I've yet to take off myself however today I made my first landing. My instructor absolutely great, the man with the majic thumbs. I flew my spad in patterns and eights both ways and made a couple approaches. On final just as the plane passes me it revs up and I think that he has taken over control so I just let it go. It lands hard and bends the home made aluminum gear a little. Come to find out, he hadn't taken over at all, it was just running out of gas and reved up. Go figger. Next flight went better after remembering to reverse the xmitter I was using. That was wierd everything going backwards. Once we switched it all was fine and I made my first pass to land a little too high so I went around again. I cut the throttle on downwind and let it settle in on base it went by me about four feet above the ground and settled in for a three point landing. Some of the other guys asked who landed it me or Dave. Now thats a real compliment considering this fellows ability. I know it may not be a true solo but I feel real good that I got it on the ground and all in one piece. See a pic of my plane, built by my son-in-law. It has a OS .46LA Futaba radio and servos. Here's a pic.

Nice looking spad.
The thrill an instructor gets when a student does a smooth landing is exhilarating!

Congratulations! Keep up the good work!

Congrats!

My instructor had to tell all the other instructors that came out on Saturday how good my first landing was on Friday. It must be an instructor thing.

It was like this - "Hey XXX, this is YYY - he landed on his X flight and it was perfect".

So I'm guessing instructors like to brag about landings of students. I won't mention the second landing, or when he was showing me how to really slow down in a strong headwind and the wind stopped for a sec and the plane stalled at about 4 feet. We've both spent time in full scale planes and both of us said at the exact same time "Wind died, plane stalled". Kinda funny actually.

Wow you have landed before taking off. I think taking off is way easier.

i did too. i only did 2 flights on a buddy box and i felt ready to try to fly for myself, the take off was tricky cuz the plane gets really squirrly on the runway, when you land it is soo slow that it is easier to control IMHO.

My instructor had me do landings before takeoffs too. I think landing is easier to control too and as of yesterday, i've been cleared to solo at the feild i fly at.

I tend to work on landings with my students before takeoffs as well. Mostly because it's easier to teach that way, believe it or not.

First, I usually have the student doing the taxiing a bit, but I do the takeoff. The we start shooting approaches, working the throttle, and learning proper technique for not just the approach, but the abort and go-around and climb away.

Once they have that down, it's usually time to land anyway, so I get them to land it. Then I get to tell them that a fast taxi followed by the "go around" from an approach is basically a take off, with just the elevator work to avoid leaping off the ground too soon. So I get them to take off from that point. So I kind of get to teach them two things at once, .

As a side note, I've seen more "close calls" on bad take-offs at my field than on bad landings. Guys yanking it off the ground too soon and doing that classic stalling arc to the side and in to the ground. And it seems 9 times out of 10 the arc is towards the pits. Planes hitting potholes or ground looping and coming out facing the pits at full throttle seems to be all too common as well. And that's all amoung "experienced" pilots.

I think a typical student at a typical flying field is more likely to crash their own plane on landing, but more likely to hurt someone else on takeoff.

i have done that unfortunatly. my plane was ground looping for a long time, but then i figured out it was too tail heavy removed the excess weight and it flies great.

anyway my plane took off, turned 150 degrees at knife edge and came right at me, i kill the throttle and jumped and my foot caught the leading edge of the wing. the wing is foam so it still flies, but i had a spare so now i fly with the non-dented wing

My instructor had me land on the 2nd flight and no takeoffs till about the 4th one.

I landed at the 2nd time also, but after that I couldn't nail a good landing in a long time. I would recommend to you guys try flying from all the pilots stations at your club, do not get use to fly from a single one and learn to land up wind, down wind, cross wind(I mean even 90 degrees); learn to land from left to right and from right to left. I spend the whole weekend(Saturday and Sunday) doing so and I can say "now I can land in every situation with confidence".

I also tip stall on take off once, and of course toward the pitts, the only thing damage was my ego.