Originally Posted by
baerster
Thanks everyone! I started flying lessons at a local club last week (Marymoor RC) with a buddy box. I was humbled by how difficult it was for me to fly a Cub without any gyro stabilization. I have been flying park flyers with gyro and an Eflite Conscendo with SAFE, and those were reasonably easy for me, once I got used to how everything is reversed when the plane is heading toward me, etc. But I had developed some bad habits from flying with gyro and SAFE. Flying without them was - as the joke in the movie Airplane goes - "an entirely different kind of flying. Altogether." I started learning the benefits of very small stick movements and keeping the wings level when the gyro won't do it for me.
So I downloaded RealFlight 9.5 immediately after my first lesson (last week) and got the Spektrum dongle the next day, and have put maybe 7 hours into it. Tomorrow I will see how much it paid off - how will it go when I try an approach to final, for instance.
Ask your instructor if the rates and the "expo: are right for you on your plane. Rates determine how much stick movement you have to give to make the airplane respond a given amount. Too much, and you need little tiny movements and are frequently over controlling. Too little, and the plane just won't respond to your movements very fast, which may be an issue in circumstances where you need that extra response. Expo (exponential) allows you to have a low response around neutral, but the further you move the stick, the proportionally greater it will be. Helpful, but it can be a bit of a balancing act to get it comfortable, as with too much, it can be easy to move the stick a bit too far, and the plane does a lot more than you intended. I usually dial it all down for beginners, but my radio allows one to change the settings while in flight, so I can adjust what the student is feeling in the air. But not all radios are that fancy.