I have been flying my Avistar for the season having soloed in the spring. I am comfortable flying and doing basic aerobatics. I am good at landings in mild winds. However, I am still having trouble with throttle management into a wind with gusts or with a cross wind. I am having trouble telling the speed of the plane. I had my first crash because of wind speed change and stalling before I could adjust.

There has been a lot of discussion on landing but I just couldn't find specific input on throttle other than maintain height with it. Is there anything other than amount and how "mushy" the elevator feels to tell the speed of the plane on approach? When the plane is wing edge on coming straight at you there isn't any visual clue so it seems like control feel is all you have. I guess I need to just keep the plane's nose slightly down and keep my throttle ready to keep it up.

My plane was an RTF and fixing it was fun. I liked learning about how the plane is constructed and have a lot more confidence that I could build a good kit. I did learn about the weakness of the Avistar tail. :-)

My next plane will be a Four Star 60 but I will start with the Avistar again in the spring to get my feel back. This forum has helped a great deal with that decision and I thank you all.

jmps,

When landing into a strong wind you can do two things have a steeper shorter final approach this will allow more airspeed without idling up or you can increase throtle and stay with a flatter approach the problem is in judging airspeed to prevent a stall as you already found out. The only answer I have for you is practice provides an instintive feel for what is too little or too much throtle during landings

Keep your speed up and fly the plane to the ground. As soon as the wheels touch, pull the throttle all the way back.

A good thing to do is to pretend that the runway is about 50 feet higher than it actually is. Practice landing on that imaginary field up there; it will tell you how fast or slow to go, and what kinds of rudder and elevator imputs to put in. Then after a few passes, make the field 20 feet high, and so on until you're comfortable with how the plane reacts. No matter what you read in here about specifics, every plane and wind condition is slightly differient, so the best way to learn this skill is to practice. A strong headwind usually requires a few more clicks of power on final, as too little power will make the plane wallow around a bit. Once you have the plane down close to the runway, you can back off of the throttle, as the plane should slow down quicker in a headwind than not. Again, practice up high a bit to find out the exact inputs you need to make.

Also on a windy duy the wind speed drops quite a bit below roughly three ft. so if your going along at 20 mph and you drop below that height it drops to 10 mph and it just quits flying . So best to keep the speed up.

One thing that may help you is to start noting on a calm day the attitude of your airplane at landing speeds. is it flat, nose down, or nose high? also, make a mental note of where your throttle typically is on a calm day when on short final and just before landing flare. keep in mind, what's keeping your airplane flying is the speed of the air flowing over your wings, not your speed in relation to the ground.

Once you have your power settings and attitude memorized, you apply it on days with more wind. At first this may feel awkward because the plane seems very slow, but remember the air flowing over you wings is still fast even though your groundspeed is slow.

On gusty days you may want to have a bit more power in case you have a sudden wind drop on final.

Thanks for the tips everyone. I did practice some landings in gusty conditions yesterday. Keeping a little throttle helped calm the plane on landing. I landed a little faster than on calm days but it was much easier.