As I am teaching new flyers, and trying to help them deal with reversal, that is when the plane is flying toward you, I suggest they project themselves into the plane. Frankly that is what I do.

If you were in the plane and wanted to bank left, you move the stick left. If you want to bank right, you move the stick right. This is always the plane's left and right, not the left and right of the RC pilot standing on the field. Likewise, if you were in the plane, you would pull back on the stick to raise the nose and you would push on it to lower the nose. So it is for the pilot in the plane, so it is for the RC pilot.

That is why we talk about pulling up to come out of a dive and pushing over into a dive. You will never hear someone yell, push up, push up! because it would not make sense in the context of the plane.


As stated earlier, when I am flying, my radio is more or less flat out in front to me, not verticle, so there is no up and down on the sticks. I only have forward and back, left and right. In Europe, I understand that transmitter trays are common. In that case the radio is virtually flat and it is just like sitting in the cockpit.

If you want an UP/Down correlation for up and down of the plane, then that would be the throttle stick.

As many instructors will tell you, you control altitude with the throttle stick and attitude/speed with the elevator. So you push the throttle UP to climb and Down to come down ( forward and back for me).


BEYOND WHAT YOU ASKED BUT RELATED - Up elevator does not make the plane climb

If you don't have enough speed/power you can't climb with the elevator no matter how hard you pull back. In fact if you don't have enough speed, applying up elevator will cause you to dive and perhaps spin as well. This is called a stall caused by too much up elevator for the speed of the wing.

In fact one of the reasons why new pilots crash is because they think the elevator makes the plane go up. They apply up elevator with insufficent speed, and the plane stalls an starts to drop, so they apply more up and the plane dives. The correct response to a stall is to apply down elevator so the plane can gain speed and the wings can start to generate lift again, then you slowly, gently apply some up elevator to get back to level flight.