Learning to fly with 7.5

Newb here....with a 3 channel trainer sitting in the wings, so to speak.....I'm on the sim every day for at least an hour......I'll take any pointers, tips, tricks, etc. that anyone would care to offer.

Thx

Semper Fi!

Tip:

Turn OFF "Keep ground in view" mode.

Learn to always have a mental image of where your plane is located and oriented.

At first you'll be all over the place when you attempt a landing. After a while though you'll find that you'll be able to predict where the plane is at when the horizon becomes visible.

At our field I spend the most amount of time with novices doing square box patterns in both directions around our field. Practice this to the point that it is effortless for you to maintain altitude, square off corners and make straight runs on your downwind and approach legs.

Thanks. I'll try it. I'm all over the place attempting to land now! heheheheh

Getting up is no problem.....turning and trying to maintain altitude is where I'm at now....still fighting the transposition of controls after turning 180......every now and then I pull off a nice landing....that's when I quit for the day!

A stiff shot of something that bites back, helps.

Keep at it. Believe it or not after (substantial) practice you'll not even think twice about orientation nor control reversal. Later the only issue becomes not being able to determine which way your RC plane or heli is pointed.

The sim helps with this a lot too.

You can zoom out and take the plane out so it is a dot in the sky, with autozoom off.

Then swirl the sticks around and try to tell which way the plane is flying, not by how it is oriented, but rather the way it responds to your control inputs.

e.g. if you pull up and the plane heads down, it's upside down.

You can turn smoke on and off to help too.... all without fear of damaging a real model.

For the moment, concentrate on keeping the plane flying in a straight line down a runway centerline. Work on maintaining altitude in turns and exiting a turn lined up with the runway.

The latter is the hardest thing for novices to achieve. Once they do, landing becomes much easier.

It's harder to do with the sim, but from my decades as an RC instructor, some tips when you get to the flying field:

1. Turn yourself slightly to face in the direction the plane is headed. Just turning your shoulders is enough, just so you are slightly looking to the side or over your shoulder. You can even do this seated in the chair in front of the computer! You'll find yourself doing it less and less as you get used to the controls. Then right will always be right, and left always left.

2. As noted, make all your turns when in the landing pattern 90 degrees. When on the downwind leg, make two 90 degree turns to get to final, trying to make a half circle is SO much harder to get to the centerline of the runway.

3. If you are facing the runway, make that final turn to end directly off of your shoulder. You will swear that you are too far in from the runway, and the plane will hit you. As you level out from the turn, just slightly face the direction the plane is going (#1 above), and you'll hit the center of the runway much, much more often!

#1 NO... disagree, do it right, if you can't get on the sim.
#2 Agree
#3 I use points on the horizon... I turn to home when the plane is in the general area of a point that is lined up with runway from the pilots box perspective. To find these points takeoff from each direction on the runway and see where the plane appears on the horizon when flown straight away. Now when you are landing, and the plane is in the same position, you will be lined up with runway. This becomes less important as your flying skills improve. You will be able to make those circling carrier landings.

12oclockhigh said:

#1 NO... disagree, do it right, if you can't get on the sim.
#2 Agree
#3 I use points on the horizon... I turn to home when the plane is in the general area of a point that is lined up with runway from the pilots box perspective. To find these points takeoff from each direction on the runway and see where the plane appears on the horizon when flown straight away. Now when you are landing, and the plane is in the same position, you will be lined up with runway. This becomes less important as your flying skills improve. You will be able to make those circling carrier landings.

Click to expand...

As to #1, there is not a "right" way. My suggestion was one of many ways. This one helps the beginner get ahead a little faster, with less frustration. They stop the turning pretty quickly after getting takeoffs and landings under their belt.
As to #3, since perspective lines merge at the horizon, we're pretty close to saying the same thing. The shoulder thing is just a handy "always familiar" reference, that most people intuitively understand. And ALL beginners tend to land on the far side of the runway as they unconsciously steer the plane away from themselves. This helps counter that a bit.

#1 I think your turning shoulders method is a crutch, the sooner landing is learned properly, the less time is wasted. Thus it is a faster method and has less frustration plus you don't look backwardly. I know guys that stand on the field to take off and land. BAD PRACTICE. It is time to learn it right the first time. No time to unlearn bad habits.

thank u fellas.....

12oclockhigh said:

#1 I think your turning shoulders method is a crutch, the sooner landing is learned properly, the less time is wasted. Thus it is a faster method and has less frustration plus you don't look backwardly. I know guys that stand on the field to take off and land. BAD PRACTICE. It is time to learn it right the first time. No time to unlearn bad habits.

Click to expand...

Yup horrible practice.

Better to use the stick time to greatest effect.

Well, of course it is a crutch. One that is self extinguishing as the pilots skill level increases. It does help reduce the crash rate, as it assists with reducing the workload of the very busy time that is landing.
We're not talking standing with your back to the plane here, just enough to make the whole control reversal process initially less problematic. If we were, or if the student continued to do it for long into their flying avocation, that would be in the same league as only being able to turn onto final from one direction. But the practical matter is that as the student gets proficient, they ease into coping with control reversal, and the turning goes away. And anything that helps reduce the early learning crash rate is a good thing.

Of course sim practice is extremely effective. But if the transition from sim to real word doesn't quite match up for an individual, there can be an alternative strategy to get a begginer over the hump of the first complete flights.

If we're being purest, buddy boxes and flight sims are also crutches.....

Lots of good info fellas. I appreciate it.

tiny animations

Is there a way to increase the size of the scale of the animations at all? Depending on the selected strip, some of them can be pretty small.

Yes there are various things you can do, such as scale the plane larger, or deselect "keep ground in view" mode and zoom in to maximum.

Remember though that at an airfield the plane can and will become a "dot in the sky".

You are best off learning to pilot the plane through the air, not by the orientation you may see, but rather how the plane reacts to your controls. This will help with those real world situations where you go "oh f__k, which way is it pointed!?".

You will have to contend with that.

The BEST visual scaling you can use in the sim is where you get a 1:1 correspondence with the real world.

Think of your TV or monitor as a "window" to the virtual 3D world. Then place the plane in front of you a specific distance ( hint: there is a "ruler" 3D type object in Realflight ).

Then adjust the zoom or scaling until a projection of that 3D view corresponds to real life.

Needless to say this is much easier to achieve with a larger screen TV/Monitor.