I start with the moonwalk so the students have an easy landing
style that works every time. So if they're caught out, they can always fall back
on it without worry.
Ok, one note before I get to Trim+1
A fully stalled glider can not climb. This is a very important landing concept.
If you climb, you have not stalled the glider.
So many people only think they're flaring their gliders. They think they're
flaring hard enough. They think they're flaring fast enough. They're very much
wrong.
This works on any stock glider. This doesn't work well if you've messed with the
trim of your glider. If you find issue with this, please ask yourself why you're
trying to learn a basic landing technique on a tweaked glider.
So. Approach the earth faster than trim (as always). Round out into ground
effect. You will naturally slow the glider as you pay off speed to maintain
altitude.
The glider will eventually hit trim speed. You will know this because there will
be no forward pressure on the uprights. Before you were holding them back to
have speed. Now that speed has washed away and they are no longer begging to go
forward, they are loose in your hands.
I demonstrate this in my videos by fully letting them go. I am at trim. There is
absolutely no doubt about this.
I do not recommend that people let go. I do this simply to make things extremely
clear.
After I hit trim, I wait one second. One, not two.
And flare like I mean it. This is easy to do because I know the glider will
fully stall, root and tips. I know this because this works with every single
stock glider.
The glider stalls and falls off my back.
This is an exceptionally easy and effective landing technique. I very seldom
find need to use any other technique.
I teach the moonwalk first as this one introduces something new, the ability to
screw up. With the moonwalk, you might wind up belly flopping and rolling on
your wheels.
With this, if you rush things and give a decent, but not quite enough flare, you
can balloon up. If you don't hold it, you're going to whack and you're going to
whack hard.
Even if you don't rush things, you can give a weak flare and balloon up. Oddly
enough, this is harder to do than with a late flare, that extra energy you're
carrying actually makes getting the flare right easier. But you can still muck
it up if you try hard enough.
If you wait too long and give a weak flare, you need your running shoes on. If
you're experienced with the moonwalk however, you already know how to recover
from this problem.
The correct action when you do mess up and climb of course is to hold your
insufficient flare, but realize that your "flare" was wrong.
Something I hear pretty commonly is "Yeah, that works fine on an easy glider,
but I fly a topless".
Here's me doing Trim+1 with a Stealth KPL 12 (yes, the itty bitty one)
