_777th_Wake

I'm getting my aerobatics down in my Supertsar, loops, rolls, hammerheads, inverted flight and what not. But I have not been able to get the bounce out of my landing. I'll often get 3 bounces and have a prop strike killing the engine. Fancy! [&:] I know I'm touching down wrong somehow, any suggestions?

Crashem

you might be stalling the model just before touching down try to fly it down i.e land alittle faster with a flatter angle and flair when you are less the 1 foot off the ground

a65l

My Feedback: (17)

With wire landing gear, you really have to finesse your landings to keep the plane from bouncing. Best suggestion I can make is slow it down as much as you can, if you can try and fly along about a foot off the runway untill it just drops of its own accord. You also could try a smaller nose landing gear wheel, try and give the wing negative incidence with the plane sitting on the ground. Also release the elevator as soon as the plane touches down.... HTH

Andy

FHHuber

One cause of bouncing the landings (like a pogo stick) is the nosewheel being too long in relation to the mains. After a few hard landings, the mains tend to spread out and the tail gets closer to the ground. You have to occasionally bend the mains back to bring the tail end up.

It will help also if just as the wheels are about to touch down, you start feeding in up elevator to see how long you can keep the nosewheel off the ground.

MinnFlyer

My Feedback: (4)

The landing gear is the first thing I'd check too.

It's ok for the plane to sit "Slightly" nose up, but only 1 or 2 degrees.

Crashem

777th_Wake,

after reading all the posts you received it occured that this is Exactly where this forum or any other falls flat on its face. All the suggestions are good but since none of us have seen the model or your flying style its extremely difficult to correctly diagnose the problem and come up with a solution. May I suggest that you get one or two "good" pilots and modelers to test fly and check your model over I'd be willing to bet that you'll get your problem fixed in less time then it took to read the responses to this thread

Jim Finn

My Feedback: (2)

Bounce free landings! Works great! You can drop the plane from 3 feet and it hits the ground like mud does. No bounce! I have used this set up on 9 pound Astro Hogs and on a TigerKitten and on a Super Kaos.

Chris-_-Memphis

My Feedback: (3)

jim .. what kind of setup is that lol

flyinrog

My Feedback: (1)

Thats a cool set up Jim..I dont have this problem as I dont have landing gear,, I belly in deadstick every time.....Rog

MinnFlyer

My Feedback: (4)

Jim, you have too much time on your hands

But that rocks!

Carlos Murphy

My Feedback: (72)

I'm assuming your plane is a "tail dragger" so the problem is a simple one to remedy. The speed of your plane on landing is not that critical, don't try to flair a tail dragger, just as the main wheels touch the ground, GET OFF THE ELEVATOR!!!

As soon as the wheels touch, go to neutral elevator and the plane will stick and run tail high down the runway while slowing down.

I've done this hundreds of times with my H-9 PT 19, Great Planes Spacewalker, World Mustangs, Spitfire and all other tail draggers I've flown, piece O cake.

Geistware

My Feedback: (16)

I would recommend that you throttle up before landing to smooth out the touchdown. Many people flair on landing and if you get the timing down, it works, If you throttle up to prevent from stalling, it works better.

FHHuber

The SuperStar (Hobbico's SuperStar...) is a typical tricycle gear trainer.

RCaillouet3

Without knowing a little more, I can only speculate. If you are flying off pavement, then making really nice landings are tough, but manageable. On grass, the landing issue gets a little easeier.

Now with this being said, a good landing is generally always a product of a good approach! One thing you may have is an inconsistent approach path and speed. This is one area most people forget about. You want to strive to make your approach the exact same way evertime! If for nothing else it gets you eyes used to seeing everything the same way and lets your mind think of nothing more than the flare.

The flare, this is one of the most difficult things to do properly, but is one of the most simple to understand. All you are really doing when flaring to land is to arrest you sink rate and raise the nose of the airplane to a nose high position. If you are to fast on your approach, then the airplane will appera to "float" down the runway. If you are too slow in your approach ... well the bad things that this can cause are too numerous to go into here! So the best thing is to keep a little (key word is LITTLE) extra spped during an approach.

As to how I teach an approach and landing is simple. If the airplane is pointing slightly nose down, then you are flying down! You don't want to be flying an approach with the nose high, this could lead to rapid airspeed loss and stalling the airplane! So, the easiest way to fly your approach is to point the nose down to the descent rate you want and adjust power for airspeed.

NOW BEFORE EVERYONE GETS ON ME FOR THAT ONE, pitch and power BOTH play a factor in the sink rate and speed of an aircraft, I know! But once you realize that you have the landing idea down pat! But at first lets give someone somewhere to start that will keep them from ending up with a nose high airplane with no power trying to make an airplane sink. That phase of flying is dangerous for a beginner.

Now that you have the proper descent path set up, you should be in a nose DOWN angle with little power (around 20%.) Once you get over the runway, or can make a safe glide to the runway, and are hopefully around eye level above the runway reduce power to idle. If the engine is at idle with the airplane still 100 feet in the air, you may be trying to come in with to steep and approach angle, go around and try again! Now what is an airplane with NO power ... A BRICK! The airplane will naturally fall from the sky. So don't worry about making it come to earth it will do it on its own! What we want to be concerned with is ARRESTING that fall! How do we do that? Easy, the airplane in a nose low attitude is actually flying forward, and this gives you energy! We need to use that forward energy to arrest the downward energy by pullting back on the elevator stick! This does 2 things it will raise the nose AND slow the airplane! Now we don't want to get the airplane to slow! So as soon as the airplane is in an attitude that will NOT let a nose wheel hit the ground first, you are set up for landing. Just hold that attitude until the airplane is a 6" - 12" off the ground and if the airplane starts to sink to fast, pull back SLIGHTLY on the elevator. This will level the airplane off for a second as the speed slows down, and then the airplane will start to slowly sink again. If the airplane starts to sink to fast again, repeat procedure above until you have the elevator full back. If the airplane is not on the ground by the time you have gotten to a full back elevator stick position, you may want to add power and go around and try it all over again!

This is called a full stall landing!

If you fly a tail dragger, then you have the option of doing what is called a Wheel Landing. This is essentially the same except that your approach is made with SLIGHTLY more speed. You want get the airplane in a wings level attitude 6" - 12" from terra firma. Now hold that pitch until the airplane sinks to the ground. If sink is too much, use same process as above but with verly slight movement of the stick! You ideally want to touch down in a levle attitude with SLIGHTLY more speed than the previous described landing. What you are doing is flying it onto the runway istead of stalling it onto the runway. The key to this landing is that the istant the main gear touch the ground, release elevator stick (and in some cased add a small amount of FORWARD stick pressure) to make the tail stay up in the air while the mains are "forced" onto the ground slight by the airplane's pitching slightly downward.

A whell landing is a very graceful manuever!!! But it takes a lot of practice!!!

With this bit of info, your landing may come out better. But the whole issues with good landings are good approaches and gentle movements of the controls!

Thanks,

Reg

Carlos Murphy

My Feedback: (72)

Ditto on everything you said, I use and teach the same methods all the time.
Sometimes I see a pilot bouncing his plane off the runway consistently and I'll go stand behind him and whisper in his ear " on your next approach don't let the plane touch the runway, concentrate on keeping it off the runway and it will settle all by itself " and then I usually hear "OOOH, that was neat".
I've worn a quarter inch off the tail skid on my new World Mach 1 trainer, great airplane.

DBCherry

My Feedback: (4)

I'll make one comment; ALL of this, from passing the runway threshold to touchdown, will take no more than about 5 to 8 seconds, so it's a lot to remember/think about. (Watch the second hand on a clock.)

I'm guessing that you're not too far from good landings. Most likely, you're touching down nose low (nose wheel first), OR touching down with too much speed. Yes, it's also possible to stall the plane just before touchdown and have it bounce, but it's much less likely. Besides, bouncing 3 times tells me you're carrying too much speed.

As was mentioned; if you're flying from a paved runway the bounce is much more likely to occur.

Good luck,
Dennis-

sdavied

My Feedback: (4)

Bouncing on landing is almost always the result of having too much airspeed at the point of touch-down. I know from flying full scale airplanes that I sometimes will bounce back up into the air. Everytime it was because I had too much airspeed. Having the airplane stalled at the time the mains touch down is the ideal technique in landing. If I don't hear the stall warning screaming at me, I don't think it was a good landing.

The airplane doesn't need to have a nose down attitude for a good approach. The key is controlling the airspeed. This is done with adjusting the angle of attack. If you have a given angle of attack and a certain power setting, the plane will maintain altitude. If you decrease the power and keep the same AOA, the airplane will descend at the same airspeed. That being said, the airplane needs to slow down to land. You don't want to make an approach at cruise speeds. Final approach should be at an airspeed just a little above stall. (about 5 - 10 mph) This requires about a level attitude. Descending at a level attitude yields a positive AOA. This slows the plane in preparation for the flare. The trick is to hold the airplane just off the ground as long as you can.

In my opinion there are those who can land and those who just simply fly the plane to the ground. Landing is my favorite part of flying.

RCaillouet3

sdavied, has brought up some very good points. But 5-10 knots above stall in full scale, would be around 1-2 knots in RC. Not very good thing to be flying an RC airplane that close to stall. I agree with what you have said to some extent sdavied! I fly full scale airplanes as well. 80% of all places teach full stall landing as the correct approach, but this is not always correct.

An example of this is in the Fairchild Metro III that I fly. The stall speed is around 85 knots with full flaps, but our "ref" speed used for touchdown varies with our weight, and is generally around 110 knots! The reason that "ref' speed is sued in large category full scale planes is that "ref" is generally 1-5 knots on the "backside" of the power curve.

In simple terms the power curve is a 2 sided beast, and is simply the power needed to keep the airplane in the air. On the "front" side of the curve, power equals speed and pitch equals lift. An example is that if you have an airplane in cruise flight if you pitch up, you gain more altitude than you lose speed, and exact opposite for power.

On the "backside" of the power curve (slower than maximum lift to drag speed) you will have an excess in angle of attack and little forward airspeed. This means, that the wings are pitched up to the point that anymore pitch results in increassing more induced drag (remember that lift is 90 degrees to the angle of attack.) Imagine this for a momment to get a picture. The airplane is pitched up at a very high angle of attack but is traveling forward across the ground. Due to the wings being pointed upward, lift is actually pointing rearward to the realative motion of the airplane, instead of skyward like normal. Now in this area of flight, increasing pitch generally results in an ever DECREASING amount of speed, with little loss of altitude. This "region of reverse command" as I was taught it's name, it is CRITICAL to remember that POWER keeps you airborne, and PITCH keeps airspeed!!

Why does all this matter, easy if in a level attitude while doing an approach, it can be VERY easy to pitch up only to find that the airplane SLOWS down MORE. This can be VERY dangerous if low to the ground and with the resultling loss of airspeed! Stalling an airplane close to the ground, if not INTENDED for landing, can be VERY dangerous! Remember that when the wings stall, spins can occur!! This is why "ref" speed is important for large full scale airplanes, pitching up more say for a flare, does nothing below this point but to slow you further!

This is why I teach having a slight nose down approach, and only to raise the nose enough to keep it from hitting first! The approach I teach may result in longer landing distance required, but generally it is slightly safer. If you have an airspeed indicator that you could see the realative airspeed of the air passing over airplaneat all times, I would say yes, a nose level / slightly nose up approach would be fine! But for RC where that isn't possible, a nose low attitude for an approach would be much safer in keeping a plane from stalling at to low an altitude.

Don't get me wrong, sdavied! Your technique is perfectly acceptable! I just find the technique I use and teach to be slightly safer for RC use.



Carlos Murphy, THAT IS A GREAT TECHNIQUE!!! I never thought about whispering that to someone!! If you don't mind I am goona try that one too!!!


Thanks,

Reg

jucava

how much weight does those shock add?

Groucho fan

It sounds like you're coming in too fast, come in slower and at a shallower angle and flare when you're just above the ground.

Carlos Murphy

My Feedback: (72)

Come in over the threshold, apply full left rudder, apply full right aileron and full down elevator... your plane shouldn't bounce!!!

I think we've worn out this subject... just practice.

Chris-_-Memphis

My Feedback: (3)

i wanna know more about those shocks!

jettstarblue

I'll be a long winded as possible; bend your main L.G. back, just a bit. The C.ofG. should be 2-10 degrees AHEAD of the L.G. axel.
Oh, and slow 'er down a bit.

Jetts

MAJSteve

My Feedback: (-1)

What has worked for me over the past couple of years is to check the CG, probably tooooo nose heavy. Bring the CG back to level or a HAIR nose down. I've typically added about 1/2 to 1 oz of weight at the very end of the tail on mine.

Its amazing how easy it is to get the plane into a slightly nose high attitude without having it fly back into the air, and once the mains hit, you can pull back and have it run on the mains till the nose drops from lack of speed.

Since I've been doing this, I can grease almost every landing, but if I fly someone elses plane, I still bounce once in a while. And, like everyone says, make about 50 touch and goes a weekend and you'll get the muscle memory for landings.

One other thing is to NOT try and land on beginning of the runway. Try to hold it low and level as the airspeed bleeds off and try to have it hit the wheels right in front of you. A LOT easier to control the altitude if its closer.

Jim Finn

My Feedback: (2)

The shocks are alum. or plastic and weigh less than an ounce including the oil in them. The amt. of wire used is actually less than the original LG so the weight is about the same. The front wire swings in the mount and the rear one is fixed, so the wheel swings back and up when shock is compressed. The travel is about 3/4 inch and seems to be enough. They work very well and draw a crowd at the flight line. About 9 Lbs is the limit I think though. I paid about $14 for a set of two shocks. I have not tried to make anything with a steerable front one yet. I have only used this system on trike geared acft. I see no reason it won't work on a tail dragger though. I have only used it on low wing acft. wing mounted gear but I am sure it would work mounted in a fuselage on a high wing plane too.You can e-mail me and I can send you drawings via snail mail if you like. These are fun to make .