Landing a Plane with a hardcore 3D Set-Up

Hey Everyone. Recently I received a comment about landing a plane, like the SHP, when it is set up for extreme 3D. The thing is, Jim is used to flying sport type aircraft, and decided to learn 3D. He is used to making wheel landings with fast airplanes, with a Center of Gravity suitable for pattern and sport flying. He and I share the SHP, which poses a problem: I fly 3D with a very tail heavy set-up, and he flies a little more mild version of 3D (since he is still learning), and pattern style flying. One major thing would be to move the CG forward, but Jim is hell bent on learning to land it with the tail-heavy set-up. Here's my two cents...

First off, don't attempt to make a wheel landing with this airplane, especially at the field we fly at (grass runway); there is a good chance that you will flip it over upon landing. You should try for a 3-point landing. With the current set-up, it is also hard to make a conventional 3-point landing due to the planes tendency to drop the nose when it get's slow enough to pull the nose up to land and not balloon (due to the aft CG). What you need to do is go up and fly and practice the harrier. This way, you can get used to using the throttle to maintain your altitude, airspeed, rate of decent, and attitude. Get proficient with this maneuver and bring it down low (easy with the SHP due to almost zero wing rock) and let the tail of the airplane grab the ground, and decrease the power if needed to let the plane settle down.

With a hardcore 3D machine, there are no pretty landings, just cool lookin' landings. A harrier to landing is a cool looking way to land your aiplane, and is also very practical so you don't have to risk making a high speed landing with a small plane on a grass strip.

Check out the landings on my videos of the SHP. I'm still getting used to the airplane is these videos, so some aren't pretty... but they are practical and very effective.

Hope this helped you out Jim!