Learning to fly bass-ackwards

[jeffk]

So I've been putting in a LOT of time on the sim, to the tune of about 20 hours a week (give or take 3-4 hours) for the last three months, in between work, the GF and flying (also soloed a plank for the first time in that period).

All this sim-time has allowed me to learn to hover in all orientations and inverted, do FF and FFF, flips, rolls, loop and forward/back and side/side tic-tocs and even autos.....in the sim (even if they're not always pretty). Can't grasp backwards flight just yet, but I'll get there.

In reality, I've managed to hover tail-in and I can take off and land with no problem. I can move the heli pretty much anywhere I want, do some piros, and I decided to try nose-in hover for the first time last week. It was almost a non-event. I just swung the nose around and held it there for several minutes in a nice hover until I got bored. I didn't even get the shakes like I used to. (actually I was pretty proud of that :) )

What I'm finding odd is that I'm still not comfortable with FF for real at any speed (though I have managed a nice turn from FF). I think I'm ready to try flips for real, but am I progressing out of order? Is there even an order?

I always read about others learning FF first, then the other stuff, but that's just not how it worked out for me. Is the order I'm moving forward with likely to cause me any problems later on? I'm fairly confident that I CAN do more in real life, but I end up getting nervous when the beastie is hovering in front of me. For instance, the nose-in thing.... I did it, and it was cake. I know that it's very difficult for a lot of folks, but by the same token, FF is cake for others whereas I'm still not comfortable with it.

Guide me gurus! :noteworthy

[digger60]

I found flying for real vs the sim is alot different. Iam sure one reason is that you know in the sim if you crash its no big deal, just press the red button. I do a lot of things in the sim that I cannot do for real.

I think the sim is a great place to get a good idea how it suppose to work, but is no subsitute for the real thing.

Forward flight was very easy for me since I flew model airplanes for many years before trying a heli. I think hovering in all directions for real is very helpful as the first step. This way when things do not work as planed you can get to a hovering position to recompose yourself.

I would not think flips and rolls should be worked on until you can hover and do FF. I think after FF its pretty much open as to what you want to work on next.

I think the sim is a great place to try things first, then try the same things for real..I have found that there is pretty big difference between things I do on the sim and how they turn out for real.

But this is just my openion, I could be way off !

Tom

[tz250w]

I agree with everything digger said. And plank flying really made FF easy for me too. Especially flying a glow plank, that got me comfortable with speed and height. I still regulary switch off between my helis and planks.

I would think if you aren't yet comfortable with FF you should concentrate on it until you are. What would happen if one of those flips ended up in the beast diving at you at a 45 degree angle?

[fogger]

Hey Jeff,

Here is my take. You need confidence to do things with the real helicopter. IMO, if you can consistantly do a maneuver on your sim, without thinking about it very much, without crashing -at all- during that maneuver, and you have figured out some "outs" IE you have some ways to quickly get into a safe orientation, then you are ready to go do it. If not, then you will just be causing yourself grief going "live" too early. The sim is where you push your boundaries and learn the controls. The real thing is where you should fine tune what you already learned. This way you minimize the rebuilds and the hit to your ego and confidence that comes from getting scared and crashing.

Another tidbit I realized, is that you should fly the simulator at an altitude similar to what you expect to actually fly your real heli at. I found that in real life, I'm more comfortable flying pretty low. Turns out, after thinking about this for a while, I realized that's how I had been practicing on the sim, low to the ground. Flying a "new" move higher in real life than how I learned it on the sim was actually a little disconcerting, because the orientation looked wierd and I was not used to it! So, you all can learn from that mistake, (because I dont advocate flying low too early in your progression) and fly the sim a little higher than you otherwise would due to lack of fear of crashing...

Learn in whatever order you want, that's part of the individuality of the hobby. My only recomendation here is don't go overboard and try any nutty piro stuff until you have pretty good command of ff and bf.

Hope that helps some,

-Chris

[Camp]

I learned with a co-axial Lama V3. Beat the heck out of it but learned orientation and flying in wind.

Actually spent less on it than a sim would have cost and considering I was in the middle of a divorce at the time it was the only thing I could smile about.

[Jeffs450SE]

hey Jeff.. the practic eon the sim made my maiden trial of doing flips pretty unevetful... exept the nervous shakes after it was over. The 450 SE does them so FAST!!! I 'm stuck on backwards flying too.