Ihad my grand kids here this week and my oldest one is 2 and a half years old and already flying his chopper, it's his third one, he likes to take them apart too!! He also drives his dads RC Cars and has a track in the back yard. He follows his Air Hog from room to room and likes to fly between the chairs.
This was the first time Ihad seen him flying and it blew mymind, Ican't fly it as well as he can. Then again Iget very little stick time, he doesn't share very well at all.
My wife is buying me one so I don't have to share either!!
In the last photo Iset up a plane out front of my shop, I haven't taken him in there yet but I decided to give him a surprise. His dad just pointed out my planes that are hanging and that made it hard to do anything else all day. I'm starting a new trainer real soon for his next trip out.
This really blew me away!!!

Get him on the sumulator.  He'll have a blast.  You may need to get him a chopper instead of the trainer.

The next generation.

Mike

His dad has G-4 and he has been on it for a long time, well, a long time for him. It was just too funny to watch.

thats lovely to see

It's truly amazing when we see young kids like this who are adapt at flying. Iwas covering XFClast weekend where Iwatched Justin Chi and was truly amazed. Justin is only 6 years old and was competing in one of the biggest flying competitions around!!!!

Ken

Yeah wow I've heard about this kid! blows my mind especially since I'm having a hell of a hardtime flying a heli on the sim!

ActuallyI've onlyrecently learnedthat after flying for about2 and a half years now that I've been doing it with"HOT STICKS"
by that Imean I never really fully understood the full functions of my radio (Futaba 6EXA bought off some one on here ) and haveprogrammed it partially wrong!

I've been flying with positive exponentials on my sticks (making them more sensitive towards the center)and alwayswondered why mymodels were always super twitchy whenI so much as only breathe on the sticks...

Ijust figured since they were delta wings they were harder to fly, tillsomeone gave me a rebuilt Avistar as a gift and i saw the same thing happeningwith it.The previous owner always wondered why i was alway going on and on about dual rates not realizing that I programed my radio in an almosttotally coo coo way.

Although flying with super sensitive sticks made me a better pilot, Now thatI've figure out howto set up myradio properly i can fly much better with proper dual rates functions and exponentials.

Heck! even in the flight sim theheli is a lot more docilenow haha which is lovely for me!

Just goes to show i guess. Know thy radio!

But it still blows my mind when i see kids flying! I just don't know how they do it especially with choppers man! I mean look at the size of these two kidswow!

Pretty amazing sight to see that little kid with a radio in his hand flying a little heli right in front of him, indoors no less!Very impressive!

My son turned two last week, I've been thinking about an mcx heli for him. He loves my planes out in the garage, but not sure how he would handle a tx right now. He likes to throw things cause I have been getting him ready for sports. I think he has a good arm on him.

In this case the kid has been around his dad a lot and he fly's helis, boats, and cars plus his sim. He also brought home a Bob Cat to put in his race track in the back yard, no land scaping yet so he did it. He also has a pre run off road racer and the grand kid is with him all the time helping work on the car. The nuts are broken loose then the kid gets to remove them with dad holding the wratchet so it doesn't slip, all the time telling the kid what the parts are and what they do.
He talks plain without any baby talk and repeats everything said, you really have to watch how you talk in front of him!! For fun Igave him a tower talk and he points out servos and TXs and lets you know what they are and do. He thinks the P-51 is the best plane. He is happy for hours with just the tower talk?? Then Igave him the HOrizon book for his ride home.
These kids today are just so far advanced in a lot of things that Istill don't understand. Alot less advanced in other stuff too. They are growing up wit a joy stick in there hands in front of a computer so I'm not too surprised in how fast they learn. My 12 year old student was able to solo in one day, took me weeks of flying the buddy box and a couple of years to not have my knees knocking and sweat on my brow every time Ihad to land.
I'm just ammazed at them!!
Gene

At least you know what to get him for Christmas. A kit and help him build it.

you're right that joystick helps ALOT! I was doing game flight sims on playstation and pc long before i ever flew a real rc flight sim or even a plane! I took to it naturally learning orientation in less than a day however getting the thing to land on the runway in the sim was a bit of a pain! I even thought that it must be impossible haha!

I saw that 6 year old fly a heli on U-tube when he was only 5, after seeing him fly I decided to put the heli into cold storage, I got really depressed knowing that a 5 year old can fly a heli way better than I could even imagine doing!?

Ican see why you'd feel like that! I'd tend to feel kind of like that too! In fact i've never been into heli's butthat was before i met christopher and now even though i have no immediate plans to get one I still want the skill..

If i were you, id say "never say die" and get stick time on the sim! thats the way to go man.. don't compare your self to some one else.

practice for improving on "your" level and build up from there!

Just becuse he's learned it all fast doesn't mean you can't learn it all too... and it doesnt mean he's final skill will surpass yours either!
I say don't compare, insteadimprove on your self rather than trying to attain someone elses skill level!
my two cents.

When Iwas learning to fly , my instructor had two 13 year old students too. They had alread pretty much learned to fly but I was told not to worry about the kids because they were going to advance way faster then Iwould.
Today when I have students most of them are in there 50s and 60s and if Ihave a young student at the same time I tell the older guys the same thing. Even knowing this and understanding it the older guys really feel bad when it takes them so much time to do the same thing as the kid did in no time at all.
My biggest thrill was the day I beat all the kids at a fun fly in the beginners class and won the event. Iwas even being cheered on by there parents!!
I'm still amazed when I see 4 and 5 year olds flying at the field all by themselves with dad just standing next to them. Ilike seeing the parents taking time out to work with them even more. Iwish I could take some credit for my grand son but it's all him and his father, I had nothing to do with it.
When my kid got his first RC car Ithought it would be a waste of money after a few weeks but after almost 30 years it looks like it paid off.

Don't get me wrong, I can fly my MX450xs just fine, in a scale manner, I put it away because I felt that I didn't see myself getting into it that much anymore and after seeing that kid in action, it almost made me question why I'm hitting a wall trying to learn simple areobatics with it, then it dawned on me, the next time I went to the field with my plane that I found myself mixing the heli inputs in by accident. More of a brain fart, I found myself nudging the elevator backwards to decrease approach speed and man did I use rudder in the turns, I guess that's one good thing heli's teach you, rudder! I have well over 80 flights on it and no crashes, but I need to rebuild the entire head, it's all worn out from flying it soo much. I think I'll rebuild it and play around once in a while, it definately sharpens you skill and reaction time by playing with it.

Ahhh i see i see... You dont need my two cents then :/ you've got a pretty good handle on it! I never thought of it but heli does teach a lot of rudder! it helped my airplane loads too! but i definitely need a coach to learn heli as it is im doing it all my own and as was the case with my radio initially, I'm sure i'm going it it in some ways wrong :s

When we both started on the heil in May 2006, my learning curve was much faster than Justin's. But, around 5-6th month, he started to excel and flew right past me. At that time, especially right after Justin lands, I had no energy or desire to go up. This bad feeling lasted about 6 months or so. I then became better and felt that he is who he is and I am me. I started RC because I loved it not becuase I wanted to beat Wolfgang Matt or Hanno Prattner.

I just put in 100x more effort that Justin and one day when he slows down, I will fly right past him in my next life.

Benny

Kids got tallent, but I find that alot with the newer generation, they excell due to gaming more and more, I learned heli's the hard way, my first was a garbage walkera 36, after countless hours of rebuilding and slowly making progress, I was able to do basic flight and get somewhat comfortable with it. One day I just stared at it and decided I was ready for a new machine, when I bought the MX450xs I had a real hard time trying to figure out pitch curves with throttle curves until I watched some guy on youtube show how to do it, man that was simple. Then I brought it outside and set it down, I checked everything over and expecting the worst, but to my suprise, the blades only needed 1/2 turn on one to get tracking right, then I lifted it off. I was actually kinda suprised how much better it handled and flew compaired to a cheap heli, and by no means is the MX450 a top notch machine, the aluminum head showed how solid the inputs were, now, instead of constantly chasing and correcting the heli, I was telling the heli what I wanted to do. This is the only advise I give people when they want to fly heli's, don't cheap out, the cheap heli's have soo much slop and are poorly made, this translates into a harder to fly machine. You spend very little time learning and more time correcting what it's not suppose to be doing. I don't recommend going for a full blown compitition machine, but somewhere middle of the road and make sure the parts are available for repairs. Other than that, I'm a green-horn to heli's, so I can't give anymore advise than that. Well, maybe one more, buy a good HH/HL gyro, it will help you learn much faster without worry about constantly trimming the tail or having it drifting in the slightest wind.

Unfortunately, this is a catch 22 situation.

You don't want to spend much money until you like it.   But, you won't get to feel how good and easy a heli can be until you spend much money.
So, you spend little on a RTF that doesn't fly well and you give up thinking it is too hard for you.

CB,.....30 years? stop driving it, those are called collectables. Let me guess, an old cox racer or a kyosho sand buggy.

How about this one, it was my old car when I was a little kid myself, a bit older then him but I was very young. Wind up clock spring power and it hauls mule. He remembered it from his last visit. Back then Ihad to shoot in some WD40 and let the rust flow out from the spring then it was a lot smoother winding it. He had me playing with that car for a couple of hours until I got tired of winding. Ihave a lot of cool old stuff around and it all still works. My son was into the electric off road cars. Even started working for a fellow that was making aftermarket gears and parts for them when he was about 13. He is flying the Helies now plus the gas powered boats. The young man is still into anything RC and has a fleet of stuff, just no airplanes? Iwill get him into planes his next trip out.</p>