Ok, it is the winter blues, and I am trying to have fun and pratice my flying skills, until I get time to get out on the snow with my plane. Does praticing trying to fly a plane 3d help my skills? I am having a heck of a time doing 3d well on the phoenix flight sim program. Any ideas on other skills to pratice on the sim?

Thanks

Jon

I have an old Real Flight version 2. On it most of the flight is way to easy. For example I could hover all day long on the RF long before I could hover 30 seconds on a model. That is what I don't like about it. What I do like is it will teach your thumbs what to do. In other words it will help develop muscle memory so you can react without thinking. This part of it will help you.

David

Sure. Even sitting with a transmitter in your hands turned off and imagining flying a model can help your skills. In fact, that was my homework assignment when I first joined a club and took their flight school. And also to familiarize yourself with every trim and switch without looking down.

Will it give an exact and interchangable experience of what the "real thing" will be like? Nah. They are getting better. I have Dave Brown's RCFS 2001 and FMS v2 Aplha 8.5. The Super Skybolt and Sopwith Camel in the FMS are both fairly tough to land smooth, and will stall and snap in unrecoverable fashion at low altitudes, and I like to practice with them. Some models can do things like inverted flat spins with the throttle cut to idle that gain altitide. And I never find a divot of pothole on the rundays like I do at our field. I think it was Real Flight version 3 or 3.5 that we had at our mall show last month. The Corsair allowed us to take off with the landing gear up. That's not gonna happen in real life. I was also zipping a helicopter around and impressing the teenagers who wanted to see one fly. I have no helicopter skills and don't believe for a minute I could keep a glow R/C helicopter alive for a single flight.

Just remember it is practice and does not mean you're able to transfer the abilities directly to an R/C model. The "fear factor" is just not there with a sim, and the pressure to fly and not screw up in front of your peers caused a lot of dirt naps - as does excessive testosterone in front of those same peers.

Jon, Flying 3-D on a Sim will mainly improve your 3-D skills.

If you're looking to just improve your flying skills, I would suggest setting a fairly stiff cross wind and practice takeoffs and landings.

See you tomorrow!

Thanks Mike and guys, I have been praticing crosswind landing and other stuff. I don't really want to fly 3D, but I would like to be able to if that makes any sense.

On a side not, I am not sure if I am giong to make it on Sat (:, my wife had to go the the hospital last night, I guess she needs her gull bladder operated on (she is back home now, but we have to figure out what is next) and both kids are getting sick. So I may not make it

If I don't make it, buy a plane for me

Jon

Sorry to hear that, but family comes first. Give her my best.

I learnt all 3D on a Sim 1st and the when I could do it on there started trying with a plane.

The think I discovered is just try and learn one thing at a time and keep doing it again and again until you perfect it rather than trying a number of different things in a row.

I had a knee operation and was laid up in hospital afterwards and spent 3 hrs with nothing else to do so just kept doing rolling circles until I'd perfected them. That then gives the natural sticking which is the same but bigger inputs to try rolling harrier circles.
Again I couldn't hover so just sat with the Sim for hours doing it again and again, now I'm fine if I start with canopy towards me and fine if I start with gear towards me but's it's not natural to go from one to another like torque rolls, if I hold it gear towards me for a while and then turn I'll forget which way it is and still go opposite to correct so now whenever I pick it up I just sit and do torque rolls and having started that 3 days ago I can already see an improvement.

You've then got to translate it into your plane but it's brilliant to get things natural and for learning sticking so you don't have to think about it !!

Dial up some winds and gusts on the simulator, then things won't be so easy.