Landing The Plane

It may seem strange, but if you want to be a good pilot, and a good fighter pilot, you have to learn to land the plane.  
If you were at a real flight school, you would be taught that the ideal is to time everything so that the plane stops flying at the same time the wheels touch the runway.  At the Kentwood Station school of flight, I am going to give you a simpler goal.  Your goal is to cross the end of the runway, close to the ground, wheels down, throttle off, and your speed between 100 and 150 mph.  Then you fly the airplane just above the ground.  As the plane slows down, it will settle onto the runway.  This is just a general goal, and the exact procedure will be different for each plane.  If you can find landing instructions for your particular airplane, that will help.

Here are some general rules:
Lower your landing gear at about 150. Some planes can lower gear as high as 175, but stick to 150 unless you know for sure.  If you hear a groaning sound when you lower the gear, you are going too fast.

As the speed drops below 150,  press the Q button twice to lower your flaps two notches.  This will provide some extra lift and make the plane more stable at low speed.  In some airplanes, you use full flaps to land. Experiment with this to see what works best for your plane.  When you lower the flaps, be careful that the nose doesn't bounce up.

You want to fly the plane just above the runway for as long as you can.  As the speed bleeds off, the plane will settle onto the ground.  The plane may bounce a little, especially if it is a light fighter.

Here are a few videos as examples:

Spitfire Landing

Spitfire Takeoff and Landing

This video shows you what real Navy flight training looked like in a training plane

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