rcdude7

My Feedback: (264)

Hello, I have so many questions that I don't know where to begin.

First, I am a plank flyer with many years under my belt, I have also taught a few others to be plank flyers (don't hate me ). I am ready to branch out so I now have a new raptor 50 and need your help.

I have heli instructors in the club and I will look to them for instruction, but I am wondering if it will be harder for me to learn the skill of a heli pilot because of my planker habits? For example, I have helped some people learn to shoot guns and know that in general it is easier to teach basic marksmanship to someone who has never held a gun and had a chance to develop bad habits.

What advice do you have for a plane guy trying to become a heli pilot?


Thanks in advance, Mike

trickle007

buy a good simulator, I use Phoenix Flight great for helicopters, others use Real flight

abronbibly

My Feedback: (1)

I just picked up aerofly professional deluxe, it looks awesome and since I'm on a Mac - it was the best decision. Aerofly5 is out and is sick! BUT, it's very hard to get on the US markets, it seems like Ikarus is still trying to get the new version over here.. I couldn't wait so I bought the AFPD instead of AF5.

I'm still waiting on everything to come in, but I'm planning on using it with a Spektrum DX7 remote.. It's supposed to rock!

If you are on a PC then you definitely have a world of options to play with.. I too am just getting started and I can't wait to begin flight school!

midntpumkin

i always laugh when people say this ...and i will tell you why.
when i first started flying (remember dave brown) there was the dave brown sim some blocks as helis and planes and real flight just came out , well at the club i was in they were always saying those things dont teach you how to fly , and the same went with the pa1 autopilot from futaba , they always said get a teacher to fly either with a buddy box or the hand off method . i always had a hard time getting help in the club i was in, even being in there for 6 years , i learned to fly with the sim than with the teacher teaching me to fly. get the som its going to let you do so many things that you would never try in real life , like 50 mph gusts and high winds to fly in , it was so much fun to do and crash all the time , you will be alot quicher if you learn in the extreams than just flying around and doing stunts.

sorry it just brings me back to the days i started flying yes a good sim is a exxelent way to learn to fly

TakeshiSkunk

Sim all the way man, log a bunch of time. I went from sim to hover to ff to inverted hover and aerobatics with no drama. I have yet to dumb thumb, though I did just experience my first crash Tail rotor just died out of nowhere midflight. My sim experience actually helped here too, I instinctively hit throttle hold right away and did my best to autorotate it down. 400/450s don't auto so great so it was still a crash, but I did manage to minimize the damage.

Rafael23cc

My Feedback: (6)

Mike:

You are in the right path. Your airplane experience taught you that you don't know. Have you ever heard the phrase: The more I learn, the more I find out of things that I don't know? So you are at that phase.

To better answer your question (not getting involved in the simulator debate), yes, your airplane habits might hinder your progress as a heli pilot. I will point out a few. The good thing is that you are aware that it might be a possibility.

1. As an airplane pilot, you might have the tendency of lowering the throttle when something goes wrong. If you do that on a heli, you will be lowering the collective and potentially slamming you heli on the ground.
2. As an airplane pilot, your aircraft pulled itself forward all the time. On a heli, you have to push the heli forward all the time, that means that you have to keep slight pressure on the elevator stick to maintain forward momentum. At any point in a helicopter's flight, it can move in any direction, unlike the airplane where it can only move within an arch in the forward direction.
3. On an airplane you could bank-and-yank to make it turn. On a heli, although you could also do it that way, most likely you would end up in the ground if you tried it. Remember the pushing to maintain forward speed? Coordinated turns are the key on helicopters. You have to use that rudder in turns. As you learn to hover, your initial turn will be slow speed so rudder only turns will be your initial turns.
4. And the main difference is hovering. I consider hovering an airplane, one of the capping off maneuvers as an airplane pilot. If you can pull that one off, you could probably do anything with an airplane. On a helicopter, you have to learn to hover before you can do anything else. You hover to take off, and you hover to land. So hovering will be your basic skill on helicopters.

I might have missed a few aspects of heli flying that are very different from airplane flying, but these are the basic ones that I can think of from my office desk.

Rafael

karlik

I've flown planks for over 20 yrs.

I'll bet while helping other plank flyers learn you've found that one guy will have a hard time with one aspect while the next guy struggles with something totally different. So everything Rafael says is true for some guys and some of us create some different problems.

First get a good sim, the two suggested are probably the best.

I'm working on side and nose in. Rafael says you may throttle down when something goes wrong, and I'm sure a lot of folks do. When I'm doing nose in and panic in my brain jumps into a botched fixed wing landing... I add throttle and give a little up elevator (a fixed wing go 'round) and promptly spike the tail rotor.

I can land a fixed wing easy and that means I've already mastered the nose in concept of left=right and right=left, but for some strange reason I'm having trouble with that on the heli and I'm having to train myself all over again.

I've talked to other converts and some have had a teriible time learing, others are flying in no time at all.

But it's fun journey no matter how bumpy the road is.

TakeshiSkunk

Yeah nose in never really gave me much trouble on a plane unless I was going to knife edge or doing some long series of rolls back and forth. Heli felt a lot more awkward in that regard, I can hover nose in now but I'm still not completely comfortable with it. A heli reacts a lot differently to control input than a plane, figuring out how to hover I was just constantly worried about overcontrolling. In a plane if you roll the wrong way you can just roll back and not really have it be an issue, but in a heli if you roll to the side its gonna take off in that direction. Your fixed wing experience will help I think, it'll make you more comfortable with different orientations even if you do basically have to relearn them for the heli. You'll have a leg up on someone who's never held a Tx before. Familiarity with the transmitter and motor skills involved in flying anything will definitely be beneficial.

The key is to not be afraid of the heli. Just convince yourself that you can do it and you will, there's a big initial hump to get over (which you can completely traverse with a sim) but after that it's really not so bad

wzak29

My Feedback: (1)

Also been flying planes for years, as said before the hardest I had to overcome was not to pull back on the throttle when I got into trouble, works fine with planes but not heli’s.

TakeshiSkunk

I don't completely understand why you'd want to cut the throttle if you were in trouble in a plane. That would generally lead to a stall, which I would imagine is usually going to make whatever problems you're having worse. By the same logic I've generally considered 3D planes much easier to fly than trainers because they always have the power to pull out of anything, I scare myself more often with my Mini Mag than with my Typhoon :P

rcdude7

My Feedback: (264)

Thanks everyone for posting, some things were brought up that I hadn't thought of. I will look for a realflight sim to re-train my fingers and brain.

So, fwd flight is power/throttle up and push the elev stick fwd?

Do most students start learning to hover with the help of HH mode these days?, or do they start learning to mix rudder movements right off the bat? I will have to unlearn the airplane tendency to only use rudder on landing, take off and during aerobatics.

I am looking forward to learning to hover, for starters.

rcdude7

My Feedback: (264)

karlik

I learned to fly in southern Cal on a Gentle Lady 2 meter glider, then moved to slope gliders so the throttle didn’t do much for me at first. I switched to nitro when I moved back to the NW and at first when the plane got a fair distance away I’d loose the front/rear aspect in a turn and couldn’t tell if it was coming at me or going away (you tend to keep slope gliders pretty close compared to a .40 or .60 size nitro). My first reaction was reduce (not cut) throttle to slow it down and give me time to try to convince my brain that it banked left when I moved the stick right so it’s coming at me. Probably a few other times when reduce throttle was the best solution too.

I can’t imagine the old timers learning heli before we had simulators – or worse still before we had trainer cords. I learned on the Gentle Lady by passing the transmitter back and forth. I can't imagine passing the transmitter with a heli. There had to be a lot of crash and repair compared to what we go through today. And my memory is failing me, did the old Dave Brown sim have a heli model or was it only fixed wing?

My Falcon 40 fp only has a crappy rate gyro so I can’t answer that. I really think being forced to "fly the tail" now will make me a better pilot in the long run, but that's just me. I found the gyro in the sim was way more stable than the falcon so quite often I will throw the rotor trim off by one or two clicks in the sim to make it feel a little more like my fp.

We do have guys at my field who only use the rudder to taxi. Those are the guys who call on the emergency land line phone and ask what direction the wind is blowing before they make the trip to the field. [sm=spinnyeyes.gif]

I was told by a few of the heli pilots I know that after they were forced to use the rudder/rotor on the heli they started using it more with fixed wing and are even making co-ordinated turns now.

wzak29

My Feedback: (1)

Let me try to explain, it’s like your brain knows that moving the left stick up and down changes your altitude, when flying a plane and you get into trouble you instinctively pull down on the altitude stick to go up(elevator), on the heli you will go down and that‘s not good. I am talking about my own experience, I did this for over a month on the sim. Before I broke this habit.

Rafael23cc

My Feedback: (6)

That is correct, but you should worry about hovering first. If you don't have hovering down, how would you land? Also, you should work on hovering in all orientations before attemting forward flight. You have a steep learning curve in front of you.

I know of very few people that switch out of Heading Hold. The only reason I see to switch out of heading hold would be to fly "scale". Nowadays, gyros are set-up in non-HH to maximize rudder power but then they get switched into HH and never switched back. If you have a good radio, you can tie the gyro's gain to the flight mode switch and the HH sensitivity can be adjusted in flight. I never take my gyros off HH. There is no reason for it.

Rafael

TakeshiSkunk

I've always tried to make a point of using rudder flying fixed wing just because I have a lot of experience flying actual planes with my dad. When you understand the reasoning behind co-ordinated turns, rudderless turns start to look really sloppy and ugly. Of course most of the time when I'm flying fixed wing now I'm on my side or upside down or hovering or something, so it's not quite as much of an issue as it is when I fly my trainer.

Co-ordinated turns on fixed wing are necessary for tracking a really nice clean steady altitude turn, but really aren't absolutely necessary just as a piloting skill. In helis co-ordinated turns are pretty much the only way to turn. You can do break turns with a heli but you tend to lose a lot of altitude if you aren't going really fast.

I should probably work more on my low speed turns in helis honestly, I'm still not quite as comfortable as I'd like to be with them.

mydartswinger

Bringing your nose in on an airplane is a bit easier because you're not constantly making corrections (unless you're doing some crazy 3D like torque rolls or harriers coming towards the flightline). In a nose in hover on a helicopter, you're constantly making corrections, forcing your brain to work faster. Once you get into forward flight, your nose in skills will be more similar to an airplane. Take your time, get some help, and you'll do fine.

Enjoy your transition.

rcdude7

My Feedback: (264)

I am still watching this thread and soaking all this knowlege up. One thing I have come to understand here is that while planes nearly fly themselves, helis require constant attention and focused concentration to remain in flight.

Looking over this raptor titan, makes me realise just how complex these machines really have become over the years. I have spent over 20 yrs making a living maintaining Jets for the US NAVY as a airframes/powerplants mechanic and I am still taken back by the engineering that has gone into this cool machine.

Although I'm not going to rush in prematurely, I'm eagar to get some stick time on this heli.

Mike

karlik

That brings up a question I've been meaning to ask and this is as good a place as any. How do you guys trim the transmitter for a heli? If a plane is even close to trim I can let go of one stick or the other adjust the trim a few clicks. No matter how close I have it on a heli I can't let go of the stick for even a milisecond. Is there a way to trim a heli in flight - and does it just come with experience?

Solman

You have to trim it when it is dead calm. You will pretty much have to be always be making minor adjustments during flight. Only difference is that when trimmed, adjustments will be minor. I tend not to adjust the trim too much or at all because different wind conditions will cause it act differently every time. To trim a helicopter, hover it about a foot off the ground and let go of the controls. See way it goes and then land it. Make your adjustments while it is on the ground. Take off about a foot off the ground and repeat the procedure until you are happy with the trim. Once you have it trimmed out, it should take little effort to hover it.

TakeshiSkunk

I would say trim out big issues by hoverring low and then landing. Don't worry about fine tuning anything until you're already comfortable flying. I can take my hand off the stick for a bit to adjust trim and then just catch it before it gets away from me.

I know helis seem crazy overwhelming right now, but you will become comfortable with it. It'll never be as relaxing as flying fixed wing but it'll stop being scary lol

Solman

You are able to take your hands off it to adjust your trim because you are close to fine tuned. I tried at hte beginning to adjust while in flight and almost met with disaster. It is highly recommended to take up about a foot which is high enough to take your heli out of the ground effect. Land it and do your adjustments. Once you get it very close to fine tune, it will make learning to hover and fly so much easier. You will be fighting the controls a lot less. I ddin't learn the trick about hovering/landing/adjust trim concept until I watched an experienced flyer do it that way. I went home and did the same thing about 4 or 5 times and it worked very well. I was quite happy with the results. I now do it the same way every time.

Rafael23cc

My Feedback: (6)

I agree with you with the trim method. But do not agree with the ground effect comment. The ground effect "bubble" is approximately equal to the diameter of the rotor blades.

having said that, you DO NOT need to fly outside of ground effect to trim your heli. Now, the heli should be pretty close to being trimmed when it leaves your building bench if you leveled your swashplate and balanced the bird properly.

Rafael

karlik

Thx for all the feedback. Seems I have been pretty much doing it right... hover/land/trim/rinse/repeat

Mike may end up with a slightly more advanced heli than my Falcon FP - I'm not sure I'll get it to a hands free point until I upgrade.

Solman

I don't know about yours, but my rotor diameter is 28".