Stormrider51

Hello everyone. I'm a 62 year old guy who recently jumped into RC flying. My wife bought me all the gear including a simulator (Phoenix 4) and a plane (Apprentice) with DX6i radio system for my birthday. I accepted common wisdom and made contact with an instructor for assistance and training. That's when the problems started. I live in a rural area where instructors are scarce and we could never seem to match up our schedules and/or the wind conditions. Because of this I spent two weeks working on the simulator, which has the Apprentice programmed in, for at least an hour a day. Often more. Being retired has advantages. The sim gave me the chance to learn stick movements until they became second nature. In my younger days I flew full scale aircraft and I can tell you that two sticks under my thumbs while standing on the ground doesn't have much in common with sitting in a plane with the yoke in left hand, throttle in right, and feet on rudder pedals. Having been through flight school did give me the advantage of knowing the principles of flight such as thrust vs drag and lift vs gravity. I already knew how the various controls affect the flight of the plane. Beyond that I was as much a newbie as anyone.

I had a decision to make. I could keep waiting until the instructor and I could meet or I could go fly the plane. I had been taking full advantage of the simulator by increasing wind conditions and directions and also increasing the difficulty of the plane itself. I decided to go fly. There will be those who tell you that simulators are useless and nothing can replace an instructor and buddy box. If you have an instructor then I agree that would be the way to go. But I taught myself to fly using a sim so it can be done. If you have been hanging back on trying RC because you don't have a club or instructor available you might consider giving the following points a try.

1. Learn the basic principles of flight. It's available on the internet.

2. Get a GOOD simulator. There are some good ones out there and some that are pretty pitiful. You need to be able to alter weather conditions and being able to increase the sensitivity of the plane itself is good as well. I suggest using the same transmitter you will be doing your flying with. That way the "feel" of the sticks will always be the same.

3. Start your sim experience with dead calm conditions and one of the trainer planes. Warbirds may be sexy but leave them for later.

4. Imagine that you are sitting in that plane and fly accordingly. Make your climbs and turns smooth and gentle. Just like flying a full scale plane, the landings are the hardest part. Practice those. A LOT. Remember that every flight will end in a landing the only question is whether you will still have a flyable plane afterward.

5. Are you bored yet? Tough. Keep things nice and easy anyway. Keep going until all the stick motions have become second nature. It's called "muscle memory". Plane flying toward you or away from you, your reactions should be instinctive. Remember that if the plane is coming toward you and appears to be banking left it's actually going to the right so you would apply left aileron to correct. I deal with this by thinking right wing vs left wing but this may not work for everybody.

6. When you feel completely confident in calm conditions, add some wind. When that gets easy add more wind. Keep adding wind until the plane can't fly in it. Now back off the wind speed but add gusts. Landings suddenly get a lot more interesting! I'd swear the simulator would wait until I would flare the plane for landing before giving me a good gust to pick the plane up and try to stall it. Okay, comfortable with gusts? Back off on those and add in a little crosswind. Then more crosswind. Then gusty crosswinds. Keep making things harder until you know where the limits are, what you and your plane can handle. Sure, you will crash but now is the time to crash. The simulator gives you a nice new Apprentice every time you do. That's more than I can say for the guy who cartwheeled his P-51 Mustang the other day when he misjudged the crosswinds on landing. All I could think was "That's gonna hurt...his wallet".

7. You have been flying easy gentle climbs, turns, etc until you are sick of it. Right? Okay, back off on the wind conditions and take the plane up. Loop it. Roll it. Spin it. Stall it. The plane will do things you don't expect. Can you return to straight and level flight? Every time? If not go back to Step 5 for a while. If you can handle it then increase the wind conditions and practice the same maneuvers.

8. BE PATIENT! Remember, if you are crashing the simulator you will crash your much more expensive model. Take however long needed. Did I really need 40 hours on the sim before I flew my Apprentice? Maybe not. But I approached the whole thing in a structured manner just like the instructor did when I went to flight school. I think it's important that you do the same.

9. Today is the day. It's time to fly. You picked a day when the winds are mild. Check and re-check everything. My radio required reversing the aileron servos between the simulated Apprentice and the real model. I was glad I found that out before I tried to take off! Line the plane up facing any wind. Slowly advance the throttle. Be ready with a little right rudder to counter the tendency to veer to the left (P-Factor). Let her lift off. Keep your climb and turn gentle just like you did in the beginning on the sim. Now, one last time, I'm going to ask you to be patient. You are flying! You will want to stay up forever. Instead, fly the pattern and bring the plane in for a landing. It's much better to make your first landings when you have plenty of battery power (or fuel) for an abort and go around. Landing really is the hardest part of flying. You can always take off again. Keep track of your flight time. A dead stick landing is the last thing you want to tackle right now.

Before I begin to hear the screams and guys calling for a rope, let me stress that I'm NOT claiming a simulator is better than an instructor or even as good. I think the best of all possible worlds is an instructor and a simulator. I would certainly have progressed much more quickly and would have flown my plane the first day. That's the route I would have taken if it had been a reasonable option. All I'm saying is that if you are stuck in an area where instructors are few and far between, all is not lost. If you are patient and employ a structured lesson plan you CAN teach yourself to fly. Of course, you can skip the whole patience bit and just go fly with no training at all. Eventually you will learn provided you have enough money to repair crashed planes or buy new ones.

So what's my record to date? I don't keep exact records like I did when flying full scale but I have at least 20 flights on the Apprentice and a number more on my ultra-micro J-3 Cub and Champ. I have had one crash with the Apprentice. It was my own dumb fault. I was shooting landings. I hadn't kept track of flight time but I knew the battery had to be getting low. Instead of landing the plane I decided I could make one more go-around. I was wrong. The wind was somewhat gusty and as I lifted the nose to climb away everything went wrong at once. The motor started to power down and a gust pointed the nose straight up. The plane fell over on its back at about 6' above the ground. Just to complete the mess I pulled back on the stick instead of pushing forward. Had I pushed forward I might have avoided a total crash. By pulling back while inverted I literally dove the plane in. The result was a broken motor mount, cowling, and spinner. I had it back in the air two days later. I've also broken two prop shafts on the J-3 Cub. Memo to the manufacturer, that prop shaft is very thin and breakable. The one on the Champ is at least twice as think and hasn't broken once. I fly from a grass field and the dime sized wheels on the ultra micros dictate that landings amount to having the wheels meet grass and the plane noses over. The Cub doesn't handle it well.

carl24bpool

Good post bud.

i too went for self teaching and am still doing so now. Im flying a Ripmax 40 nitro trainer.

What I would add to your words of wisdom is to ensure you have a friend on hand to trim it out as that was the hardest bit of my first flight.

chiggerbite

I took this EXACT approach, with a few more safety precautions:

On step 9, I buddy boxed with my club instructor on my first flight. As it turned out, I didn't really need him, other than to help me get my Apprentice S trimmed. After the first flight, my instructor turned me loose and I soloed the next flight. I prefer to fly when other club members are around though. They all give me little bits and pieces of invaluable knowledge in flying technique, plane setup, and plane maintenance.

I just got into the hobby in June. My first purchase was a r/c flight sim. I actually spent almost 50 hours doing almost nothing but takeoffs, landings, and pattern flying on a trainer in the flight sim before I took my first flight. In the flight sim, I tried to setup a custom field that was as close to our club airfield as possible. I flew with variable amounts of wind from various directions. After my experience, I think I made believers out of several folks at the field in the value of flight sim training and the quality of the Apprentice S 15e as a trainer.

Stormrider51

After reading your replies I realize that I did leave out a couple of things I intended to post. The first is that I got a much more experienced flier to take my Apprentice up for its first flight. He set the trims for me. The second thing I wanted to suggest should have been inserted between #7 - #8. I was going to say that a person should use the sim to fly warbirds, EDFs, turbines, and anything else that strikes their fancy. If nothing else, crashing on almost every flight will convince you to go buy a trainer as your first plane! I now have a Fly Zone FW-190 and a Durafly EDF Sea Vixen sitting in the hangar. I've had both flown by my friend so they are trimmed out and ready. I'm not. I know this. I fly most evenings so I'm gaining experience fast but I figure I'm still at least two weeks away from flying the FW-190. When I'll fly the Vixen is anybody's guess.

Storm

jester_s1

Good job on using a smart, methodical approach to learning. Something that jumps out to me in your process that you didn't mention specifically is that you were disciplined enough to work at your skills on the simulator instead of just playing on it. Many of the impetuous youngsters who get on here asking about learning to fly without an instructor want to do so because they are impatient. They want to have fun with the hobby now, and figure an instructor is just going to slow them down by making them learn things. So the sim time is mostly spent hot dogging the plane instead of working on precision flying in all kinds of wind. Then when they get out into the real world they aren't prepared for cross winds or gusts or a plane that doesn't fly exactly right or that is out of trim. You've used the sim exactly as it was meant to be, as a tool to learn on.

JeffinTD

Nice post.

I would add a couple of suggestions.

Keeping the first flight relatively short is a great idea, but I'd suggest staying at a safe altitude and doing some figure 8's to get a feel for how it handles, and then slow the plane (up high) as if you were on a landing approach. Best to find out how the plane handles at low speed, how it warns you of impending stall, and how it stalls when you have lots of altitude to recover.

Secondly, I'd suggest you get a Li-Po alarm. This is a small device that plugs into the balance plug of your battery and it will start beeping when any cell's voltage drops below what you've set. Much better than using a timer, IMHO, because some flights you use more throttle than others. Also cold weather or an aging pack can give you less flight time than you expect. For just a few bucks, no more dead sticks at a bad time. Plus I find packs last longer if you don't run them all the way down to the ESC's low voltage cut off.

Have fun. I still really enjoy going out and shooting landings with the Apprentice. After a while a bit of gusty crosswind adds to the fun.

fly_inverted

Stormrider, you sound like a pilot! I'm impressed by your patience and commitment. Teaching yourself to fly rc is certainly possible; I began teaching myself about six years ago and I still consider myself to be learning on every flight. For instance, just yesterday I was on YouTube and learned to do a pop-top! Ran to the field and tried them... I'm no good at them yet, but with practice (and altitude!) I'll get it down. I've got a fleet of 5 or 6 aircraft now, with a few 50cc size ships in there that I 3D. Once you get into the hobby and your rate of crashing slows down it's great fun!

I might add that it's VERY important to know approximately what the stall speed on your plane is. On the second flight of all my new aircraft, I spend most of my time gradually slowing and holding altitude with the elevator it until it stalls. By stalling and recovering it repeatedly, I can get a feeling for the speed at which it stalls and, of course, the manner in which it stalls. Does it stall straight forward? Does it tip stall? Does it give any warnings of the impending stall? These are things that I really like to know before I accidentally stall it. My experience has shown me that if you're familiar with your airplane's stall, you can frequently recognize and correct the stall before it fully occurs. This is vital down low or on a landing approach!

Also, as Stormrider briefly mentions, a basic understanding of aerodynamics is very important! It has allowed me to instinctively make the correct inputs in situations where I didn't have the time to think about how to react. I would seriously recommend doing some reading, it's saved me several planes over the years!

Nice write up Stormrider!