From tail-in to all 8s and funnels in 6 months

[jbobb1]

Has anyone considered doing a group practice session on multiplayer? I use Phoenix. I bet group therapy could be beneficial!

[ArchmageAU]

Originally Posted by mkovalcson

You can also fly a 700 much further away from you which I do now.

Three years ago I had an intimate engagement with one of my 700's and I was VERY lucky, but it has FOREVER changed how I fly and I backed off quite a bit and moved the heli a lot further away from me while flying.
...

Yes VERY lucky. Close encounters with 700's rotor spinning at flying speed can easily come off far worse than this.

Cannot advocate safety more highly than this.

Even a 360 (450 size) can do significant damage.

Glad you are still flying did not toss it all in after this incident.

[mkovalcson]

Originally Posted by ArchmageAU

Glad you are still flying did not toss it all in after this incident.

This is the train of thought I had in the aftermath.

1. Am I missing any body parts or chunks? I could be in shock, quick body check. Triage.
2. Boy that was stupid! Self loathing for being an idiot.
3. Get the batteries out of the heli before they catch on fire!
4. Oh shit my arm is starting to look ugly! Will my wife force me out of this hobby?

I never at any point thought I wanted to leave the hobby, BUT I would have respected my wife's wishes if she had been adamant about it.

As it turns out she surprised me. She looked at me closely and said, "You are never going to let this happen again, right?". I was in disbelief since my wife is incredibly protective of me.

[peteski]

Originally Posted by ohawa

Another thing is on SIM I fly Blade 700 but IRL MCPX BL and nanoCPX BL - and these smaller seem not at all to be the same as the large one. It is only the fear of repair costs that I don't want to move to 180X or something alike. Would the size of the heli make IRL easier or not?

I found that really small micros like the mCPX don't really fly like the sim, especially once you start getting into inverted flight. But the 180 CFX is a huge improvement in this respect. I found the 180 far easier to learn basic flips, rolls, loops, inverted hovering/circuits etc than my mCPX. It's the smallest heli I've come across that flies much like the sim with decent tail hold and stability through piro moves and transitions. Coming from where you are now, you'll definitely find it a lot easier. Going slightly larger again there's the awesome OXY 3, which to me flies much like a powerful 500 on the sim. It really is the ultimate compact practice machine and can do the lot with style.

Basically there's no need to go for a 600/700 class heli to get a good correlation with the sim. Technology seems to have made these smaller 300-450 class helis very capable indeed. My biggest heli is a Goblin 380 and that flies like a 700 on the sim. I'm sure a real 700 flies much bigger than a sim 700 too, but as far as sim vs real life goes anything I learn on the sim using a 600/700 class heli I can translate straight across to my OXY 3 and G380 and even my 180 CFX, although that does need a bit more caution! For example I'm working on inverted funnels right now and my OXY 3 can perform those effortlessly all day long, just like any of the Heli-X 550 or 600 class models. They're a little more difficult on my 180, but still very doable with a bit of practice.

So don't be afraid to move up to a slightly larger heli. You will actually crash less and if you add a rescue FBL unit and learn to use it properly, there's no reason to crash hardly at all. I'm on 250 flights with my OXY 3 and only 1 crash in that time. Cost about $50 to fix and most of that was the canopy, which wasn't actually written off. I've crashed my 180 CFX 3 times in around 200 flights (early on when first learning inverted orientations) and again costs were minimal as I was flying it over long grass. Haven't crashed my G380 yet and don't intend to if I can help it!

Just my thoughts on my experience of moving up from micros in the last year.

[SHYguy]

I have tons of experience with mCPX and Nano (also brushless and dual brushless) - and I must highly recommend the XK K110 for a "live sim". This is the heli I always wanted those two other to be. Flies great, good piro comp, very good & solid construction and DIRT CHEAP. Agreed the 180CFX is a great micro, but it never survies a crash so not a good "live sim" for me

[peteski]

Originally Posted by SHYguy

Agreed the 180CFX is a great micro, but it never survies a crash so not a good "live sim" for me

That's true, but if you fly over long grass it helps a lot. Crash damage on mine has been minimal, but still stops you flying at that moment. Also teaches you that crashes are not free once you get away from ultra micros, which in itself is not a bad lesson to learn!

[oliver1071]

Just checking in haven't been to my favorite thread in a while.
hit 1200flights so far this season. Nerves are no more buddy boxing anyone who wants to fly my heli's at the club and haven't crashed from anything but mechanical failures.

The hobby is going very well for me I couldn't be happier.
Biggest challenge now is maintenance. Things fail if you fly without crashing so I need to work on my maintenance schedules.

I still can't get over how much this training helped me. I was just watching some old videos of me not even able to tail in hover for more than a few seconds it's crazy how hard this hobby is.

Really trying to perfect auto's now they still make me nervous taking my expensive heli's up in to the sky and turning the motor off is a little freaky.

Hope all of you guys are doing good and having fun with the training

[peteski]

Originally Posted by oliver1071

Just checking in haven't been to my favorite thread in a while.
hit 1200flights so far this season. Nerves are no more buddy boxing anyone who wants to fly my heli's at the club and haven't crashed from anything but mechanical failures.

The hobby is going very well for me I couldn't be happier.
Biggest challenge now is maintenance. Things fail if you fly without crashing so I need to work on my maintenance schedules.

I still can't get over how much this training helped me. I was just watching some old videos of me not even able to tail in hover for more than a few seconds it's crazy how hard this hobby is.

Really trying to perfect auto's now they still make me nervous taking my expensive heli's up in to the sky and turning the motor off is a little freaky.

Hope all of you guys are doing good and having fun with the training

Great to hear Oliver

I'm having the same issue with maintenance. No crashes means no forced maintenance, so you have to start scheduling routine maintenance and working out the life expectancy of various critical components. The latter is not that easy as there are so many variables and unknowns. For example I was wondering how long you can expect a set of servos or an ESC to live for? Do you just keep running them until they fail or toss them after 500, 1000, 1500 flights? I guess there is no easy answer and it comes down to the cost of replacement vs potential crash costs. Bearings are easier as they usually show signs of wear and rarely cause crashes when they start to fail.

Now the weather is starting to close in, I'm starting to think about my winter maintenance schedule. Maybe worthy of model specific threads.

[oliver1071]

Originally Posted by peteski

Great to hear Oliver

I'm having the same issue with maintenance. No crashes means no forced maintenance, so you have to start scheduling routine maintenance and working out the life expectancy of various critical components. The latter is not that easy as there are so many variables and unknowns. For example I was wondering how long you can expect a set of servos or an ESC to live for? Do you just keep running them until they fail or toss them after 500, 1000, 1500 flights? I guess there is no easy answer and it comes down to the cost of replacement vs potential crash costs. Bearings are easier as they usually show signs of wear and rarely cause crashes when they start to fail.

Now the weather is starting to close in, I'm starting to think about my winter maintenance schedule. Maybe worthy of model specific threads.

Can't say I've ever had servo fail one got twitchy on me an I clean the pot with some contact cleaner and it's been fine ever since.
ESC's I expect to last forever if they're not pushed past their limits.

You're right about bearing no biggy just replaced the tail bearings on my 480Xx after 500 flights they started to make clicking sounds.
Belts are probably the biggest concern. I haven't decided on an exact number per model yet for belt replacement.

[toadiscoil]

There's an app and web site called RC Logger where you can enter your crash and maintenance info for future reference. Would be cool to have a massive DB to gather flight count of a certain part replaced of a certain model.

Originally Posted by oliver1071

Can't say I've ever had servo fail one got twitchy on me an I clean the pot with some contact cleaner and it's been fine ever since.
ESC's I expect to last forever if they're not pushed past their limits.

You're right about bearing no biggy just replaced the tail bearings on my 480Xx after 500 flights they started to make clicking sounds.
Belts are probably the biggest concern. I haven't decided on an exact number per model yet for belt replacement.

[peteski]

Originally Posted by oliver1071

Belts are probably the biggest concern. I haven't decided on an exact number per model yet for belt replacement.

I wouldn't stress too much over belts for what they cost. I'm going to replace my OXY belt at around 300 flights (I think Luca said they were good for 400) and my G380 belts at 100 flights as suggested in the SAB manual. I'll change the tail bearings and dampers at the same time, again as suggested. I have no doubt the belts would last much longer, but I don't want to take any chances. How many flights have you got on your belts currently?

[oliver1071]

Originally Posted by peteski

I wouldn't stress too much over belts for what they cost. I'm going to replace my OXY belt at around 300 flights (I think Luca said they were good for 400) and my G380 belts at 100 flights as suggested in the SAB manual. I'll change the tail bearings and dampers at the same time, again as suggested. I have no doubt the belts would last much longer, but I don't want to take any chances. How many flights have you got on your belts currently?

200 on my G380 and G500. 500 on my 480Xx tail belt it autos good so I'm not to worried. 100 flights on my 690sx.

Originally Posted by toadiscoil

There's an app and web site called RC Logger where you can enter your crash and maintenance info for future reference. Would be cool to have a massive DB to gather flight count of a certain part replaced of a certain model.

The VControl flight analyzer takes care of all of my logging and provides a way to click on a date and enter comments for that day.
You can pull up a summery with all the comments and model info there's also an indicator on the particular day that a flight session has comments. Also the overall view of all weeks is nice to see how much you're flying a model.

[Ghostwhiper]

Great system ArchmageAU.
Started last week and allready see a lot of improvement in my flying (Sim and IRL)

I have no problems with the slow upright piro's and compass points.
Started inverted hovering and at about 4 crashes at 100% sim speed (cyclic only)
Already flying circles, lazy 8, stallturns, flips rolls and autorotations in play time.

The thing that improved the most was collective control to be honnest

[LiquidDrift]

This is indeed a great system and a great approach to learning. I've been flying for 2 months now and probably have well over 200 hours of sim time w AccuRC.

On my micro XK K110 I can do flips in all directions into and out of inverted hover, piro flips, backwards circles, and all the usual upright stuff, fig 8, stall turns, etc.

I have been loosely following the lessons and just doing the slow piros was super helpful for upright flight. I've been working on inverted slow piros which has been a big help on recovery from bad flips into inverted.

Thank you so much for taking the time to post the lessons; with AccuRC particularly since it has no training modes, it's nice to fire it up with a plan for the stuff I want to train each day. Seeing my weekly improvement in the field has been very satisfying. People who regularly walk the park even complement my improvement, lol!

[toadiscoil]

It's great to see good comments on this method! I took on ArchmageAU as my "Yoda" and he was cool enough to accept. I have progressed so much thanks to his tips and tricks and it all started with this training. I am now trying to learn the super hard all-orientation flight, basically circles and figure 8's in all orientations. Been very happy so far

[Kaolith]

I've kinda missed doing this method! It's​ helped me get the basic orientations upright and inverted down IRL. Now to master circles and funnels. I gotta get that All orientation flight! What sim do you use Toadiscoil? Maybe we can practice? I could use a buddy for motivation

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[bazsound]

Finally forced myself to start doing this!


Been flying trex 250 since august last year and trex 450 since a month ago (previous on off experience with v977)

Already seeing improvement after doing lesson 1 twice (with playtime ibetween)
I have issues with my right arm though during extended hovers, it becomes really ubcomfortable after 5 minutes, beyond that its really hard to continue on to 15 minutes.

Even after the playtime and a good rest my arm continues to feel uncomfortable.

[toadiscoil]

Hi there!

Sorry but I got lost in threads and lost track of this one. I fly Heli-X and neXt to fly online. I usually fly at nights, I am trying to do very focused practice. But if you jump on for sure we can fly and have some fun!

In my experience it helps to ensure you have your hovers VERY nailed down as it is the most basic and critical of all the skills you will learn. Make sure you can keep the heli on a very slow hover at 100% sim speed for 15 minutes each on: upright clockwise, upright counterclockwise, inverted clockwise and inverted counterclockwise. You need to have these orientations perfectly burned into your brain.

I am doing flips, rolls, stall turns, tic tocs, inverted hover (nose-in), punch-outs and trying funnels but they are all sketchy and in one direction only. When I started training all orientation figure 8 I realized I was missing still on my training so now I am back to nailing down the inverted hover. This is very hard but will help you a lot when you progress once you have it figured out.

Originally Posted by Kaolith

I've kinda missed doing this method! It's​ helped me get the basic orientations upright and inverted down IRL. Now to master circles and funnels. I gotta get that All orientation flight! What sim do you use Toadiscoil? Maybe we can practice? I could use a buddy for motivation

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[toadiscoil]

I find more than 5 minutes it gets more difficult. Very hard to keep focus. That is why when it's automatic in your brain it will get easier and you will realize that. I am shooting for 8 minutes currently. Then I will go for 15. Inverted I can't keep up more than 1.5 minutes

If you can try to mimic your real flight position. That is standing up and using a strap if you use one. Try to position your computer so that you can do this. Connecting to a big screen TV helps. That's what I do when I travel for work on the hotel TV

At home I have no option but to sim on my laptop unless no one is home which is when I hook up to the big screen TV. Rare hehe.

Originally Posted by bazsound

Finally forced myself to start doing this!


Been flying trex 250 since august last year and trex 450 since a month ago (previous on off experience with v977)

Already seeing improvement after doing lesson 1 twice (with playtime ibetween)
I have issues with my right arm though during extended hovers, it becomes really ubcomfortable after 5 minutes, beyond that its really hard to continue on to 15 minutes.

Even after the playtime and a good rest my arm continues to feel uncomfortable.

[Kaolith]

If you fly fpv, you can use your fpv goggles for a pretty decent big screen! I tried it out yesterday. Not as high resolution, but that is okay.

I've found getting back into it 15 minutes is a massive drain. I might try 8 or 10 minutes to see if that makes it better.

PMed you Toadiscoil



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