ground carefully . . . at least I do.  Then get on the elevator to keep them from nosing over.

Here's a practice drill for those of you with simulators.  Set your rudder trim full to one side or the other and then land.  Responses will be similar to a cross-wind landing in a good breeze.  There is nothing as pretty as a good Cub pilot who crabs in his model gracefully in a sidewind.  You can do it with anything but the slower ones show it off more.

Then there are take-offs.

I also had an old curmudgeon of an instructor who was a pattern flyer and he insisted on a scale take-off at about 25° angle.  Most of my models have bocu power and I have to conciously force myself to do that; but it is still my habit because it looks nice.  Next time at the field watch how many ballistic take-offs you see vs. a steady roll-out and climb to gain airspeed and height.  The warbird guys get to be experts at this: tail "flying" while the wheels are still on contact with the ground.  Also watch how many guys "cheat" and take off across a runway rather than use the rudder to keep it down the center.  Sure, you can do a torque roll, but can you take off properly?</p>

That is so true that my instructor made me overshoot the final turns just before start final approaching to the landing strip, making a big semi-circle, so I could see the attitude better.

Turning into final leg too early is the main cause of undesired stalls.

When forced to approach toward myself, like during dead sticks, I try to focus on not to exceed the critical AOA (around 10 degrees) by looking at the top of the wing.

Stalls only happen for excessive AOA, never for insufficient air speed.

That's why I miss the little red flag on a 72mhz Tx...

I can see how laning at a distance can be a problem. It definitely much harder to judge you rate of descent and airspeed from a distace and I have learned this the hard way with some bad deadsticks ealy on in my RC flying career. The one thing that helped me more than anything has been intentional deadstick landings. This is not to be done with a plane you care to much about. A old trainer works well. I used my Tower Hobbies trainer.

I started out by pulling to idle at some point in the down wind and just practicing hitting a pre determined spot. I still hd the engine if I needed it but tried not to use it. When I could land right in front of me consistantly I started killing the engine in the downwind and putting in the same spot. Pretty much the same but no insurane if I misjudged the glide slope. After I got comfortable with that I started killing it much higher in the sky so I had to make some S turns, spirals, or slips to judge my energy to still hit the spot. Once I got a handle on that I had my buddy fly the plane and a random he would kill the engine and hand me the radio. From there you have to think quickly and make good decision to use the engergy you have avaible to put the plane safely down on the runway.

I now do a slightly less dangerous (for the model) version of this with all my planes. When I first get a plane I spend a great deal of time doing touch and goes and deadsticks just to get a good handle on the glide slope and slow speed hadling for each plane. Keeping the plane closer to you as the pilot is critical in the take off and landing phase of flight.

I really dont think people spend enough time practicing landiings. It is easy to see everytime I go to the local field to fly. So really it just comes down to PRACTICE!!!!!!