Congrats pilot!
If you can't let go of the yoke and not have the aircraft change pitch, you're not trimmed.
The airplane can fly itself when in trim for long periods of time. The more accurate the trim, the longer it'll fly where you wanted it to go without any corrections.
Hands off, if the airplane doesn't change pitch, you're trimmed.
How you determine it is to "trim away pressure". If you're having to push to keep the nose down, trim nose down. If you're pulling, nose up.
When you feel the yoke sitting there and you aren't pushing or pulling, let go. Now make a small, fine adjustment to stop whatever small motion there is.
Any change in power, start the process over. It never ends.
My airplane has a small right bank tendency, but in trim in cruise, I can rest my heel of my left hand on top of the left yoke horn to counteract that rigging issue, and not have to push forward or back at all on the yoke for many minutes at a time in smooth air, once trimmed. Altimeter won't move.
Same thing last night on final, totally smooth out, 65 knots, 10" MP or so, 40 flaps, nice stable approach from 3 miles out straight-in where the Tower told me to report.
Aiming for the touchdown zone markers, they were neither climbing up the windscreen nor descending. Enough excess energy that if the engine quit, I'd make the end of the runway even with 40 flap hanging out. Power was just to make the touchdown zone paint.
Way high on the VASI to start because a Skylane set up that way will come down faster than 3 degrees. Trick os to make it stable. Trim!!!
Start high, the VASI will come in right when you get there in that ultra slow, stable configuration. All that's left to do is a small pre-flare at the threshold to slow to 55 and hold as you slowly close the throttle. Then flare. Don't do it early or you'll arrive very ungracefully.
With the STOL kit, you start to run out of elevator and touch down mains first at about 45 knots with nary a blip of the horn. Nose high, you hold it off and it really doesn't want to go flying anymore.
Technically still too fast but it's a lift generating beast with the stall fences singing and it's a wrestling match to get it to hold off until 35. You have to roll in full up trim over the numbers to make that look good, and not need ape arms.
Also a lot higher chance you'll bang the venerable 182 nosegear down hard trying to play that slow.
Thus, the landing story. You can start to feed in up trim in the flare if you can do it without looking, just beware that if you punch it for a go-around you're going to be pushing forward REAL hard to keep it level while trying to roll out the up trim and start retracting those 40 degrees worth of barn doors hanging out.
Sometimes you don't want to be perfectly trimmed. Leaving it trimmed for 65 knots and manually doing the effort for the flare and landing, is saner.
