I am having a heck of a hard time making good landings. I have a 48” EF Laser EXP. I have flown sport and old pattern planes for many years and am usually very good at landings. Normally I start a slight flare at 10 feet and gradually increase it as the speed bleeds off. This does not work with my new 3D Laser.

It has less momentum than I am use to flying. I end up ballooning and stalling than it flops to the ground. No damage but it’s not good. Sometimes in calm weather I can do ok but this morning it was a little gusty and I could never get a smooth landing.

Do I have to just drive these things to the ground? Do I need to keep a little power or just cut it off? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

You will find that these 3D electrics are much easier to land than your old sport and pattern planes once you have the right technique. These planes are designed to stall cleanly for easy transitions into harriers, not hang onto every last molecule of air like the older sport designs. Also, a big prop out in front of the airplane with a very low idle is unlike the little props whizzing away on glow motors that you may be used to (not sure if your background is sport electric, gas or glow)...it will act as a brake instead of a force that extends your approaches.

So, get out there with a fresh pack so you can have a few go-arounds, and try a few landings with the throttle up a bit...say just under quarter throttle. Fly the thing all the way to a foot above the ground and then see what happens...if it keeps on going and you overshoot before you can flare, power up and try again with the throttle a bit lower. If you sink too fast, try the approach with a bit more throttle.

Once you get used to landing like this, you will find these planes much easier to land because you can chop the throttle all the way to idle and do a much steeper approach without worrying about overshooting the runway. Energy and speed management is much easier with electric 3D planes.

being new to balsa all together, thanks for the informative run down cody.

p.s. was killin it with the laser last night. man what a fun plane.

Thanks I will give that a try.

I have been flying both glow and electric for 30 years but this is my first 3D ship. Apparently it’s just different so I need to learn a new technique.

I have learned that I need more battery packs and lots of practice. Also 2200 packs are a bit short on flight time.

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I also see that some recommend down elevator mixing with low throttle. That sounds like a good idea. I will try 1% down trim with bottom 25% of throttle and see how I like it.

http://docaustinextreme.blogspot.com...d-landing.html

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honestly i wouldnt mess with mixes. take the time now to learn to land correctly, its really not that difficult. 3D planes just need to be flown to the ground. keep the nose down and power on and you will be fine, especially with something as small as the 48 laser

i had the exact same challenge with the 48 exp edge. It just ballooned. On landing, i would use a few clicks of down elevator to keep the nose pointed down. Also I ended up moving the packs forward so it was slightly nose heavy instead of neutral

Originally Posted by rcbirk21

honestly i wouldnt mess with mixes. take the time now to learn to land correctly, its really not that difficult. 3D planes just need to be flown to the ground. keep the nose down and power on and you will be fine, especially with something as small as the 48 laser

I agree 100%, it is far better to learn the proper landing technique, a skill that will be invaluable to you as you progress with this style of aircraft.

If the plane needs down trim at low throttle it may be tail heavy. It would be a good idea to check this with an inverted check...trim the plane to fly level hands off at about 2/3 throttle, then roll inverted. If it climbs it is tail heavy which will make landing more challenging and is not necessary for the better planes to 3D well.

Originally Posted by cwojcik

If the plane needs down trim at low throttle it may be tail heavy. It would be a good idea to check this with an inverted check...trim the plane to fly level hands off at about 2/3 throttle, then roll inverted. If it climbs it is tail heavy which will make landing more challenging and is not necessary for the better planes to 3D well.

i do think that was ultimately my challenge...that it was tailheavy early on. Once moving the packs forward it was fine.

Originally Posted by swampflyer

being new to balsa all together, thanks for the informative run down cody.

p.s. was killin it with the laser last night. man what a fun plane.

No problem, glad you like the Crack Laser!

Sounds like you are flaring too early and/or maybe you need to carry a little power on the approach.
These light models don't carry the momentum of heavier sports jobs and those big props on closed throttle act like an air break, both of which can lead to loss of airspeed and stall if you flare early.

I also have the Laser and providing it's not tail heavy find it a piece of cake to land but you must fly it until it's almost on the deck and flare when you are just a foot or so high. If you need to stretch the approach out then give more power, don't try to stretch it with elevator alone.

This help and advice from 48 edge foroum helped me a lot:
Written by Ben Fisher (3DHS)

1. Landing is a maneuver, like any other. You are the pilot, not the passenger. The very first step to making good landings is to take responsibility for them. If you are at the field, and you see a pilot make a bad landing, and he turns around and says "the plane did..." then you can be pretty sure he's never going to be a landing expert. Once a pilot can say "I screwed that up, I need more practice" (about any maneuver) he is on his way to being an expert.

2. CG

CG (Center of gravity) is important for landing. When you are landing, you should (if you are doing it right) be flying slowly on final approach. We are all aware that if we go too slowly, our wing will reach a speed at which it no longer works and will stop flying. We call this a stall. When we stall, we lose lift, and the plane will fall out of the air.

However, our aircraft has two wings (if it's a monoplane)...one in front, and one in the back (the horizontal stabilizer with elevators). In flight, the main wing holds the plane up, and the tail wing provide up or down lift to hold the plane stable. This is why a nose-heavy plane requires some "up" trim and why a tail-heavy plane requires some "down" trim (and why expecting your elevator to always end up perfectly in line with your stabilizer is not correct).

When you slow way down for final approach, the smaller tail wing stops flying first. As the tail wing loses efficiency, the balance of the plane takes over. A nose-heavy plane will drop its nose (the heavy end) and a tail-heavy plane will drop its tail (the heavy end). Dropping the nose is not a problem...dropping the tail causes the plane to slow down more and we may stall. This is why a tail-heavy plane is more difficult to land, because the pilot has to use elevator to push the nose down to maintain flight speed.

You might want a tail-heavy airplane for 3d tricks, but first be sure you can land it. To help:

3.Throttle

Do not glide down to landing. Your throttle is a speed *control* and if you set it correctly it will help to keep your plane at the proper speed on landing, not too fast and not too slow.

If you learn to fly a full-size plane (or learn to fly an RC plane correctly) you will be taught at some point to fly a "stabilized approach". This means that your landing approach is stable, in that it has no time limit. You could start your approach at 20 feet high or 2,000 ft high, and you can fly in this mode as long as you want.

The opposite of a "stable approach" is a "decaying approach"...this is an approach flown without enough throttle or too slowly which has a time limit. The plane is slowing down (because there is no throttle) and the pilot is trying to get it on the runway before something bad happens.

To fly a stabilized approach, put the nose down about 10-15 degrees, use 1/8 throttle or so, and point the airplane at the spot you want to land. Start high enough and far enough away that you get a chance to fly a stabilized approach down to the runway. Don't "flare" or do anything else until you are very low. If you cut the throttle and pull back on the stick, make sure you're only ankle-high. Too many pilots want to have a dramatic flare at the end of their approach...leave that to the experts. Just fly down to the ground and close the throttle for the last foot or so. Done.

4. Elevator

The elevator is the important control for landing. DO NOT land on 3D rates. Use your low rates. First, fly a pass down the runway about 2 feet high on low rates at about half throttle. Can you do it? For most of us, probably not. Lower your low rates and increase your low rate exponential until you can smoothly fly just above the runway consistently and smoothly. When you are flying a stabilized approach, having the correct elevator response will allow you to actually pilot the aircraft in a straight line, rather than fighting a bucking bronco. Get your elevator response right!

5. Observe

Watch people who can land. Watch people who cannot. See their habits.

What we do not want to do is to go up really high, cut off our motor, and dive at the runway, then pull up and glide along the runway, bouncing up and down, hoping to be able to smack the runway on a lucky bounce.

Instead, we select low rates, select low throttle, point the nose 10-15 degrees down toward the end of the runway and fly a smooth straight line. When we are very low we cut our throttle and bring the aircraft to level and let it touch down.

If we mess it up, we make any necessary repairs, change our CG or transmitter as needed, and try again. Once you know how to land, your repair bills go way down. know how to tra

I alternate between the 48" yak and edge and had to learn to land all over again.

What I do is complete the approach at idle and when I cross the end of the runway, bleed about 15% throttle back in. It keeps the plane flying and the landing uneventful. I hadn't tried it at first because they fly so slow... But putting in more power than I needed made them land a little more like usual.

Peace.

Nice work, Komet. You pretty much nailed it. I usually take at least 3 planes to the field...one pattern, one 3-D, and one F3A. Each one lands very different from the other, but one thing remains the same: All planes go where you tell them to go, and land where you tell them to land. I will often burn complete packs just brushing up on landings. You would not believe the nice comments I get from the "peanut gallery" on my landings. Good landings are much harder than perfect loops or rolls.