ORIGINAL: flaminheli
Man, -pkh- you are just Mr. Negative. I am sorry to burst a bubble here but have you ever thought that some people just have a better learning curve than others. My 13 year old son flies, he soloed on his first attempt, he would not even let me take off or land for him. His 3rd plane that he currently flies is an Ultimate .40 and no he has not ever crashed any of his planes. His first plane was a Nexstar with none of the flight aids and an Avistar that he would switch back and forth between the two. He had about 20 flights total between the two when he started flying a Dolphin. He flew the Dolphin for about 15 flights then started flying the Ultimate. He has over 30flights on the Ultimate. He had about 10hrs sim time on a G 3.5 before he started flying.
I'm not trying to be negative. Yes with sim time you will have a much better & quicker learning experience. The sim helped me to be self taught for heli fiying, and helped me learn to fly planes with only 3 buddy-box flights after that.
To me it seems harder to be self taught with planes than with helis. With helis, you can put training gear on and learn to hover a few feet off of the ground. If you start to loose it you just drop the throttle/collective and set it down. The training gear will keep you from tipping. With planes, the hardest parts of flying are take-offs and landings, and you have to do that on the first flight. Having an instructor to do that for you for the first few flights is very helpful!
It's hard to tell from that tiny photo, but I believe he was referring to Justin Chi, a "child prodigy" of heli pilots. Comparing him to the rest of us trying to learn to fly planes and helis is an apples and oranges comparison.