Progress

[Rich23]

Hey

Good to see your still at it. I should be free in the next week or 2 so will arrange with you to come up.

Rich

[wouldbeflyer]

Hello mate. Got to try and sort this so that I can enjoy it.Have you had a good day

[forza]

being a novice not wanting to be a pest with the local fliers as they are so advanced , it makes me feel a little embarrassed with my constant questions and feeble flying attempts

We were all there once Martin and it's better you ask questions and seek advice than do something drastically wrong. When you take off, hover and land it seems apparent to me that you're passed the need for the training rig you're using and you didn't look to be over-correct especially when the heli was drifting away unexpectedly in the wind so there's definitely progress there.

Keep chipping away at it and see where you're at in another 3 months!

[electricsceadu]

the other thing to do is to watch your fellow pilots models at your club when they are flying
you will pick up the odd thing or three and it helps you in your flying
18 batteries and no mishaps is very good going

when at your club ask the other pilots to watch your flying at then tell you what mistakes you are making and any advice they can give you
don't take any comments as a dig at you we all started once and wasn't aways the best pilots
ignore the just go out and do a 3d flight as they are just using their sence of humour

[wouldbeflyer]

Ok mate, little by little hopefully it will click ,feel like i'm in a hurry though for some reason.Everybody must have gone through this stage , I doubt anybody can just pick up and fly. I think it surprised me so much ,just how much is involved. Cars you put down and apart from runaways ,within 10 minutes you are good,except from high speed versions of 80mph upwards.
I will be content to just fly figure 8's, which may be achievable and means I can relax and enjoy it then. I know that I will ever get anywhere near your standard ,just gentle stuff will be fine

[Grumpy]

When it does 'click' it's the greatest feeling... keep at it.

[wouldbeflyer]

The lads I have seen in my local spot ,I find it impossible to follow their heli's ,they look out of control but certainly are not.Most of the time I can't tell which way is up. Its just local spots for me at the moment, on my own ,no clubs as I find it hard to concentrate and as for 3d...........................

[wouldbeflyer]

I'm sure,look forward to it

[myxiplx]

The lads I have seen in my local spot ,I find it impossible to follow their heli's ,they look out of control but certainly are not.Most of the time I can't tell which way is up. Its just local spots for me at the moment, on my own ,no clubs as I find it hard to concentrate and as for 3d...........................

Yup, it actually takes a few years of flying 3D to even be able to follow some of the routines. I'm able to follow a lot more now, but I'm a long way from flying like that :-)

But you don't need to fly 3D to enjoy flying, there's a bunch of pilots at our field who have no interest in 3D at all.

[wouldbeflyer]

Yes thats me ,even if I could

[honwal]

I have done my first hover tonight with blade 450x, the route I will take now is to keep tail in hover going, then nice steady stick movements to do 90 degree turns both ways, when I am comfortable with that I will walk behind heli to do circuits, key thing is plenty of room,
this is what I did with 200srx it seemed to work pretty well, hope tis helps

[wouldbeflyer]

Thats new, a walk behind. I will try that tomorrow but my heli tends to get away so it might be more of a sprint. I will try anything if it gets me more advanced

[tomatwalden]

Walking behind your heli to retain tail-in orientation isn't something you can really translate to larger helis. You really should think about learning orientations. I found that from tail in, moving to 45-degree angles, then to 90-degree etc. was a good path.

[PeteStewardson]

What I found was that progression seems to come in stages. You'll feel like giving up as all you can do is hover, then one day you'll just think sod it and do something else that you can't do, and come close to achieving it. Then you'll realise it's not so scary and try again.

For learning side on one useful way to pick it up is to hover tail in, then slowly move to the left or right. When you get 5-10m to that side stop and hover there for a bit and then bring it back and go the other way. Then when you're comfortable doing that try bringing the heli backwards when you're 10m to the side, and slowly each session bring the ehli further and further back until the heli is level with you to the side. Don't turn your body towards the heli, just turn your head. This slowly gets you used to looking at the heli side on, but you are still 'tail in' with regards to your body. Then after a while start turning your body a bit and you will end up eventually hovering side on facing the heli.

Also ALWAYS practice both sides. I didn't and favored one side over the other to hover and it took a long time to get over preferring one.

Depending on where you are it may also be worth considering some proper professional training too. I've been to Flyinfish a number of times and each time it's brought on my flying massively. There's a good trick to that, you'll find a decent instructor will be taking you beyond the thing you think is difficult.

So in my case rather than trying to learn figure 8's and side on flying ( the thing I went for ), Dave had me learning to hover nose in ( Something I didn't feel ready to even consider before that). It scared the crap out of me but the fear isn't so bad as you can't crash because he'll save it when it goes wrong. But then when I think about it now I realise that actually, I was moving the heli around into the nose in orientation, which meant I was going through the side on orientations without thinking about it because I was focused on being worried about nose in. So I went from tail in hovering to nose in in 3 hours. It doesn't work for everyone, and some say it's a waste of money, but I find it worked very well.

[PeteStewardson]

You know what, commenting on this thread made me go back through my threads and I realised something and have a piece of advice.

Buy one heli ( and maybe a micro or two if you want as well ) and stick to it! Don't go buying the latest and greatest because it doesn't help you progress.

I started with a Phoenixtech TT360 ( no longer sold in this country sadly ) and flew it EVERY day. I flew no matter what the weather was as long as the wind was't too bad, and if I crashed I had the spares on hand and fixed over night and was back out the next day. I progressed and was moving along at a great pace. Then I started to buy more helis. I bought them, sold them, bought more, sold them, and you know what I've realised that rather than flying helis I'm now building them and tinkering with them. Yes I'm having fun doing it, but my flying hasn't progressed that much. I currently have 5 Helis ( if I don't count the other airframes I have for spares for those 5, if I do I have 9! ), most of them in various stages of completeness for one reason or another.

With that in mind I have today told myself I'm having a proper clear out. I'm selling anything I don't fly at all, and most of what I don't fly much. I'll end up with 3 helis I think and I can see me flying each for different reasons. But I've told myself no more, I need to start progressing, and I'm not doing that with a fleet in bits.

SO yeah my biggest bit of advice. Don't get sucked into buying what you don't need. Have a good heli and fly it a lot, and have the right spares on hand to fix it when you need to.