If you are wrecking your landing gear (obviously setting down too hard), then you may be doing the classic beginners mistake: Trying to land your plane using the stick, instead of using the throttle to land.
What you want to do is fly very clouse to the ground at low speed, fly level, and then gently decrease the throttle, so it's the lack of power that makes you loose the last few meters of altitude to the ground, whilst with the stick, you try to keep the nose level.
It's all in the timing, and it takes some practice, and be gentle on the throttle, if you decrease it too fast, the centrifugal forces of the engine and prop slowing down can make your plane roll violently, so you want to do it in a slow and smooth motion.
The opperating word here really is "gentle", you want to set down as gently as possible, and all your inputs should be gentle and smooth.
Also, make sure your stick is set up propperly in the game, a lot of people really struggle with the game just because they are running a bad stick config.
From the main menu, press the "Hardware setup" button, and then "Input", and have a look at how your axies are set up.
Especially the Aileron and Elevator axies (select them in the dropdown box in the top left corner) can be important to tweak, as they often default to a setup of:
100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
That's no good if you are using a joystick! It's much too sensitive, it can work ok with some Yoke's, but not a stick.
You'll probably want to experiment a little with thease settings, and find what works best for you, but for now, if it isen't allready, try setting the Aileron and Elevator Axies as this:
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
With that setup, you'll find that smooth and accurate movement is much easier when doing minor corrections (vital for doing accurate gunnery, and things like landing), and a lot of people swear by this setup.
But like me, you may also find it a bit too sluggish, and that when trying the exicute a combat turn, it seems like the point where the stick goes from accurate and sluggish to fast and responsive, happens too suddenly, and it can be hard to not stall when it does.
If that's the case, you may want to experiment a little with a non-linear setup, personally, i like thease two:
15 30 45 55 65 75 85 90 95 100 <- i use that for very nimble and responsive planes, which can need a bit of taming.
And:
20 35 50 60 70 80 85 90 95 100 <- i use this one for larger planes and planes that just plain aren't very manouverable, as the above setup seems a tad too sluggish with thouse.
If you have a twisty-stick rudder, you may also want to apply thease settings to your rudder axis. For actual rudder-pedals, an all 100 setup works very well, but not so much with a twisty-stick, where it will be much too sensitive.
What you want to do is fly very clouse to the ground at low speed, fly level, and then gently decrease the throttle, so it's the lack of power that makes you loose the last few meters of altitude to the ground, whilst with the stick, you try to keep the nose level.
It's all in the timing, and it takes some practice, and be gentle on the throttle, if you decrease it too fast, the centrifugal forces of the engine and prop slowing down can make your plane roll violently, so you want to do it in a slow and smooth motion.
The opperating word here really is "gentle", you want to set down as gently as possible, and all your inputs should be gentle and smooth.
Also, make sure your stick is set up propperly in the game, a lot of people really struggle with the game just because they are running a bad stick config.
From the main menu, press the "Hardware setup" button, and then "Input", and have a look at how your axies are set up.
Especially the Aileron and Elevator axies (select them in the dropdown box in the top left corner) can be important to tweak, as they often default to a setup of:
100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
That's no good if you are using a joystick! It's much too sensitive, it can work ok with some Yoke's, but not a stick.
You'll probably want to experiment a little with thease settings, and find what works best for you, but for now, if it isen't allready, try setting the Aileron and Elevator Axies as this:
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
With that setup, you'll find that smooth and accurate movement is much easier when doing minor corrections (vital for doing accurate gunnery, and things like landing), and a lot of people swear by this setup.
But like me, you may also find it a bit too sluggish, and that when trying the exicute a combat turn, it seems like the point where the stick goes from accurate and sluggish to fast and responsive, happens too suddenly, and it can be hard to not stall when it does.
If that's the case, you may want to experiment a little with a non-linear setup, personally, i like thease two:
15 30 45 55 65 75 85 90 95 100 <- i use that for very nimble and responsive planes, which can need a bit of taming.
And:
20 35 50 60 70 80 85 90 95 100 <- i use this one for larger planes and planes that just plain aren't very manouverable, as the above setup seems a tad too sluggish with thouse.
If you have a twisty-stick rudder, you may also want to apply thease settings to your rudder axis. For actual rudder-pedals, an all 100 setup works very well, but not so much with a twisty-stick, where it will be much too sensitive.
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