Is the buddy box a good way to teach beginners to RC flying? I hear you can learn RC flying without them.

Having a budy box is KEY..and relatively inexpensive. You may have heard by now that the toughest part of learning this hobby is actually landing the plane. With a buddy box, the instructor can take over without having to actually hand over the controls. This is key in landing where there is not enough time to hand over the controls.

I think most instructors would agree that it is much easier to teach someone using a buddy box. When the student gets into trouble it gives the instructor the freedom to allow the student to correct the problem. Without a buddy box the instructor has to worry about when to snatch the transmitter from the student's hands. In the excitment some students really latch on.

If you have a second transmitter all you have to buy is a cable to connect the two transmitters. If you only have the one transmitter, your instructor may have a spare you can use. If not, a buddy box is cheap. Well worth the cost.

Eric

I agree, it's definitely the way to go! I've seen buddy boxes save quite a few planes!
Eric is right, when I was learning, I didn't even have to buy anything. The guy teaching me had a cable, and I used his transmitter as the "buddy box"

Mike

Hi Ptarmigan,

No, the buddy box is not a good way to teach beginners to RC flying...and yes, you can learn RC flying much more effectively without them. The reason is that passing the box, either physically (pass the box method) or electronically (buddy box) does not allow the instructor to provide physical feedback to the student. Teaching someone to fly, whether full-size flight training, or R/C model airplane flight training is not just about the instructor saving the plane. It is also about the student learning the "feel" of the stick so they can do the right stick movements to get out of a bad situation or make a good landing. Buddy boxes and "passing the box" take away the feel of the sticks just when the student needs it the most, resulting in a longer learning curve and usually resulting in damage to the airplane when you finally get around to doing landings.

Use of a "kinesthetic" method, (where the student stays on the sticks 100% of the time, and the instructor adds inputs only when necessary), is much more effective and is also much safer. The kinesthetic technique is used by all full-size flight instructors through the use of dual, connected controls. When the student does not input correct control movements, the instructor "guides" the student's control inputs (sometimes quite forcefully), so the airplane will fly correctly, and especially not be damaged by a "hard" landing.

R/C model airplanes are real airplanes. They are just smaller than full-size airplanes, are piloted from outside the airplane instead of from the inside, and they are about 10 times as difficult to learn to land with precision. Students need to learn to land as a first priority in their flight training (full-size airplane or model airplane) and that means doing as many landings as you need with an instructor guiding your stick inputs until you can do repeated good landings without instructor input.

As an R/C Flight Instructor, I use Kinesthetic Instruction to teach people to solo model airplanes. Typical students require more than 500 hands-on, full touch-down landings/touch-n-goes in order to demonstrate solo capability. This is about 10 times as many landings as are required by the average student learning to solo in full-size airplanes. I simply could not do my job, (which includes taking full responsibility for any aircraft damage) if I used a buddy-box.

For more details of the kinesthetic method of flight training, see my web site ( www.hobbiesaloft.com ) under the "Our Secret" option.

Ray Smith
R/C Flight Instructor
Owner, Hobbies Aloft R/C Flight School

Hi Ptarmigan,

It's not clear what alternative to the buddy box you've heard about. Ray's method (instructor's fingers hover over student's fingers) certainly works, but you'll find a lot fewer instructors comfortable with that method than the buddy box. Here are some other methods that I've heard about or seen:

1. Transmitter hand off: Student flies as instructor talks. If student gets in trouble, he quickly hands transmitter to instructor. I do not recommend this method, unless, perhaps, you're flying a U.S. Aircore plane, but you'd be surprised how many folks use it. Expect to learn airplane repair.

2. Simulator: Student spends many hours with a simulator before going to field. This method only seems to work for young people, but I've heard credible reports. You've got to really spend hours with the sim, which bores most people to tears.

3. Park flyer: These electric planes fly very slowly, so they give you a lot of time to react to errors. I don't think they're much like flying glow-fueled planes, but I mention this here because a lot of people feel this is the best way to learn to fly without an instructor.

Whatever you choose, good luck!

I like to use Flight Simulator, Flight Simulator 2002 Professional Edition. That may help, but not always. I do know how to land an airplane in a simulator, which is tricky at times.

I also use a kinesthetic teaching method similar to Ray Smith's.
No, I don't wrap my arms around anyone when I teach. I have my student place their thumb on top of the elevator/aileron stick and my thumb and forfinger underneath their thumb. For the most part, my thumb and forefinger is only there for no more than five minutes total throughout their entire training course.

On the very first lesson, I can help them land and only physically correct when absolutely necessary, which is only a second or two, now and then during the landing process. Usually after about 10 minutes of their first time on the sticks, I can back away a few feet and let them have total control without me bothering them as they fly solo. This I could never do with a buddy-cord when I used one, so you see, I have had extensive experience with BOTH world's of RC flight instructing and will never go back to the buddy-box.

But, as they say, to each his own. The only thing that bothers me is that some instructors claims to have tried my method but finds that the buddy-box is more to their liking. If they had tried my method and experienced the same results I have, they would not perfer the buddy-box. Like anything else, kinesthetic teaching takes a bit of practice and usually cannot be learned properly just trying it for a short time. 5 hours total to solo is the average.

In teaching taking off and landing, I have the student work the throttle and steering and if necessary, all I have to do is reach over and hit the throttle to idle if the plane goes where it shouldn't be going on the takeoff run. Once this method is properly learned, teaching is more fun than personal flying, at least it is for me. If I'm not teaching, my personal planes sits on my work bench collecting dust.

Take care,
CCR
http://www.kites.org/rc_instructors

I maintain one of the club trainers and buddy box gear to go with it. The club maintains a second club trainer and buddy box, and I use both regularly for training new flyers. We generally train new flyers through ground school and basic flight maneuvers with the club trainers using the buddy box. They have to have thier own airplane before I teach take offs and landings, and for this I start out with a few lessons on the buddy box, and then switch to pass the box and kinesthetic.

Our club has trainer boxes and cords to work with Futaba, Hitec, and Airtronics. We have budgeted for a JR Quattro system and JR cord, but no one has yet shown up at our field with JR gear.

As I practice using the kinesthic method, I use it more and more, but I am not confident with it yet, so for now I am still using the buddy box.

I would like to switch over to kinesthetic only, but I need practice with it.

I think Ray and Clarence both deserve credit for promoting their methods however, and I am betting they gain in popularity. I expect that with a GOOD instructor, the kinesthetic method is the fastest way to teach.

I tried the non buddy box sytem. Once! I almost crashed an LT25 trying that method. I can see that it might be very good once you get used to it, but its certainly not for me and I don't even know how you could train yourself to use that method without endagering some planes during the learning curve. I have to disagree about one thing. I start my students with the plane high. When something is starting to go wrong, I have time to tell them to pull up or level out. that way they fix the problem themselves and know how they did it. The first few times, they probably don't even know that there is a problem but they soon catch on.

Fastsky,
There are several ways to train yourself on how to use kinesthetic instructing. How I started way back, was when I was using the buddy-box, my students had a hard time trying to figure out what I meant by moving the sticks "smoothly". So I would reach over with cord still attached and put my thumb and forefinger underneath their thumb which was on the top of the stick. That way, I could show them what I meant by smoothly without them releasing the controls. One day it hit me that I didn't need the cord as I was doing the kinesthetic thing on a regular basis. Later, I found that I could safely teach my students how to takeoff and land right away.

How you can practice on your own, would be to hold the transmitter off to your left side as if you were teaching a student.
That way, you can get used to the weird angle that the aileron/elevator stick would now be at. Practice doing that and at the same time pretend that you were orally teaching someone. For example, tell your student preceisely how to carve a perfect turn. You don't have to say this outloud as your flying buddies would think that you went off the deep end.

When you tried this method, I don't know if you had your thumb and forefinger under your student's thumb or not, but I found this is far less intrusive. When my first flight student made his first landing, he sometimes asks if you did it on his own or not. I can back away within a few minutes of instructing using this method.

Here is a little secret: When you give control to your students, (whether you use the buddy-box or not) tell them not to do move the sticks at all for a few seconds. This shows them that they don't have to fly the plane as the plane will fly itself in a straight line quite smoothly.

Take care,
CCR
http://www.kites.org/rc_instructors

I can immeditately tell when a new flier was trained by the use of a buddy-box because although they may be able to get the plane up and down in one piece most of the time, their fingers are constantly moving on the sticks, as if it were like their feet were on the peddles of a bicycle. What I mean is, it seems that they think that the sticks must be moving all the time to keep the plane in the air.

Apparently, they were not told that all of those movements weren't necessary and/or their instructor could not look at the student's fingers and the plane at the same time. Perhaps in time, this finger moving nervous habit will stop, but I've seen too many 15 year veteran flier's fingers jittering about on the sticks, and these were 20-50 year old pilots. I've witnessed more than one newbie solo pilot appear to be mixing a batter even though the plane was not jumping around much, if at all. Maybe this pilot thinks that it's necessary to fly like that since he can safely takeoff, fly around and land.

A few fliers had gone to a commercial flight school and were instructed to "bump" the sticks to make a turn, I guess to prevent them from holding the aileron/elevator stick over too long. Some could fly solo, but they were simply doing what they were taught. I don't know if their instructor explained that was just a temporary learning exercise -- to be abandoned later on.

Take care,
CCR
http://www.kites.org/rc_instructors

Clarence,

That is a very important point. Regardless of the instruction method, instructors need to teach that the control movements need to be smooth, deliberate, and minimal. I teach students to plan their turn, deliberately feed in a set amount of aileron, ease back on the stick, deliberately roll out on the new heading and ease the stick forward, and then do nothing.

Periodically I will hold the transmitter well away from my body with my fingers very deliberately OFF the sticks to show the student that the airplane will continue quite nicely without any help from the controls. I also will put the airplane in an uncomfortable attitude, then chop power and set the tx on the ground to demonstrate that left to it's own devices, a properly trimmed trainer airplane will "save" itself.

I think anyone who fancies himself an RC instructor needs to spend 100 bucks and take some dual from a full scale instructor, ideally in a Cub or Champ. I think there are an awful lot of RC flyers, including self proclaimed instructors that really do not understand how an airplane works.

Chris,

I totally agree with everything you said. I don't mean to put down the use of the buddy-box, but it seems that 99% of people have been trained with the buddy-box, which more or less doesn't allow the instructor to see what the student is doing with his fingers on the sticks.

What Ray Smith and I are trying to do is simply let people know that there is an viable alternative training method to the buddy-box and pass the tx method. I wouldn't bother explaining how kinesthetic instructing until I keep reading of all the problems instructors are having in using the buddy-box, but you are quite correct in that there are probably too many instructors who don't really understand how to teach. I've seen too many instructors simply stand their and basically save the plane and hope that his student teaches himself. This may go on one day a week for years and years, until the student finally teaches himself how to fly or simply quits and finds something else to do. The instructor then blames the quitter student for not having what it takes.

Have you seen what I've been up to introducing RC aeromodeling to the entire NYS school system? NYSTEA (New York State Technology Education Association) If you like, for more info, you could email NYSTEA president Tom Frawley. ([email protected])

http://www.mfarchive.modelstuff.co.uk/mf045/postbox.htm

Take care,
CCR
http://www.kites.org/rc_instructors

I think it is a bad move not to fly on the buddy box. You could learn without it , but you wouldn't learn as quick. If you did go on the buddy box you would have more planes.

There are more than one way to skin a cat. My apologies to cat lovers out there.

Argue for your limitations and they are yours.

Take care,
CCR
http://www.kites.org/rc_instructors

There are other flight sim packages that work better for R/C. The most confusing thing is when the plane is coming toward you. MS flight sim is very realistic but does prepare you for thinking backwards. You are always in the cockpit or the same when the plane is headed away from you.
I use FMS which is very good and free. Of Great Planes G2 is excellent but so is the price.

Use some R/C software and see if it feels different being a stationary pilot.