Several weeks ago, I was flying my Skylark 70. The take off rolls seemed to be much longer than I originally remembered, but what the heck.. fly the darned thing.

Then, I realized that the landing was much longer than usual, too. We have a 3500 x 250 foot runway (Forestry Service landing strip for their air tanker).

Anyway, I did several of those take-off's and landing's when, on approach, one of our club instructors came up to me and commented about my practicing downwind takeoffs and approaches.. Jeech, I thought, he must be on drugs or something.. then I realized that it was ME that was really out of whack!! So, I just said that 'practice makes perfect, then turned it around and landed in the wind.

Oops..

Did you hear the one about the pilot that was landing and noted that the runway was very short, but extremely wide?

Ba-da-boom!!

One problem with re-trimming a model for approach is when you forget to reset the trim for the next flight. I've seen more than one model get into trouble when the pilot forgot to retrim before take-off.

My Twist 60 is a prime example of retrimming a plane. As it burns off fuel the CG moves aft requiring trim changes during flight. When I fly a full tank out and dead stick I have added 5 clicks of down elevator trim. There have been a couple of times I taken off and found it way out of trim and remembered I neglected to reset the trim after I landed. [X(]

When I fly fullscale I always use the trim during all phases of flight. For models I trim the plane for cruise flight and dont' worry about it after that. The only change I would do for retrimming would be an elevator/flap couple using a computer mix if necessary - then its set once and not worried about. Otherwise I prefer to feel what the plane is doing.

Hogflyer

None of my planes fly the same, so there is a bit of difference from one to the next. At the beginning of the decent on the down wind leg, I come back to a throttle setting that gives a decent rate that looks right and feed in up elevator to start slowing the airplane down. More up elevator is given through-out the whole way down the glide path. I use coordinated turns onto base and final, rolling into and out of the turns with aileron and coordinating the turn and countering adverse yaw with rudder. More elevator is needed in the turns and given then backed off of when the plane is leveled again. I use throttle to control the decent rate. I can't give a you definative amount of stick travel used on the decent as it is what ever it takes to do what needs to get done.

Many times the turn from downwind to final is one big turn with no defined base leg.

I don't use the trim to hold back pressure as like many have said, then I would need to go back to neutral before the next take off.

I would have thought this thread to be interesting to beginners. Chances are fairly good a beginner could take off and fly around some before crashing. A discussion on how to land should be helpful, I would think.

After landing short of the runway more than just a few times, I concentrated on determining why that was happening. How can I miss the whole darn runway. Well, I have seen that hundreds of times. The reason is rather interesting. Since a number of full scale pilots have all ready commented on this subject let me point out that if you are in the cockpit looking down at the beginning of the runway, you can clearly see where the runway starts. Well, in R/C the actual fact is that you do not know where the end of the runway is relative to the plane. Our telescopic vision allows us to determine distance up to about 17 feet. That is called Depth Perception. Just 17 feet. Look it up in Google. In average conditions you do not know where the plane is relative to the end of the runway until it touched down. By then it is too late to do anything about it. The plane is where it is. After I sorted all this I decided I wanted to have more control of where I touched down. I do that by selecting a favoring position at the field to stand at. I then attempt to touch down in front of me. That way I know where the plane is. At our field we have trees and building on each end of the field, and the only way to miss them, since there is no way to know where they are relative to my plane, is to have sky under the plane whenever possible. My final starts out very steep. I use elevator to shorten the approach and throttle to extend it. I make many elevator/throttle/rudder/aileron corrections to get it to touch down close to in front of me. Doing this in high gusting winds is a tremendous adrenalin rush. Most people seem to land the plane where ever the plane decides. They hit the trees or land short of the runway and do not know why. I hit a tree about every 5-6 years. I know why. Does this make sense to anyone?

Yes, the old flying field the old club flew from had a pine plantation at one end, about one hundred feet from the threshold. These trees are 50-60 feet tall now and is why there is a new place we fly at. However, when the trees were 30-40 feet tall, you could land from that direction doing the following. Stand near the threashold and always keep the airplane above the high horizon the trees made. When you know the plane is close to you, you can let it dip below the treeline.

Another method I use is watching the plane; but, also observing with peripheral vision, when it's shadow crosses onto the runway. Naturally this only works when there is sunlight enough to cast a shadow and the shadow is cast in a direction that is helpful for this to work. Our runway is maybe 600 feet long and 300 feet wide. My airplanes stop rolling, after 50-100 feet. The field is big enough that touching down on the threashold is not important. Generally I fly from mid field and I land at mid field.

The old runways at the old field were two crossed runways at 300 in length, one 75 feet wide and one 50 feet wide. The new field being so much bigger has made me much more sloppy about hitting a spot, then I was flying from the small field.

Villa,

It makes sence.

Every runway has an approach pattern.

JMO,

Bob

If you do a lot of landings, eventually you get pretty good

... assuming your plane/s last long enough for you to get good, and then you go to a new field and suddenly you're nowhere near as good. I see it all the time where I fly - we have a main runway with two diagonal runways running off it (like a letter K where the vertical's the main runway) for when we have strong cross winds. I, like most members of the club, can put my plane down in the middle of the main runway with my eyes closed, but put me on one of the cross runways and I blunder about, often finding the longer grass at the edge, or trying to put it down 2/3 the way along the cross runway. I actually prefer to land on the main in a cross wind than use the cross strips. (Hmm maybe I should rebuild my old trainer and practice cross strip landings.)

I experienced that myself but to add on the problem I was dead stick. Needless to say I overshot and landed in a drop off where I couldn't see the plane

Yep, you only get one shot when you're dead stick... actually the only time I succesfully used one of our cross strips was on my last lesson when I was going for my Bronze Wings (Australian solo flight qualifications). I'd just taken off and the instructor's plane flamed out as I turned onto the downwind leg. I made the call "Deadstick. Landing on the cross.", turned it onto the strip fairly tight onto the cross trip approach to bleed off some height, put it down about 1/3 the way along the cross and was slow enough by the time I came to the end of it to turn onto the main and finish my roll-out. My instructor just looked at me and said "Congratulations. You just earned your wings." You think I've been able to hit that dang cross strip square on since then though?

Would you guys agree; landing on a smaller field is beneficial to precision? I even think it is beneficial to emergancy (dead stick) landings. With the small field, I had specific locations and altitudes I felt the plane needed to be at, in the pattern. If I couldn't make one of these locations, I adjusted the flight path to try and make the next one, etc...

Self taught newbie so DO NOT DO AS I DO. Although I've only crashed once on my second flight (forgot to scope out the ant.). with the trainer I fly it out, cut the throttle, turn(the right way), dive for the run way, pullup to stall,dive again,level out,a lil nose up, float,float,float,more elev up.float, float ,float ,THROW RADIO DOWN RUN OUT AND CATCH IT..... REALLY it's all true but the catching part..... The best landing I ever did out of my dozen or so flights was the first time up ever. Dead stick from way the hell out and about 4 foot of roll after touch down. most of them now are controlled crashes usually laughing my a88 off while trying to land

I would say yes, but a good landing in different conditions is distinct from just getting it down in reuseable form. Same with any field.

A former club I belonged to with a field atop a mountain and unreachable in snow used to ski-fly in the winter at a small town park with a minimal softball/baseball diamond beside a river. Totally surrounded by large trees. It was a steep approach, and from the river side the downdraft was fierce. That little field was a tough one for the larger/faster moders, but a blast none the less. For a long time I carried a "lucky twig" in my flightbox that the model brought me after passing through one of those trees. I landed it with a section of branch passing completely through one wing panel after getting "a little close" to one of the tree tops.

Now if you take a foamie or SPAD that can be hand launched or landed in 15 feet after a hover it's kind of a poor comparison to a Kaos or a WWII warbird that need a longer approach and roll-out.