Correct way to land?

[CommandingSloth]

So I was just wondering... Is there a correct way to land a heli? I practice on a sim everyday, RF7 to be exact, but I dont know the best way to land. I get in a hover, and I give it a little down collective and it descends and looks like a rough landing... I was just wondering, what is the best way to land with a nice soft and smooth landing? I also use the thumb method, not the pinch, so maybe my thumbs give to much down input on the collective? I don't know, but thanks for any help!

[newbheliusr]

I hit throttle hold about 6 feet off the ground and do a mini auto. But you can do it from any height really. Smaller helis are harder. Might want to be lower.

[CommandingSloth]

I had thought about that, but didnt know if that the correct way to go about landing, or if there even was a correct way. Thanks for your input though, I'm gonna try that!

[Russell Harding]

The 'baby auto' is a good way to go. It decreases the rotor speed quite a lot upon landing and you are less likely to have a tipover or ground resonance. Even if you do tip over, there is so little rotor momentum that damage is less likely.

I can go either way about this in some special cases: A TT gear'd 450 on tall grass might do better with a powered landing so the tail rotor can cut a little space for itself, rather than wrapping the grass at low rpm.

[Inverse]

Mini auto.
You aren't under power yet still have some lift to play with. Makes for a smoother landing and you're less likely to drill the heli into the ground.

[ryanha]

I recently went through the same set of questions. I fly a TRex 450L dominator and one of the challenges with that heli is very little clearance with the tail rotor on the ground. The field that I fly on is dirt and I was having problems with the tail rotor hitting the dirt/pebbles and stripping out gears on landing, so I spent some time thinking about it. I tried the mini-auto style but the problem is that with the 450 there is so little rotor head momentum that you don't have a lot of time to make adjustments if you are not perfect.

What I do now is I have Mode 1 set to normal mode (e.g. throttle goes to zero at bottom stick) and I set the D/R & Expo settings very soft. Like 20% expo and 80% dual rate. I switch to mode 1 when I am ready to land, then I do a very easy hover and slowly reduce throttle. I have found that this gives me the smoothest landing.

One other sim tip is that I made a stand-up configuration. Meaning I move my monitor up to eye level and I SIM standing up. I also use my regular radio (DX9) because I found that it flys much differently than the interlink controller.