@mayan - my sim time is limited to the trackpad on my mac (no sticks)!
I posted my maiden on RC groups and got some more tips to share here - the landing tips assume landing up where we started (not down at the beach)!
Setup
As a beginner you ideally want the glider to have the CG a little bit forward. This will make it be more stable, meaning it will want to pull up from a dive by itself, even while the elevator is centred, neutral, level and even with the horizontal stabiliser, but it shouldn't be pulling up when it's going kind of slow like in straight and level flight, only when you put it in a dive, say 45 degrees down angle. Later when you become better, you can move the CG back to neutral where it says it should be, or even a little behind it when you become even better.
Check for any slop in your pushrods, or linkages, with no binding, or double neutrals and check everything is centred.
The V-tail has no angle of attack, it is lined up even with the bottom of the wing. But the bottom surface of the wing isn't what matters, it's the wings' chord line (centre of the LE to the centre of the TE) is the line that should be parallel to the stabiliser. This means there is some 'built-in' up elevator, so long as it's not too much we can live with it.
1- Feed in a few beeps of down trim, go to a park, run with it holding it level, and just slightly let go, then grab it again. Adjust as necessary until it stays pretty level when you run and release it, then recapture it.
2- Hold the fuse just behind the CG, take one step, and firmly but not hard, toss it aiming at a spot about 20-30m in front of you.
It shouldn't climb or dive. It should fly pretty level, maybe slightly nose down, performing a nice descending glide, almost hands-off, and should almost be able to land by itself.
3- Try again, but this time 'flare' a little before touch down to make the landing more gentle.
4- Now you can hold it behind you, the palm of your hand facing up, take a few steps and throw it harder and up, like a grenade launch. Before it slows down and stalls, push the nose over and level out. Now you're higher and you can do a gentle turn making a big circle.
and land.
After you trim it to do good test flights in the park, look at the elevator (actually, since you have a V-tail, they are called ruddervators). Does it look like you have up trim, down trim, or are the ruddervators level with the V-tail? This should give you an indication if your CG is correct.
Good test flights with the ruddervators level with the V-tail indicates a correct CG (assuming the angle the V-tail is mounted at in relation to the wings’ chord line is correct). Good test flights that have up trim indicate a CG that is too forward. Good test flights that have down trim indicate a CG that is too aft. So long as the CG is close, the ruddervators should be close to neutral.
Slope
Back at the slope, the wind speed should be at least as good as the maiden, and close to perpendicular (straight in) to the slope.
1- Now to test the CG at the slope again, and perform a dive test. Once you get pretty high, point it into the wind, quickly push the nose down to a 45-degree angle down, and let go to see what happens. It should slowly, gently, pull up by itself.
If it pulls up kind of hard, you probably have too much up trim, needed to fly level when it’s flying slowly, but kicks in at a faster speed. This indicates a CG that is too forward, and the up elevator trim is needed to keep the nose from dropping when flying level and slowly.
If when you dive, if it starts to dive steeper, then you probably have too much down elevator trim, needed to fly level when flying slowly, and when it starts going faster, that down elevator trim kicks in, making it dive more. (NOTE: If it does this, and starts diving steeper, tucking under, quickly but gently pull back on the stick so it doesn't get going too fast. Don’t pull back too hard, you don’t want to fold the wings, but you don’t want to let it get going too fast either.) Having too much down elevator trim is usually because of an aft CG, and the down trim is needed to fly it level when it is flying slowly.
2- You shouldn't have to throw your glider hard or up (that can start the porpoising). Nose slightly down, gentle launch. In a good lift, the nose can be slightly down, but the glider will still climb.
3- Remember, it's not a power plane. If you pull back on the stick expect it to stall. Fly it higher. If you fly it below the slope edge you are losing out on lift. If you get 1/3 or 1/2 down, you might have a hard time getting it back up. Try and fly back and forth, from left to right and right to left, making your gentle turns away from the slope, with a little bit up elevator during your turn, trying to stay just a little bit out in front of the edge.
4- Try to make gentle turns, always turning AWAY from the slope, like a figure 8. Use just enough back pressure on the stick
(up elevator) in your turns to keep the nose about level. At first, you don't want to nose to dive in a turn, or to climb in a turn.
Keep in mind that the more you bank the glider, the harder you will have to pull up elevator to keep it from diving down. Later as you get better and very comfortable with what you are doing, you can do steeper turns, pulling back harder on the up elevator. But remember, with steeper turns, you should going a little bit faster, or else if you are slow, bank hard, pull up hard, you can stall. Later you can also do loops, stall turns, and maybe even a roll if you have enough rudder authority.
Landing
Try to land up top, not on the beach. It’s too hard at this stage for you to be able to tell well what it’s doing and how to control it well from so far away, and from that vantage point.
The first thing you want to do when you decide you want to land is to feed in some down elevator trim, say about 4 clicks (or beeps). You might only need as little as 3, or you might need as many as 6. But start off with 4 clicks (or beeps) at first.
You don't want the glider to start diving and continue diving more and more or going really fast. But you do want the nose to be pointed just a little down so the glider isn't gaining (much) altitude any longer, and so it's going a little bit faster vs when you were out in lift trying to gain altitude.
1- To do a slope landing, you need to feed in some down trim, and go out away from the slope, out of the lift zone, do big gentle circles, descending, to at or a little below ½ way down the slope, then come downwind at a 45 degree angle to the slope.
2- As it comes closer, it’ll start rising. Try to time it so that when you get to the edge of the slope, it is just a little above the edge of the slope, then I turn around into the wind and lightly dive it into a bush.
If you don’t make it up to the edge, just turn back into the wind a little early and go out and try it again. If you end up too high, do the same thing again.
2- Try to be at least 50' above you when you start your downwind leg of your approach. KEEP IN MIND airspeed vs ground speed.
If your glider is pointed into the wind, and the wind is 10mph, you can be barely moving forward and that's still plenty of wind moving over the wing to keep it from stalling. But if you are pointing WITH THE WIND (downwind) and are only going the same speed or even slightly more than the wind, then that is not enough wind moving over the wing to prevent a stall.
3- Instead you have to be moving at least 15mph downwind (in the given example above, when the wind is 10mph).
Also, don't bank your wings hard. The worse thing you can do on a landing is to be going downwind, not moving very fast, and bank the wings hard. That's a recipe for a downwind tip stall. Downwind (tip) stalls are difficult to recover from. You better hope you are pretty high if that happens.
4- Pick a spot near your landing area, which should be back and out of the lift zone, and do gentle circles losing altitude. Try to time where your circles are in relation to your landing spot, with the width your circles, and your rate of descent, so that when you get down to about 10-15 feet above the ground, you can straighten out for your final approach. You should now be able to point glider at your landing spot, be still descending, while not going to very fast.
5- When you are about a foot or two above the ground, pull up SLIGHTLY to slow the descent. Keep it moving so it doesn't stall. And when it's just about to touch the ground, pull up just a little more to FLARE for the landing.