how to NOSE IN ???

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I can hover tail in, left and right, forward flight, but not nose in. I have tried two different method of nose in.

First, I move the right stick where the main blade drift to. If it drift to the right I move my stick to the right and so on.

Second is to imagine I am in the heli and never have to think anything in reverse.

What do you guys do? Is it really matter? Will it be something you never think about when you nose in as you gain experience? I don't want to develop bad habit and it will be difficult for me to do more advance stuff.

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[BarracudaHockey]

Well the sim is good stuff for learning nose in but what I did before I had a sim is fly figure 8s and the inbound legs I kept slowing down till it was a nice slow forward nose in hover. It took the sim till I had the nuts to take off and land nose in but this technique works, just keep it up around 10 feet or so and have a bail out plan in mind (in this case a quick half piro to tail in till you calm down)

[Danyboy]

How I did learn to nose-in?

Well, actually, I did not learn it at all...

At least not learn it in a direct approach which had the goal to learn nose-in.

What I did, until I discovered my abilities to nose-in:
On Zoom/Shogun, Setup, hovering and basic hover-manouvering (~5hrs).
Next step (due to faulty transmitter) onto BladeCP, again hovering (~1hr), forward flight and fast forward flight (~8hrs). Then 2 more hrs of what I call "freestyle", meaning zapping allover the place, working on precision but never exceeding my abilities (not "trying" something, only stick to what I knew and could, and perfecting that).

After the total of around 16hrs, my mentor wondered, why I still claimed I was unable to do nose-in-hovering, while doing all the other stuff like fast-stops, very tight/steep turns, and a few mild aerobatics like turns.
So he asked me to fly my regular lazy-eight. Then he asked me to widen the turns, so the inbound leg (toward me) would be longer. Then he wanted me to slow down on the right-to-left-leg (due to more favourable wind). Then to slow down some more. And some more...
And there I was, hovering a stable nose-in about 15feet in front of us.
And never realized it until he asked, how I felt...

My advice for general - which also helped me to gain that hovering:
Never think "yeah I did it, let's go on", before going for the next step...
Always ask and proof yourself: "can I do it repeatedly and well?".
In my opinion, many people crash their heli's because they might have been able to master a step, but it is still too much on the side of conscience, while it must go into the reflexes.
To use a sentence of a movie: That's right, it's all in the wrist...! ;)
Take one step at a time, step-by-step, bit-by-bit, sip-by-sip.
Only if hovering is boring and while doing it, you can occupy your mind with something else, then you are also able to mentaly "throw the switch" to hover-mode and recover from what has been a risky and failed manoeuver.
If at such a point, you still have to think how to hover, you might fail because of the mental stress you have from the manoeuver beforehand...

I know that there are heli-schools that teach to learn to hover, then to learn to hover sideways, then nose-in and only then to go on to forward flight.

I followed a different path from another school (now doesn't that sound like apreacher from a strange church? ;) ) that has the philosophy that when a helicopter is in forward flight and in a turn, it is quite stable and will continue the turn. Most of the corrections needed are in Pitch and some in the tail. Therefore, it is kind of safe - if you have the self-discipline (if you don't, learning heli-biz is anyway kinda hard and expensive... ;) ) - to go from side-hovering to forward flight. First learning to accelerate the heli smoothly, then having it land. Then doing lazy-eights. By the time those get boring, you most likely adapted the way of steering and it works unconsciencly: You think you want to turn the nose left and the hands work on the details of "how to". You see the tail hanging a bit in the turn, the hands correct automatically. Again, it's all in the wrist.
And from there, it is only a small step to fly the eight's the other way around (so at the crossing of flightpaths, you'll be flying toward you), and then - as I did - slow down, and some more, and some more. Until you are in hover.

General tips I expirienced and never believed they have that much influence:
1. Always fly your first manouevers into the wind, also hovering.
Work on the reproduction of something you've been able to achieve once, before going for another step... It's got to go into the Reflexes... Like shifting when learning to drive a car...
2. If you are "trying out" something, be at piece: no gasping spectators that might even cling to you when the model is closer than 10feet... If find that very - disturbing? At least if its not a very good looking attractive young blonde women that's doing it from a different cause than from the heli... ;) :roll:

Lots of text, much more than I wanted, but nevertheless, I hope I was able to give some insight in my philosophies...

Cheers,

Daniel

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Thank Andy and Daniel for your time to explain this. I really like this philosophy. I hope this will help me and other newbies!! :D

Cheers,

Chris