Landing jets help!

[Becks]

Well, I got promoted to First Officer. I've been flying prop planes since the begining. I have it on to where you must be a certain rank to fly
certain aircraft. I don't care much for freeware planes although I do have at least a dozen installed and I don't really like to do payware.
(says a lot since I did buy FSPassengers) So theres not really much to fly at my rank.

I've been doing some flights with the default Learjet and boy I do horrible on landings. I either come down too hard or strike my tail on the
ground which is driving me nuts. I come in at less than 120 knots and with 40 degree flaps and spoilers. Am I flaring too much or
what? It seems to me it would be a good landing until I hit the ground and bounce and then my co-pilot gets on my case who starts
freaking
out saying he hopes the gear struts arent bent lol. If I cant land a small learjet I'm not going to have any better luck with the bigger planes.
Any tips or suggestions?

Oh yeah, does anyone change the view to remove the cockpit so they can actually see the runway on landing? or does everyone just tilt
the camera angle down with the cockpit still on?

[Anastasios]

Well, personally I prefer bigger jets.
I HATE the learjet, a stupid thing to fly haha
well, for me that is.

Bigger jets like the 737, A318, etc, are (I think) the easiest to fly.
A bit more bigger, 747, A340/A380, etc
they are a bit slower with reaction, but still easier than the learjet.

But still, that's MY opinion

Tasos

[Enforcer]

Yes, sounds like you are flaring too much if your tail is hitting the ground. That means your nose is too high. Are you cutting the throttles
back to idle when crossing the threshold of the runway, so when you are flaring, you speed is dropping and you land. Remember that if
your sink rate is too great, you will not be able to pull it up, right on the runway, it is too late at that point.

[Jetflyer]

You're NOT landing with the spoilers ACTUALLY deployed are you?? That will mess things up for sure! Use them on the ground only. The default learjet
is also very poor. It flies horribly I find. Hold on power for a bit longer, until 20-10 feet or so, aim for a certain spot on the runway every time
and balance the power so the you are not chacing the airspeed up and down, so the pitch is level until flaring.

[Sovek]

I find the learjet a dream to fly compared to the 727-200, ugh, that one is very hard to land. but yeah, I found out on jets you never idle your
engines unless on the ground, its ok to do on the prop engines, just not jets.

[kvuo]

OP, it seems you're too slow. your view is distracting you. ctrl-alt-enter / ctrl-alt-backspace until you have about 2/3 of the view below the
horizon when you're on the ground. this gives you the proper perspective. If you're landing above 5 degrees nose up, you're too slow.
aim for level attitude, _maybe_ 1-2 degree up whilst on glideslope. 120kt sounds a bit slow, from what I've seen of the stock LJ45. You
should probably be doing 140 or so.

[Becks]

Thanks for the tips, I'll try it out lol. Practice makes perfect I guess. and I'll try it without spoilers this time

[Jetsim]

Enforcer wrote:
Yes, sounds like you are flaring too much if your tail is hitting the ground. That means your nose is too high. Are you cutting the throttles
back to idle when crossing the threshold of the runway, so when you are flaring, you speed is dropping and you land. Remember that if
your sink rate is too great, you will not be able to pull it up, right on the runway, it is too late at that point.

i know its a stupid question but is the thereshold the part of the runway where it says somthing like 6l?

[Jetflyer]

The threshold is indicated by parallel white bars (usually 4 or 6 each side of the centerline). The number is just next to these. 1000 feet further on is the aiming point markers which
are the part of the touchdown zone you should aim for, although the touchdown zone extends to 3000ft with 1500, 2000, 2500, and 3000 feet markers.
These are used only by smaller planes (like GA) which want to land further up on a long runway to turn off quicker.



Post Edited ( 10-30-05 12:34 )

[SD_BFU]

I'd like to disagree that the Lear45 is poor thing to fly. I also had the same problem before, but as long as I keep 140 - 145 with full flaps
on finals, flare 10 degrees and control nosewheel after touchdown - everything's fine. Make sure you deploy spoilers after the nosewheel
is on the ground, hit reverse and slow down. These planes - Lear and Gulfstream - are very flyable and they have a lot of weight in the aft.
Also make sure you have proper weight balance while loading up the plane.
IMHO - I love Lear-45.

[Fritz Bayerlein]

He was landing with the spoilers, no wonder! This thread is irrelevant now that he was landing like that. Jeez.

[TonyH]

Spoilers are called that because they spoil the lift of the wings. Should only be used for rapid descents and after touchdown to keep the
gear firmly on the deck. If you try to land with them deployed you're likely to come down pretty hard.

[poden]

There are some pretty good Biz Jet freeware planes out there. One that I have is the Bombardier Global Express.

[pegase]

The default FS2004 jets need a speed of 130-140 at touch down with some 30-35° flaps.

It is not usual to praise FS2004 default features but the lessons and checkride will help you a lot.
When you get this FS2004 "ATP certification", It does not mean you know flyiong but at least, you can learn by yourself without breaking too many of
these expensive machines

An essential key is keeping master of your speed in all flight configurations
Train without stress at comfortable altitude to
-keep a decided speed at decided altitude,
-when OK with that, a decided speed at decided descent rate
- ------------------------- a decided speed (let's tell 140 in landing configuration) when starting at constant altitude for 2 minutes, descent at
-1500 ft/min for two others, decreasing to 1000 for two next minutes, then 500 for two next minutes and once again constant altitude, if you start
this at 1000 AGL, it let you at the end some 4000 AGL. enough security.

Bon courage !!! :top;

[Skyscraper]

As for the views: I used to turn on spot view when about to land but then I could'nt use the cockpit buttons anymore. So when I test a new
plane I do like this: keep cockpit view AND oben a new view (spot plane) and I drag this new window over the cockpit view and keep it
active so that I'm able to change the view angle on the plane I'm flying.

After some practice I keep the cockpit view only, since we were told to stay realistic...