help with co-ordinated turns please

[family guy]

hi, been a fixed wing pilot for many years and have never owned an aircraft that needed co-ordinated rudder&aileron and must admit to finding it a bit a challenge to keep in together both on my sim and on the field, does anyone have any tips please as each time i try it just gets worse , does not help that i don't fly with a governor on my esc. i am flying a clone 450 trex...fine heli, a tad twitchy but have only tipped it over once when landing slewed since i started flying it and that was on its first hop.

[trillian]

It depends on if you're hovering around or in fast forward flight where you are banking in the turns.

When hovering around at slow speed and keeping the heli level you are essentially just moving it forward with the elevator and steering with the rudder as the aileron is just keeping the heli level. But in FF flight you can pretty much bank it and steer with elevator like you would a plane and then follow with the rudder if you need to swing the tail around more.

I started flying on fixed-wing and I would all but ignore the rudder after taking off but now when I fly a plane again (kinda rare these days as I don't have any myself) I find I am automatically using the rudder as well.

In full scale fixed-wing it is a general practice to use the rudder a bit in turns to keep the nose pointed into the turn and counteract the extra drag of the wing on the outside (unless you're banking really hard).

Anyway, probably all of that is fairly obvious, it's just a matter of training your left hand to steer the nose and keep the tail where you want it and eventually you don't even think about it.

[family guy]

you make it sound soo easy, i had to do it with my gliders but as you describe it, it makes sense. the faster in forward flight you go, the more it sort of behaves like a fixed wing. not got to high speed runs yet, hands are too shaky after a hover! lol, will take on board your comments, thanks for the tips i am holding it in a stable hover atm and getting used to flying a heli again. i never bit the bullet like i have with this bird, I've got the bug and keep watching the wind out the window to see if i can steal another flight. got the orientation bit about licked, just got to keep it within a point of ref so as i don't 'loose' where it is in the sky, i kept going too high before, now i do the odd ground run in front of me a-la-figure-of-eight and this seems to be building my confidence and skill...ish lol, just got to remember my limits atm.
once again, thanks for the early morning reply....i thought i was a bit of a night owl all on my own

[trillian]

you make it sound soo easy, i had to do it with my gliders but as you describe it, it makes sense. the faster in forward flight you go, the more it sort of behaves like a fixed wing. not got to high speed runs yet, hands are too shaky after a hover! lol, will take on board your comments, thanks for the tips i am holding it in a stable hover atm and getting used to flying a heli again. i never bit the bullet like i have with this bird, I've got the bug and keep watching the wind out the window to see if i can steal another flight. got the orientation bit about licked, just got to keep it within a point of ref so as i don't 'loose' where it is in the sky, i kept going too high before, now i do the odd ground run in front of me a-la-figure-of-eight and this seems to be building my confidence and skill...ish lol, just got to remember my limits atm.
once again, thanks for the early morning reply....i thought i was a bit of a night owl all on my own

When I first started flying helis I found it very natural to fly it like a plane because there's a bit of self-stabilizing when it's moving forward. I found doing hovering lazy 8s very difficult and had to really work on it to keep the heli under control and going where it's supposed to. Even after I felt fairly OK nose-in hovering it would freak me out when at some point in a turn I would swing around into a nose-in orientation. My orientation comfort level was in three stages; 1. Just flying around like a plane where it's always moving along at a good clip. This didn't give me any trouble. 2. Hovering stationary took a bit longer. 3. Being able to hover in patterns and turning from both side-on orientations to nose-in in a smooth transition, this took the longest. I think it was a matter of dealing with so many things at once and it just takes time for it to become 2nd nature.

I'm not usually up this late But I didn't get back from Charmouth until 10 and then had a late dinner, watched some TV and I'm still not tired really.

[family guy]

very informative and re-assuring to hear about your trials and tribulations. just got to get as much stick time in as possible. although a very useful tool, it seems that a flight sim will only help you get the stick movements and reactions but not real world stuff like teaching you how to deal with orientation, depth perception and panic attacks lol. hope the drive was uneventful, the meal hearty, the TV funny and the indigestion non-existent, great site, great people, great advise...nuff said
regards, rob