My progress over the last 3 months.

[Vikki]

A bit of preamble (video). I think most people remember my pitiful attempts at hovering. It's well documented (dammit) on here somewhere. It was sort of anywhere but where I wanted it. Here's the video (you don't need to see the whole thing, though. The day after I dumb-thumbed Chopasaurus into the deck):

Blade 450 3D First flight. - YouTube

After a while I got the 450X. Although it cost more I figured repair and set-up would be cheaper (no flybar).

I took Big Larry (known as Larry from here on in) over the field I started to practice my hovering. It was then that I learnt he was a lamb to fly (hence Larry, as in Larry the lamb). So I put 1 battery through him and called it day even though I had more. I wasn't about to push my luck.

The next day I put three batteries through him, just hovering and gentle movements. I stopped feeling tense and felt really comfortable hovering him, even in 12mph winds. That's pretty much how it went for a while. Hovering. Gentle slides left and right, forward and back. Then I got to the point where I could hover him in our garden. The video was done on a bit of a windy day. Although the garden is somewhat sheltered the gusts can be unpredictable. It was practising in the wind at the field that allowed me to retain control. Judge from the video:

Blade 450X beginner - YouTube

One day I decided to try what I was practising in Phoenix. With jelly-legs I turned him 90 degrees to the left and flew away from my a short way and then pulled the nose up a little and used the rudder to spin him 180 degrees. He turned and flew to the right and I did the same baby stall turn and came back.... then I bottled it and went tail-in, hovered and landed. Called it a day as I don't went to tempt fate.

About a week later (the weather wasn't kind) I went over to my favourite field only to find that it was being mown!!! Went to another field and it was too overgrown to fly. So, spitting feathers I went back to work.

Then I had a bright idea. I phoned hubby and told him I would be an hour late getting home as I was going to the sports field to fly. Well, I went there after work and this huge area was empty.

I got Larry out and slipped in his first battery. Remembering some wise words I used the first battery to get brain and thumbs working together. Then decided it was time to grow a pair. I now have ovaries the size of grapefruits (Doc says that's not good but she don't fly helis).

I turned left side on and sent Larry off. We did small stall turns at each end and I went forward and backward a few times but the jelly-knees were there. By the time I'd got to the fourth battery I was really happy and was doing tiny proper turns at each end and the jelly-knees were gone and I was feeling really comfortable with Larry. We've had the same experience a couple of times since (weather permitting) and I've even started to try larger co-ordinated turns, messy, but getting there.

That's pretty much how I've progressed in the last month or two and I'm really happy. Larry flies really well in 16mph winds and I'm comfortable with him.

I've tried the same with Lazarus (mCPx) and he's just as much fun but in 16mph winds you need to be on the ball with him, amazing how he flies in wind if doing fast forward flight. Lazurus and Phoenix have been instrumental in this progress. Phoenix for the left to right to left flights and Lazarus for the delicate hover control.

Touch wood - I have not crashed Larry to date. I love the Blade 450X, it suits me. I'll take Bonce-Cam with me next time.

Thanks.

Vikki.

[matt35]

Hey Vikki, Looking good in the videos. Sounds like you're coming on really good and that i need to grow a pair and get more practice in! Shame you live so far away as it would be cool to fly together for encouragement

[Vikki]

Thanks, Matt.

[cjcj1949]

I think it would be interesting to know what you think of the way you learnt going from mcpx to the 450X and the 4503D. How difficult did you find the 450 after the mcpx and how useful was Phoenix.

[Leigh Beaumont]

A bit of preamble (video). I think most people remember my pitiful attempts at hovering. It's well documented (dammit) on here somewhere. It was sort of anywhere but where I wanted it. Here's the video (you don't need to see the whole thing, though. The day after I dumb-thumbed Chopasaurus into the deck):

Blade 450 3D First flight. - YouTube

After a while I got the 450X. Although it cost more I figured repair and set-up would be cheaper (no flybar).

I took Big Larry (known as Larry from here on in) over the field I started to practice my hovering. It was then that I learnt he was a lamb to fly (hence Larry, as in Larry the lamb). So I put 1 battery through him and called it day even though I had more. I wasn't about to push my luck.

The next day I put three batteries through him, just hovering and gentle movements. I stopped feeling tense and felt really comfortable hovering him, even in 12mph winds. That's pretty much how it went for a while. Hovering. Gentle slides left and right, forward and back. Then I got to the point where I could hover him in our garden. The video was done on a bit of a windy day. Although the garden is somewhat sheltered the gusts can be unpredictable. It was practising in the wind at the field that allowed me to retain control. Judge from the video:

Blade 450X beginner - YouTube

One day I decided to try what I was practising in Phoenix. With jelly-legs I turned him 90 degrees to the left and flew away from my a short way and then pulled the nose up a little and used the rudder to spin him 180 degrees. He turned and flew to the right and I did the same baby stall turn and came back.... then I bottled it and went tail-in, hovered and landed. Called it a day as I don't went to tempt fate.

About a week later (the weather wasn't kind) I went over to my favourite field only to find that it was being mown!!! Went to another field and it was too overgrown to fly. So, spitting feathers I went back to work.

Then I had a bright idea. I phoned hubby and told him I would be an hour late getting home as I was going to the sports field to fly. Well, I went there after work and this huge area was empty.

I got Larry out and slipped in his first battery. Remembering some wise words I used the first battery to get brain and thumbs working together. Then decided it was time to grow a pair. I now have ovaries the size of grapefruits (Doc says that's not good but she don't fly helis).

I turned left side on and sent Larry off. We did small stall turns at each end and I went forward and backward a few times but the jelly-knees were there. By the time I'd got to the fourth battery I was really happy and was doing tiny proper turns at each end and the jelly-knees were gone and I was feeling really comfortable with Larry. We've had the same experience a couple of times since (weather permitting) and I've even started to try larger co-ordinated turns, messy, but getting there.

That's pretty much how I've progressed in the last month or two and I'm really happy. Larry flies really well in 16mph winds and I'm comfortable with him.

I've tried the same with Lazarus (mCPx) and he's just as much fun but in 16mph winds you need to be on the ball with him, amazing how he flies in wind if doing fast forward flight. Lazurus and Phoenix have been instrumental in this progress. Phoenix for the left to right to left flights and Lazarus for the delicate hover control.

Touch wood - I have not crashed Larry to date. I love the Blade 450X, it suits me. I'll take Bonce-Cam with me next time.

Thanks.

Vikki.

Well done vikki your doing great , it gets easier and a lot more fun the more moves you learn the more you want to fly then it gets very addictive to say the least

Leigh

[Vikki]

Hi, CJ.

Let's see.

Phoenix was instrumental in my learning. When I first started flying with Phoenix I was all over the place and I crashed a lot. Before then I had the Blade 120SR and I never really got on with it so I got the mCPx. I struggled with that and was unable to hover in the bathroom. After a couple of more weeks on Phoenix I was able to hover quite well. I was able to hover the mCPx and the 120SR in the bathroom and was even able to hover out in the field on the calm days.

Forward flight eluded me for a while but found that a characteristic of the 120SR was holding me back. The mCPx died a terrible death and I was left with the Blade 450 3D.

I'd had a minor flight with training gear that was kindly donated by a member here but the field was rougher than I thought and the training gear hub broke.

I got some more and the video you see was my first proper flights and I was all over the place. I did have a prior flight but within seconds I landed heavy, tail down, which broke the tail case at the back. The day after the video I dumb-thumbed Chopasaurus into the ground in the first 49 seconds. Took out the flybar amongst other things and found it ackward to set up the flybar. Oh, I did get a swashplate levelling tool and found the swash was quite a way out. The 450 3D behaved much better after that but I'd become afraid to fly it.

Returned to Phoenix and practised some more. Then I decided to go flybarless for less complex repairs and that helped take some of the fear away. Also, having crashed the fear of crashing was much less as it'd had already happend.

The 450X was beautiful straight out of the box and only needed the trim in the parameters menu of the BeastX to correct a slight movement to the right. I practised my hovering in the field and decided to reinvest in another mCPx annd found that I hovered Lazarus much better than I ever flew Li'l Larry. Things were looking up.

I took Lazarus into work each day and practised forward and backward flight and hovering and sides in hovering in a long narrow room. An hour a day, well, nine batteries worth. It was too narrow for anything else and it started to get boring and I was already hovering Big Larry nicely. While the garden video shows a bit of drift I am better than that now.

So, while I was playing each day with Lazarus I was using Phoenix in the evening (I'd set the Blade 450 model up as flybarless) to practise side to side flight. I read somewhere that a good learning trick was to lift the nose at each end and flick round 180 degrees and the heli would return the other way. This I did and eventually I tried it in real life and it worked.

Then I used Phoenix to turn at the ends using aileron turns and then eventually tried that in real life and found it worked. I spent a lot of hours in Phoenix and my crashes became few and far between in it. I've practised banked turns, big ones, and while messy I have transferred that over to real life too.

I've taken Lazarus into the field on a windy day and I have succeded in flying him the same way. That gave me more confidence with Big Larry and removed the jelly legs feeling.

I'll not lie, it's been a bloody long road but the first time I did side to side with mini stall turns and didn't crash was a major boost.

Without Phoenix and without the durable mCPx I would not have got this far. The mCPx is such a flighty critter that the 450X seems slower in comparison. An illusion based on size but you'll know what I mean

Phoenix was probably the most important purchase. I also upgraded from a DX6i to a DX8 transmitter and never looked back.

Oh, I also fitted T-rex 500 landing skids to both 450's to give a more stable base and lose the training gear.

I hope that helps others.

Vikki.

[jago]

Well done on your progress so far you doing very well its nice to see someone doing it properly for a change instead of just flying off and then can't hover to land . All orientations are very important in hovering weather you are the right way up or inverted well done again and keep the good work up cheers jago

[cjcj1949]

I'm just starting to read your progress post and I can't resist a sexist comment. Re " Hovering in the bathroom" - you must be the only woman who has problems with this... To be fair one of my son's wifes used to complain about him taking a long time.

[cjcj1949]

Back to serious comment. Did you find that the major problem was fear of crashing rather than learning how to fly? It's well known that most people find flying a sim much easier than the real thing and the smaller helis being more survivable make this easier. Also crashing is almost a good thing, as you say, after crashing the fear factor goes down. I think we are all at the stage of being able to do something on the sim that we can't do for real. I think your method of learning and your posts will help a lot of new people.

[Swashbuckler]

Looked a bit like Farlington marsh near the top of Eastern Rd. Was it?

[Vikki]

Yes, the fear of crashing, especially a 450 size, was strong and it made me tense on the controls. In fact, you watched one of my videos a while back and said that you felt me tense up.

I also recall thinking after the crash 'why am I bothering' but that lasted no more than a minute. Then I phoned hubby and laughed about it. Because I didn't pile in at any speed the damage was slight. New blades and feathering shaft. About £12 of damage and half hour of repair work.

It showed me that a crash wasn't a disaster. The fear broke at that point and I learnt not to tense up and to relax more. It's still there to a degree, which is a good thing, but it's not enough to get in the way of one's thinking and reflexes. I fly with enough height that when the heli is coming across and I put in a small sideways correction and it's the wrong way then there is ample time to correct the right way and heli hardly sees the error. Because of Phoenix that has become instinctive, the error is corrected the instant the eyes see it. Of course, I'm using tiny delicate movements now, not big panicky ones that I had a few months ago. The corrections are just right.

One thing I did forget to say is that I bought a Quad a while before getting the 450X. I figured that it would help me. I got a DJI F450 with NAZA flight controller and flew in Attitude mode. Basically, if you let go of the sticks it self stabilises and drifts along with the wind. You still have to work to keep it in one place but it's not going to crash unless you do something really stupid.

It got me used to flying money in front of me. I then got a Gaui 330x-s which needed far more careful handling as it had no auto stabilisation. The DJI is now my camera platform and the Gaui is my tank-it-round-the-sky jobby. Crashed that one a few times but it's durable. Learnt banking turns on them, it's damn near the same as bank turning the 450 heli in Phoenix.

It helped me immensely but I can't advocate going that route as quads are bloody expensive compared to a 450 3D or X. Mine were about £350 each. Use the same batteries as the helis.

The DJI is £500+ since I added the GPS module but it makes video and photos a dream. So locked in. It glues itself to the sky.

All in all, it's been sim practise and little bird practise and quad practise and big bird practise. The sim may be boring when hovering but once you can do it for real and you do it for real every day with a small heli indoors when it's raining or windy out you can move on to forward flight and turns. Do that a lot and it won't be such a shock on the real thing.

Unless you're a natural flying model helicopters is not easy. It takes time, patience and practise. Like anything that is difficult and worthwhile - the practise time has to be put in. It took me years to learn to play keyboards but there's no danger of crashing there. Thank God for sims

The sim lets you learn danger free. You can try again and again until you understand something.

That first time you decide to fly your 450 away from you to the left or right and do the little 'stall turn' at each end of the run is terrifying. You genuinely feel you're going to pee yourself. After a while you discover that it is so similar to the sim that that feeling goes away and you realise that you are actually enjoying yourself and you're laughing!

Now move on to a more windy day. Just hover in that wind. Nothing fancy. After some practise you'll find you can do your flying again but the jelly-legs are back until you realise that you and your pal are happy in the wind. I've flown in 16-18mph winds now and it's the instincts you learn in Phoenix that help. I even did simple circuits with the mCPx in that same wind and that demanded concentration but reflexes took over agian and I had a great time. Bloody handful, though.

One other thing, if the heli gets away from you in the sim - don't reset it, learn to bring it back because there's no reset in real life.

Well, that lot and the previous lot must be about the most in-depth discertation on flying I have ever seen. I really hope it helps others.

Best regards to all.

Vikki.

[Vikki]

Swashbuckler: other side, Bedhampton way.

Vikki.

[Swashbuckler]

Ah does look familiar - I used to live at Bedhampton Hill

[Sheldrake]

[QUOTE=Vikki I also upgraded from a DX6i to a DX8 transmitter and never looked back.Vikki.[/QUOTE]

Hi Vikki, please could you elaborate a bit? What are the benefits of the DX8 over the DX6i

Thanks

[Vikki]

Backlit display. More model memories and SD card capable. D/R and F-mode switches are three position. It can do more with swash types and mixes. It feels nice in the hands ( oh God! CJ is bound to come with something for that one ). Extra channels. Great on my quad where I need to control Flight Mode and Intelligent Orientation Control, which are three position. I'm sure there's more. I may want a spare channel for retractable landing legs on the quad so they aren't in frame.

Vikki.