Hello everyone. Following my last post I have made the plunge and ordered the Trojan by parkzone. Its at home today and I will be putting it together later. One question, I intended to hand launch it but is it possible to land a plane like this anywhere except short grass or concrete. All the large areas around me are grassy and there isnt really a good place with short grass.

Let me know if you have any advise.

Adam_Fozz

Try a school parking lot on a weekend

If this is your first plane I would not advise a hand launch.

Even with experience you want the first flight to be off a hard surface to give you the opportunity to trim out the plane.

You need to do this before you attempt a hand launch lest you end up with a very fast air to ground missle.

The wheels are too small for anything but very short ( think putting green ) grass, packed dirt, or asphalt.

They will catch in grass and the plane will nose in hard at landing.

A skilled and experienced flyer could perform a "stall" landing with a bit of headwind, to plunk it down on the grass.

If you must land on grass, you might want to consider removing the wheels ( after your first flights ), and placing strong ( with thead mesh ) packing tape along the belly. Also skid guards would help protect the wings. Some people also tape the leading edges of planes that will be landing in the grass w/o gear.

The Park zone T-28 has plenty of power to do a takeoff roll....but I don't think a hand launch would be a wise idea.....You need grass short almost like a putting green...best solution would be a parking lot as mentioned above

I was able to successfully take my T-28 off from a short section of street. However, when landing, I had the bright idea that I would put her down into tall grass. The grass might be softer, I thought. The front wheel caught and I snapped the entire front of the fuselage off on a rather gentle landing! You need a flat, hard concrete type surface for both take offs and landings, I believe.

I've changed her to a tail dragger since I had so many problems with the front wheel catching on my present very rough grass/clay/divot marked landing strip.
regards, Rich

Thats what I was worried about! Here in the uk the only parking lots are in the town with houses around. Will have to have a think about it. There are areas of road I could take off from but the chances of me getting back to there for a landing are small since they are so thin. Short grass might be available around some parks or something...

...Maybe the high school soccer pitch might be short enough. Will go take a look tomorrow.

Let me know if anyone else has any ideas or experiance in this area.

Thank you,
Adam_Fozz

Packed dirt will work fine for your first flights.

After you have it flying properly you can remove the wheels and toss the plane forward to get it flying.