Newb: Do you learn to hover completely still before flying?

[joco]

A post in another forum made me think of something. Do most people nail the perfect stationary hover before flying around? I have seen vids of a guy who can fly 3d maneuvers but yet claims he can't hover completely stationary... Thoughts?

[Danyboy]

Joco,

My personal private opinion:

Learn to hover until it becomes your second nature.
I do stronlgy recommend all situations like tail-in, 45° left and right side.
From then on, you can step forward for forward flight, which will learn you very naturaly orientation and therefore nose-in (flying eight's first with the middle part pointing away from you, when proficient - meaning no altitude loss in turns, even speed throughout the figure - then doing the same with the middle part flying toward you, slowing down in the middle part more and more and there you go...).
Then it's training nose-in and all other hover-positions, always lightened up with some forward-flight for joy.
Only when you really are proficient with hovering in all directions, far and near, above and below your eye-level, only then I recommend to take the next step.

Reason being:
When you the heli is not really doing what you would prefer it to do, you can mentally throw the switch and keep in in hover.
If you try that and hovering still is a conscious effort, you have triple stress: Once from the crap you just flew, once from the save, and third for hovering after that crap... A lot less of stress involved.
If hovering happens almost unconsious, then you'll be able to flip the heli and start hovering, take a deep breath, hover back to you and start allover. Only one source for stress: Learning. And that's not really avoidable, only partly with Sim-time.

I thinking the same way as in real aviation: You should eliminate as many sources of stress as you can as soon as you detect them. If you don't, your mental focus will close in on you, locking out the wide view, unconsciously prioritise pending tasks until you're down to one single task and can no more prioritise further, and in the end, all you can do is keep the wings level and feel like a hero doing it - while forgetting all the other basics like heading and altitude, never even thinking of extending gear before landing and such... ;)

I feel that unlike planks, with a heli it's really like building a house: First you need a good foundation to build on. If that is crappy, all the house will crumble down sooner or later. With a plank, you can take a shortcut sometimes, but with a heli, it'll bite back hard sooner or later. And the bite mostly goes through replacement parts for the valet...

Cheers,

Daniel

[DebianDog]

Well said Daniel. Your flight can either end with a hover then a landing or a crash. Your choice. ;)

I skipped learning to nose-in hover and have paid for it ever since. :(

[Jermo]

I'm a newb but I'll share my 42 year old opinion.

Anyone with basic hand/eye coordination and basic understanding of controls can fly a heli and do messy 3d. ONLY a PILOT can CONTROL the heli to preform precision stunts and safely bring the model back.

I met a 3dz wonderz at the funfly recently. He crashes every flight because he's not mastered basic hovers.

I guess my basic opinion is to ask a question: Do you want to be able to fly MAD 3DZ and not really be a skilled pilot OR would you rather be a skilled pilot that does 3d?

The difference is when bad things happen a Pilot recovers and the stick banger quits on it.

If I'm in the crowd I don't want a stick banger who will give up on the bird and let it hit me, I want a pilot that will fly it into the ground trying to keep it out of the crowd.

Jermo

[Raysun]

Learn to hover tail in and recover to tail in very well before trying anything else ( gospel according to Radd!). Its by far your most important bail out move when things go wierd. Also don't need to be perfectly stationary, that will come with time. Or lots of practice in a "hard" box ie. your basement where flying outside that 4 foot box costs $$.

One thing that is important is to be able to hover when up high...30 feet or more, as your first moves should be up there, not down low.

I started FF from a tail in hover, and simply flew backwards to get home, for me a very natural progression. I'm now doing circuits, eights, and FF nose in (!!) but anytime I get uneasy which is a lot of the time, a quick snap to tail in hover settles things down real fast.

Use a good sim for any move you are thinking of trying and get it down 100%+, because the real deal will scare the **** out of you the first few times. Did I say I actually looped my heli? No way! Yup. :D



Ray

HDX450SE/DX6, many Blades.

[Hughes500Bob]

Real helicopter pilots master hover in 10 to 12 hours of dual instruction. Once proficient they get to hover solo and practice hover autorotations. Only THEN do we start to take to the sky for the exact same reasons above .... Every flight starts with a hover and ends with a hover. I see no reason .... other than crashing .... to treat R/C helis any differently.

Do the Radd heli flight school training and you will be fine.

[joco]

Thanks guys... I always agreed with the sentiment that learning to hover will make anyone a better pilot.

However, I was wondering how perfect the hover should be before FF. I am down to being able to hover within a 15ft circle... in all directions, nose in, tail is... 45 angled... and left side in... I just need to perfect right side in but thats getting better every hour.

[SinxarKnights]

Personally I think it should be near a 3ft - 5ft diameter circle. In my honest opinion, anything more and your just not really in control of your aircraft yet. Even the micro CPs can be kept in that space with a little practice. I have been cheating tho, I have been doing a tiny bit of forward flight in between my hovering practice to keep things interesting.

Just my 2 cents.

[Jermo]

<cut> I am down to being able to hover within a 15ft circle... in all directions, nose in, tail is... 45 angled... and left side in... I just need to perfect right side in but thats getting better every hour.

What are you flying ? What radio? Are there locals that fly heli? 15' is just about my entire flying area in my yard. You should be able to hover (without wind) in a 1' x 1' area or at least 3' x 3' (my heli falls off when I piro fast..probably an adjustment). Sounds like you are flying something smaller than a T-Rex450 just as a guess. Post Pictures if you can.
Jermo

[joco]

Nope I am not flying for real just yet... all on the sim. However I plan on getting either a T-Rex 450 or 600 once I feel that I should move to a real heli.

[Graeme]

Which sim? Does it have a transmitter-like interface? If it does: have you adjusted its trims?

As Jermo says, 15x15 is a pretty big area. That much wandering on a sim makes me think the trims need adjusting.

[joco]

The sim is RealFlight G3.... nope the trims seem fine... BTW... I am down to hovering in a 5x5 area now.

[ray62202]

Hey joco,
I'm in the same place you are - hovering around in the sim. One thing that really allowed me to tighten up my hover was to reduce to the control range to keep me from overcorrecting while I'm learning. I don't use RealFlight, so I'm not sure how you do this for your situation. In Reflex I reduced swashplate travel to keep the amount of movement down. This would be equivalent to reducing the swash mix in the TX. When I'm all happy and can handle all orientations properly, I increase the swashplate travel back to the original setting.

All my sim models seem to be 3D birds, so they have insane travels and speed. Not the best configuration for learning. Same idea as teaching a kid to drive in an old beater rather than a Ferrari. The high performance stuff can come later.

Of course, when you think you can hover, turn on the wind gusts to see just how good your skilz are :twisted:

[joco]

Good point... I never thought to reduce throws... and that helped a bunch too. I have tried flying in a steady high wind which is almost easier because as you cut into the wind everything slows down that much quicker.

BTW, RealFlight has a great bunch of helis to learn on and surprisingly the TRex 600 is really not very twitchy.

[shaggybirdman]

i don't know G3.5 seems way twitchy to me. i have fms on my machine, and fly a shuttle zxx (witch a friend says flies like the real deal.) in it. i just seem to over control it. my hover area is probably 15 X 15. sometimes i can keep it to a 3X3, but not often. i try to fly the mast, but everything is so small on the screen. maybe i'm expecting too much too fast. i have like 4 hrs flight time so far. granted fms is not the best sim, but my real flight doesn't like my puter anymore. i need to reformat it. anyhow what's the trick to a stable hover?

[Rickenbacker]

A 15 foot circle isn't hovering, that's careening out of control.

Unless you want to crash a lot, learn to hover stationary (within a 1-2 foot circle) in all orientations before moving on. And when you do, always think about how you're going to get out of whatever you're doing and back to a safe attitude.

[joco]

Rickenbacker... so you say a 1-2 foot circle.... for how long.... I can hover in a 1-2 foot circle for about 2-3 minutes.... after that I lose it... but never getting outside a 5 foot circle.

Also, how long does it take most people to learn to hover in a 1-2 foot circle indefinetely.....

[shaggybirdman]

i agree a 15 foot circle is way to big, but it's not like i'm moving 15 foot instantly. i correct, and i start to go the other, or new direction. i'm not toilet bowling in a 15 foot circle if that's what yo mean by " careening out of control ". there are no violent movements happening. it's a 15 area that my hovering is being done in. basicaly slow drifts then correct drift correct. if it were my nitro heli i wouldn't be diving for cover by no stretch of the imagination. this is all on the sim. everyone i have talked to says the real deal flies much easer than a sim does. i'll see in about a week when i get my shuttle back from the local heli guy. he's also the repair guy for the peeps that don't want to fix there crashes. he's doing the final setup on it, and my radio.

that's a good question joco. what is the average learning curve for learning for hovering Rickenbacker? how long it take you?

[DebianDog]

Also, how long does it take most people to learn to hover in a 1-2 foot circle indefinitely.....

Took me a year!

Flying higher than 4-5 feet helps too as it gets you out of the rotor wash

[proteus220]

Just started to fly the heli about 4 months ago (from 0 heli experience,) and I would agree with most of the posts above -> learn to hover, at least tail in, within a 1 foot circle down pat.

Over the past 4 months, I have progressed to mild rolls, flips, and some piro's, but what has saved me time and time again was being able to "reset" the heli back to tail in with a stable hover when I began to "extend beyond my capabilities."

I probably went through 20+ packs at the very beginning, doing nothing but hovering and landing, which surely has saved me time (rebuilding) and money now.

[Papakeith]

Mebby I'm a slow study, but I got my first heli in January, and I'm just now starting to feel semi comfortable in a side in hover. I'll save the piros and flips until I can rotate the heli in any direction fully under my control without really thinking about it.

[shaggybirdman]

well i think i'm in the same boat as you Papakeith. i'm a slow study, but everyone tells me a sim is harder than the real thing. i just wish my flight experience with my cx2 would help me more than just what the controls do. well when i get my heli back from the local heli guy i can see if i can manage not to dink it in the ground. i think that my nitro bird will be easer than my t rex to fly.

does bigger fly better in helis like it does with planks?

[DebianDog]

Yes bigger flies better but the crash price goes up with stability.

[shaggybirdman]

well it's only a 30 size, and so far pricing on parts doesn't. although i haven't had to replace anything, but i have looked at part pricing, and it doesn't look too bad. i'll realy see after my first crash.

[malc1]

I use a disused room at work for practising tail in hover,left and right,nose in, forward flight and very small area circuits,using my Trex 450,the Rex 600 is limited to hovering and very slight side to side manovering only in here.
Its an 7 x 8 m area with two floor to ceiling pillars in the area slighty to one side and a wall and windows to the other side.
No problem flying down the room turning around between the pillars and carrying on with whatever basic stuff you like.
Going to wide will cost you ££££`s.
You do find that anticlockwise turning feels easier that clockwise due to the view of the concrete pillars!
I find the tighter space does tend to teach you closer control,but you must be safe!