Hi this may sound strange but everyone at the field keeps telling me to "stay off the elevator". When I started flying trainers on final approach they would tell me to stay off the elevator until I was about to touchdown and then begin flare. I got that down pat, now recently I've been having motor issues and a couple deadsticks that didn't end well. Again they tell me the elevator caused a stall and that I shoulve let it fly in instead. It doesn't make any since to me... If I let go of the elevator the plane is going to fall, not glide. Is there some kind of trick to doing this? Sorry if this sounds crazy but any advice would be great

If the airplane is rigged and balanced properly. It should find the ideal airspeed and flight level all by it self. When you give it up elevator you increase the angle of attack. That slows the airspeed and shortly reduces the lift. You should have the trim set for the best glide when approaching to land. With trainers they have so much drag that you can fly with the same trim all of the time. As you fly more capable airplanes you will not be able to fly with out changing trim from power flight to glide.

Hey ib88,
Yes, your elevator will cause a stall if you lose airspeed because you are losing the lift of the air over the wing surface. As you apply UP elevator to climb, your airspeed is reduced as the airflow is reduced & the opposite with DOWN elevator will increase your airspeed as you gain more lift with the increase in airflow. Every type of airframe will have differing stall speeds that can be determined by a simple "in-air" stall test at a good altitude....some have a gentle stall characteristic, & others will have a much more drastic effect. A plane won't "fall" if it has enough airspeed. There are quite a few airframes that need power when landing unless it is a deadstick, in which case a very steep approach to maintain airspeed is dictated. Upon a landing approach, you need to maintain airspeed as your altitude diminishes until you can apply some UP elevator for the slowdown to touchdown. Practice.....no such thing as "too much".

Denny

When a plane goes "dead stick" (the engine stops running), choosing when to land is no longer optional, you ARE going to land and SOON! Now with that said and accepted as a fact you must also accept that gaining altitude is no longer possible, so if the plane is anywhere close to properly trimmed NO UP elevator should be imputed. If you were to apply up elevator with no thrust (engine not running) that slows the airspeed of the plane and when you loose enough airspeed the the wing no longer generates enough lift to overcome gravity's pull and down goes the plane. Now with the plane no longer going fast enough to keep it flying, you also loose roll, pitch and yaw control because there isn't enough air going over the control surfaces for them to be effective. Now correct action when a dead stick occurs would be to immediately slightly drop the nose, allowing the now un-powered aircraft to maintain sufficient air speed to continue to generate adequate lift and airflow over the control surfaces for directing the airplane back the the runway by the shortest route possible. It is now a "judgement call" based on your experience with the aircraft being flown whether you have enough altitude given the gliding ability of the plane to be able to set up for a "normal" into the wind landing approach, a down wind landing approach, or land it crossways on the runway. What you can not do is apply up elevator to to try to keep the plane in the air longer to make it to the runway. If you do (and you fellow flyers say you did) that's when you bleed off enough air speed that lift and control are lost and the plane crashes. If you don't have enough altitude to glide the plane back to the runway you must quickly pick the spot to touch down that will do the least damage to the plane that the plane will be able to glide to. Normally with a trainer type aircraft they glide quite well (and far) so if you have any altitude to work with coming back to the runway with a dead stick is very doable. If you loose an engine on takeoff (worst case senairo) and have little or no altitude you must slightly drop the nose and pick a spot straight ahead of the plane to put it back down. If there is runway left ahead, use it, if not pick the best place that will do the least damage. It's not likely you can turn around and come back to the runway but that is again a judgement call based on what you know the plane can do. What you should do is to practice dead sticks by at various places in your flying pattern at your field, "give yourself" a dead stick by shutting you engine back to idle and seeing how far you can get back into landing position with the engine just at idle, land it that way if you can, and if you can't make back to the runway power up and go around. Don't shut your engine off, just back to an idle to do this exercise. Do this over and over and you will be ready to do the right thing when a real dead stick does occur. When I was learning to fly, my instructor would reach over to my TX and shut the engine back to an idle (when I wasn't expecting it) and say " OK, big boy what are you going to do now, and don't touch the throttle"! It was a good learning exercise. I would drop the nose a little and fly it on in and now dead sticks are mostly a "non issue" when they happen. I hope this simple explanation helps you and please do the practice dead sticks on yourself, it will become a fun challenge while you're flying.

Thanx for the replies, these guys were pretty much saying the same thing, just not as thorough. One of them did mention pointing the nose down elevator but never up. It's still kind of unclear but I understand what yall are trying to say, it just doesn't seem it would go very far without the up elev. good point on picking a spot that would do the least damage.

When I started with a trainer I had a ton of deadsticks and did it perfect everytine. The p51 crashed twice from deadsticks, it just falls like a rock with or without elevator, and today I crashed the fazer trying to bleed off air downwind and ran out of runway and tried to turn around at the end when it went down. Maybe I got used to deadsticks in the trainer, cuz it just floats all day with up elev. but these planes are a whole different story.

imblaze88, Being that this question was in the beginner's forum, I assumed you were flying a trainer type aircraft. I don't know what a "fazer" is but a P-51, or any warbird of that type and era, requires a lot steeper decent rate to maintain "flying speed". And by "flying speed" in this case I mean the ability to control the direction of the aircraft so you are able to direct the plane to the selected landing spot, be it the runway or an area of least likely damage. Most biplanes are much like warbirds in a dead stick situation in that they must also be pointed down at much steeper angle than a trainer in order to keep the airspeed up enough to have control of it. Drag is the reason for biplanes needing a steep decent rate. I think with warbirds "wing loading" plus drag are what slows them down if you don't point them down enough to keep the airspeed up. In any case, with any airplane, each time you move a control surface that creates additional drag and it slows the airspeed down. Also, when you do bank a plane to turn (slight "roll" motion) you loose lift because now the wings are not at 90 degrees from "Mr Gravity" and his pull downward is greater, you loose altitude. Keep your control surface use to an absolute minimum, keep the nose pointed down, keep your airspeed up, yell "dead stick" so your fellow flyers give you the runway, and take the shortest route back to the runway. If you had to do a crossways runway landing because you couldn't do an upwind or downwind approach, of course don't aim the plane toward the pit/spectator area, do those at one end or the other of the runway where you won't hit anything or anybody. There are an endless amount of "variables" involved in each deadstick case and practice and experience with the aircraft will help you set the decent rate and landing target to keep damage to a minimum. As my instructor (who would shut my engine to an idle) would say, "altitude is your friend" !

It's all about conservation of energy. ESPECIALLY with the higher wing loading of fighters. You trade altitude for speed. And fighters stall at higher speeds. Trying to nurse the glide by lifting the nose robs you of speed and you stall. DO NOT get fancy and try and turn downwind. If you blow the one chance - that's it. That costs you double. You drop faster because of the loss of wind, speed and altitude. Better to put it in the weeds under some control.

Practice with a sailplane on your sim. They teach you how to manage energy.

Get your self a glider and you will find out quickly what the elevator does.

When dead stick the most important thing to remember is airspeed, once that is done don't forget airspeed, oh did I mention airspeed. See a common thread here.
Airspeed is more important than making the runway. The only reason I can see holding up elevator is you're trying to get back to the runway.
Elevator controls speed a bit of up elevator slows the airplane down, since you're dead stick you can't add power to compensate. Down elevator using gravity will keep the airspeed up. Airspeed is more important then making the runway. I was in an IMAC competition once and on my first vertical up line went dead stick.
all I could do was get airspeed I flipped the airplane on it's back, rolled wings level, never raised the nose. Did not make the runway, but made a nice landing in the grass.
hope this helps

We have a 2,000 ft runway at my club and there is oodles of room to land. But, sure enough, when a dead-stick occurs there are those who don't want the walk of shame to retrieve a model and instead try and make the turn approach back. So instead of the walk of shame they have a walk of shame carrying a garbage bag full of parts.

Worse - last fun fly (six pilot stations) we had a pilot dead stick and turned back into the pattern down-wind to land! Just totally lost all composure - and it was a 1/4 scale J-3 Cub that is a good choice if you do have to dead-stick. He made it in but it caused some excitement when the other pilots had to scatter. And there was easily 600 ft of runway he could have used if he just continued straight when he flamed out. Apparently he'd never done much glider work - where EVERY flight is a dead-stick.

I had a Kangke 50 glow engine and that was an excellent tool for practicing dead-sticks. No kidding - I had at least 9 dead-sticks for every 10 take-offs before I retired it (though with a Perry Carb replacement it is now very reliable).

One thing that hasn't been detailed here yet is that a 'trimmed' airplane flys at the one airspeed where the four forces lift, weight, thrust and drag are balanced.

If all you do to that airplane is change its thrust then it will change something else until those four forces are once again balanced at the same airspeed. If you take your trainer trimmed to fly straight and level hands off and you just add more throttle, then it will start to climb. If you had an airspeed indicator you would find out that it was climbing at the same airspeed it was trimmed to fly straight and level.

Likewise if all you do from cruise is chop the throttle to idle, or kill the engine, AND DO NOTHING ELSE, then the nose will drop to a point where gravity is providing enough "thrust" to once again balance the airplane at the same air speed. It will be gliding at the same speed it was flying at under power at cruise.

Now as said above if you raise the nose of the plane by giving it up elevator you are now changing that balance point and the plane will fly at a slower airspeed. Raise the nose too much with too much elevator and the increased drag will cause the plane to stall.

As the pro-glider guys have said, in most cases, if you are high enough, you have enough energy at cruise to make it back to the field without doing anything but a gentle turn.

Raising the elevator, raises the angle of attack on the wing, which increases lift for a few degrees and then drastically starts increasing drag which will cause the plane to slow down and stall.

As a general rule of thumb with virtually all planes, if the engine quits, add two to four clicks of 'up' trim on the elevator. If you are down wind of yourself aim the plane at the end fo the runway, wait for it to get to the runway then flair and land. If you are up wind, turn the shortest angle that will get you across from the end of the runway on the down wind leg. When even with the end of the runway do a GENTLE 180 turn and line up with the runway and land.

It's been said many times, but the best resource for learning how an airplane flies from the pilot's perspective is the book "Stick and Rudder" by Wolfgang Langewiesche. That book has been in print since the 1940's and has never gone out of date. While it's not "scientific", it presents all of the airplane's flight characteristics from the pilot's point of view and perception. It works for model airplanes as well as the full-size ones it was written about.