Getting Off the Ground

While many missions will probably start you in the air, inevitably, you will be faced with the need to take off from an airfield. While getting into the air is harder than falling out of the sky, it's not difficult once you have a little practice. The procedure to use will vary somewhat from aircraft to aircraft, so it's a good idea to spend some time practicing take-offs offline in a variety of aircraft. The following procedures are provided as examples, feel free to modify them to whatever works best for you.

Taxiing

When Taxiing to the runway, you can Lock and Unlock your tailwheel with Shift+G. The tailwheel should be locked when you are ready to throttle up for take off. If the tailwheel is unlocked, it will castor around and assist with steering while taxiing.

Braking

There are several brakes settings that may be enabled in the keymapper or by directly editing the file:

Taking Off

Take Off Procedure

One of the most important things to remember when taking off is to be gentle when increasing the throttle. Specific behavior will vary by plane. Know they plane!

Landing

Some Targetware scenarios will allow you, and possibly even encourage you, to land your plane. Landing well requires some patience and fine control of your aircraft, it should become fairly easy after some practice. The keys to landing well are:

Managing Your Speed

Speed kills. Too much and you plow through the runway; too little and you fall short of it. A common mistake is attempting to land when you're too fast or "hot". Though each plane will be different, in general, an airspeed of 100-120 mph (160-180 kph) for propeller driven aircraft will be safe. Keep your mixture rich and your RPMs high, so that in case you need to go around, you will have the power ready to do so.

Deploying your gear and flaps will increase the drag on the plane, slowing it down. The flaps also increase lift, which is very helpful in making a gentle descent. For most planes, the flaps and gear will not deploy at high speed.

Navigating Your Approach

Identify your landing spot, preferably a runway. The standard process is to make a 'three-leg' approach: Downwind Leg, Base Leg, and Final.

Fly parallel to runway so that you can see it out of your left view. This is called the Downwind Leg, because it is usually best to land flying into the wind. (Wind isn't currently modeled in Targetware). How long you should fly the downwind leg will depend on your speed; the faster you are, the longer your downwind leg should be so that you can lose more speed before making your final approach. Lower flaps as speed permits, and slow to 130-150 mph (210-240 kph) on downwind.

Controlling Your Rate of Descent

Easy does it. . Do not descend faster than 1500 feet-per-minute (460 meters-per-minute). Use the throttle to control your altitude now. Be careful not to pull back on the stick too much, or you will stall (and you won't have the altitude necessary to recover). Also, watch that you don't push forward on the stick, otherwise you might gain too much airspeed to land safely.

Once you pass the end of the runway, gently turn left, flying perpendicular to the line of the runway. This is called the Base Leg.

Once you are about midway through the base leg, lower final flaps and start a 30- to 45-degree banked turn on to Final Approach. Power off so that you can descend while maintaining a speed of 130 (210 kph) or so.

When you are on final approach, fly at about 100 mph/kts (160 kph). If everything is correct -- speed is low, rate of descent is low, and altitude is no more than 100-150ft (34m-50m) -- you should be in good shape. Use the throttle to gently decrease altitude. A very gentle flare just before your gear touch will help drop your speed. When your gear have touched down solidly, and you're not bouncing back up, cut the throttle completely and then tenderly apply the brakes.

If at anytime you feel you are fighting the plane to maintain control, increase speed and let the nose go down a bit. If your speed is too great or your altitude is too high, go around and try again. Don't try to force a landing that doesn't feel good.

If you land at high speed, you're going to probably bounce quite a bit, and this becomes dangerous and unpredictable. Smoothly but firmly increase throttle to recover, go around and try again. Fly too slow, and you'll have a hard time flaring for landing. If you have a hard time slowing on downwind, delay your initial break turn until farther down the runway, to allow a longer downwind.

Finally, the best advice is the oldest . . . practice, practice, practice.

Landing Without Power

When you've lost engine power, landing becomes much more difficult. This is called a 'dead stick' landing. The best glide speeds will be in the pilot's handbook. Flaps are usually not extended fully until the landing is assured. The glide slope for an ILS approach is 3 degrees, so an approach speed of 150 mph would correspond to ~700 feet/min rate of decent. To flare, pitch up 3 degrees and cut power, letting the airplane settle onto the ground while 'holding what you got' in the way of pitch attitude. As a general rule, the approach is made at 1.3 times the stall speed, to allow for some degree of maneuvering ability without stalling (45 degree bank turns) and to allow for wind gusts.

[Thanks to Jedi and Eiger for their help with this.]