I live in a rural area where i have no one for miles at all to buddy box etc etc. I do fly helis and am about to take a plane up for the first time ever. I have done some sim time to help the cause. So what i am after is some last minute tips from guys who have learned the same way if possible. I mean guys who are completely self taught.

Thanks in advance.

G'day Mate,
Buy a couple of backup planes.

stop thinking about flying your plane till you have more sim time

i am 100% self taught i started with a gws E trainer.. lasted 2 flights due to a gws reciever failure... second.. slow stick.. not bad hard to fly in wind.. and if it manages to nose in.. lack of experience is well.. hey i broke the motor stick for the 50th time lol i think with the slow stick the longest i ever had it in the air was 2 mins... then i hit the sim spent LOTS and LOTS of time on the sim... 3rd model... BIG jump ..... got a heck of a deal on a new parkzone stryker.. flew it the first day no issues not one crash in its long life.... kept it for a very looooooong time matter of fact i still have the airframe

id recommend at least 20 hours... seriously i think i went through 2 aircraft before really "succesfully" sending one to the clouds... the others flew.. briefly.. and well i learned to repair them before i ever actually learned to fly them lol....

IMO the sim is your friend.. my method with the sim.... takeoff.. circle... land.. repeat.. when you have that mastered takeoff fly around a bit... do the norm.. roll loop find the models bad tendencies and overcome them EG stall and whatnot..

in the end all this extra your doing will help you in that .. "OH CRAP!! ITS GOIN IN WHAT DO I DO NOW!!" scenario... that i promise you will experience..

in the end its alot cheaper to crash virtual models than real ones

make sure the plane is laterally balanced and it cg is proper. check all control surfaces that they are all properly neutralized including both aielerons at the same time. bring someone with you in case the plane needs to be trimmed in flight because if your new to flying an airplane you might be to overwelmed to be able to hit the trim levers. make sure all surfaces move in the proper direction. make doubly sure the engine is tuned and running good!! On take off climb high and fast to give you time for mistakes hopefully you will get comfortable enough with flying before you have to land. make a long approach ease back on the throttle but make sure you have trimmed the throttle control so that the engine will run at its slowest reliably sustainable speed besure the engine will not cutout when you go to this setting. if in trouble power up and go around don't force it.

figure out how long you can fly for like how long does the tank last on the ground? this lets the mtoor trun an extra tank which gives you a set number of minuts and also gives the engins a lil more time tomake sure its running nicly

if you get 12 minutes on the ground you shoudl start thinking about landing around 7 or 8 minutes into your flight,

give yourself plenty of fuel to land and remeber that if you dont like it you cang ogo around i see alot of very good piloits that just have to make one approach and one landing and its really hard on the planes.

make sure the sun is toyour back

take off INTO the wind and land INTO the wind.

dont fly at full power once you get high after take off cut to aout 1/2 youl see that this is fast enoug..

NEVER give down elevator keep all moovments smooth you dont want to loose alot of altude quickly it may suprise you and make you panic (flying for reall is different then a sim) when you do want to loose altitue just pull to about 1/4 power and fly around you will see you will slowly decend.

fly from grass it absorbs landing impact and is alot less twitchy ground controle then on concrete.

I'm in the same boat. Took my plane up for the first time two days ago. Took off unassisted, flew unassisted, and landed unassisted. I went invert one time due to banking too hard on a turn into a stiff wind that picked up. Didn't panic, just turned the nose up to stay level and rolled it back over. The biggest thing I can say is just not to panic.

I agree about the sim. I've spent at least those 20 hours on the sim. This was my first plane/radio/flying experience and I lived to tell about it again. I took off and landed onto a paved street.

As with anything like this, the more information you give the better tailored to you the advice will be.
Questions that came to mind:
What will you be flying? What is the weight, power, wing loading.
What is your heli experience? Hover? forward, nose in, nose left and right. Electric powered small. Glow powered large? Some inverted? Years of flying? new, intermediate, expert?

Most important though is where do you want to go. Back yard defy gravity or TOC Champion?
If you ever want to get good, you need to not pickup bad habits that will hold you back.
So learn the right way, 4 channel full house (alieron, rudder, elevator and throttle).

Do you own your sim? What have you been flying on the sim?

Thanks for all the advice so far. I am flying an Evo 50 Heli at the moment. I would regard myself as still new as i a have been flying around a year. I can hover in all the diciplines ,ff flight etc. Not into any 3d at all.

My plane is a Tutor 40/OS 46AX so i would presume it should be a basic trainor as far as they go. The OS46AX seems like a great engine. I dont think i will have a problem once im up there.(or am i fooling myself !!!). Its more the landings that i am a bit stressed about. In saying that when i started with the helis (also self taught) i also had a few stressful moments but with practice as with anything else they do go away. Well either way she is going up tomorrow weather permitting so i will keep you posted. Might have to take the camcorder for this one.

I suggest that when it comes to landing to start by doing some low passes at about 1/4 throttle. Keep bringing the plane lower to the ground to get used to it being lower and don't force the landing. If it starts looking ugly pull up and go around and try again. The main thing is to get a good feel for the plane don't over work the sticks and just let it glide in and flare up right at the end.

The biggest help I can offer you is to get a friend or mate to be there with you.
Walk through what you want them to do with the trim tabs as you try to keep the plane in the air.
Have them hugging you with there hands over yours ready to move the trim tabs.
When the plane gets in the air, you give commands while they are trying to follow them and you moving the TX all around.
When you get the trim close, then you may be able to take it from there but that is going to be your biggest issue.

Dire, Good luck tomorrow.
A few suggestions, Try moving all the trims on your sim controller to various out of trim positions. takeoff and try gaining altitude
while correcting with the sticks, then try trimming for level/straight flight at half throttle once at a safe altitude. I know this will not be the same as the real plane but it will give you some idea how to trim the plane once airborne.

I was unfortunate enough to have to maiden my tiger 2 a few weeks after I soloed. It actually went very well and I was able to get 5 flights that day. I bench trimmed the plane as best I could, Adjusting all control surfaces to level at neutral trim. When I went to the field I did a very thorough range check. Rechecked for proper control movements 3 times. made sure all my trims were neutral.
Fired and adjusted the engine slightly rich. then I taxied the plane back and forth on the runway for 3/4 tank of fuel to get acquainted with the ground handling of this plane.

Once on the runway ready for takeoff I again checked for proper control movement and taxied into a takeoff postion into the wind, I slowly added throttle until the plane gained some speed then added full throtlle while adjusting tracking with the rudder stick. When the plane seemed to become light (started to float a little) I added some up elevator and started to climb on a very shallow angle and let the plane gain some altitude. Right after the takeoff the plane started banking right so I had to add left aileron stick to level the wings
I pushed it harder over into a left bank and climbed to about 200 feet and once level I let the sticks go and the plane tried to roll hard right and the nose dropped fast. after gaining control again I moved my elevator trim so that the plane would fly level, made another circle, then trimmed aileron to the left. I made a few circles and checked for proper trim and then made my first landing approach.

I don't know if my experience will help you but If you are going to try this alone I figure any info might help. Being a newbie I learned a few things that have helped me have very good flights. Don't climb too fast keep your airspeed up and climb gently. Little stick movements translate into alot of plane movement, only move the sticks a little and see how the plane reacts. ALTITUDE is your friend
You have more of a chance recovering from a mistake high up. Don't force the plane to land, a trainer will almost land it self when you
cut the throttle to idle, you can always climb out of a bad landing approach and try again. Mke sure you plane is balanced and the control throws are set to the factorys reccomendation.

Good luck and let us know how everything goes
Chris

Thanks for all the help,ideas etc. I will take a few photies. Looking forward to the first flight,so i hope the weather is good to morrow. Back to the sim for now.


Regards

Clint.

I am also self taught. I would recommend tons of sim time first. I had about 100 hours on the sim before I even attempted to fly. The biggest suggestions I have is get two mistakes high when you fly and finess everything. My biggest problems was the take-offs. I used to pull to hard on the take-offs and I would tail stall. Good luck it can be done but it is not easy.

Turn the wind speed up on the sim. Way up. You're going to feel that the real wind is much stronger than what you feel from the same windspeed in the sim.

Make it crosswind some. Then opposite direction.

Turn up the turbulence in the sim. The real wind pushes models around more than any sim I've seen does on the default settings.

Your real model chopper time is going to help you a bunch. I had one session on a buddy box with a chopper pilot who wanted to fly fixedwing models, and he was flying a Funtana on his own his next time out. When he decided to try fixedwing, first thing he'd done was sit down at his sim. He'd learned to fly choppers with the sim, figured it'd work as well for the fixedwing. He mentioned that his biggest hurdle and failures were learning to deal with the model engines and setup the pushrods and get the balances right. Not a surpise, since none of this was possible in a sim. It was a shame that he'd started the whole deal with choppers, 'cause you fix airplanes with glue but fix choppers with money . But he saved himself some money on glue at least.

If you are comfortable flying your heli, you should be able to get your plane up, around and back on the ground in the same number of pieces as you started with. By way of field preparation before flight:

1. Orient yourself to a flight "traffic pattern", a rectangular path around the field and in front of you. In the air, make it a point to fly your plane in this pattern - do not just flail around the sky. Plan to fly straight and level, make a specific entry into a turn, recover to straight and level. After takoff, you will usually need to come back a bit on the throttle. You do not need to fly full throttle all the time. Your first flight will be a "trim" flight. Of course, you will set all control surfaces to nuetral before you fly the plane, but expect to make some trim adjustments in the air. It is a great help if you have a buddy who can make trim changes while you are flying. "Give a couple clicks of up elev" or "right aileron" and the helper can move the trim tabs while you keep your hands on the sticks. If no helper, you get to do it yourself. If so, don't drop your gaze down to the transmitter, but raise the transmitter to your line of sight with the plane while you are trimming.

2. Before you take off, or even start up the engine, establish a landmark or some sort of guide line that will represent a position to be aligned with when turning final for landing. This should be a position on your traffic pattern. This position is key to a good landing, as when you are intent on landing, you will want to be lined up, at reduced throttle, and basically interfere with the plane as little as possible to "let " it land. Final approach is not the place to be giving lots of control inputs.

3. Make your initial flights short - say 5 or 6 minutes. Initial flights can be stressfull and mentally fatiguing. You don't want to be forming bad habits at this point. Bad habits come about when you begin to lapse into "crash avoidance" mindset instead of "flying" mindset.

4. Expect success!

Well we arrived ,we stressed out,we flew and we landed safely.!!!! From now on the brain drain will be easier as i know what to expect. Nothing like it and i must confess i am hooked.

Thanks for all the tips and advice.

Congratulations on your success!

Congratulations!
It could not have happened to a better person