Rise of Flight - Iron Cross Edition
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13.5 Landing
After choosing the right place to land you should perform a safe landing
approach. This is the hardest and most important phase of flight. Every mistake
while landing is complicated by the lack of speed and altitude and correcting it in
time is difficult. If you are novice, your landing approach should be shallow and
aim to undershoot the landing point. It is easier to correct an undershoot with a
short increase of RPM than an overshoot. An overshoot is harder to correct
because it is more difficult to reduce speed than to increase it. When you see that
you are overshooting the landing area it is better to go around and perform the
landing approach once more. However, there is one technique of reducing speed
used by experienced pilots. Roll the plane while pushing the rudder to the
opposite direction. This maneuver is called “side-slipping”. Side-slipping has the
effect of slowing the aircraft down as the fuselage acts as a sort of wind-brake.
The plane will start sliding sideward and you will lose both altitude and speed.
However, this is a dangerous act and should be practiced at a higher altitude
before attempting it on a landing.
Due to its special features, rotary engines, with its spinning cylinder block and
connected propeller, have an increased rotation frequency when set to idle. That’s
why it is so hard to lower the speed of planes with rotary engines even when the
engine is set to idle. Such planes include the Fokker Dr.1, Fokker D.VIII, Sopwith
Camel, Nieuport 11, Nieuport 17 and Nieuport 28. You can use the Blip Switch by
pressing keys “Left Shift-E” to temporally shut down the engine and lower its RPM.
When you push it, the engine is not firing, when you release it the engine starts to
run again. It is important not to get the RPM to low by holding the Bleep Switch
for a long time. If you press the Blip Switch for too long, your engine will stop
completely and you won’t be able to start it again. This can be deadly when on
landing approach. It is better to use full throttle and then the Blip Switch when
landing because you can gain speed faster in case of mistake.
The same technique can be used when landing planes with in-line engines by
pressing the “E” key, but you should be very careful, in-line engines have much
shorter rundown time.
When the gear touches the ground and the plane has lost enough speed not to
take off again, you should pull the stick back. This will press the tail skid to the
ground and increase the braking effciency and help keep it stable while you slow
down. If the aircraft shows the tendency to turn and doesn’t react to the rudder
commands to keep it straight, which often happens as your speed lowers,
temporally increase the RPM of the engine to regain control. This is thanks to the
wind flow from the propeller going through the tail section. If you do this, pull the
stick full back; otherwise the aircraft can nose-over.
