Trainer plane fun
 

I've been gropin around these forums for a couple of months now. (mainly beginners) I've noticed that the general advice is that when you can fly and land your trainer your ready for plane 2.
Flying in nascar left hand circles and landing the plane, only got me ready to crash my next two planes. Then I went back to trainers and really started learning/ playing/ experimenting/ and having a blast with these forgiving planes.
After a previous reply that I made on these forums I thought I'd start a thread about flying techniques and fun little things that can be done with a trainer.
(By the way I fly a very beat up SIG Seniorita)
When I come in for a landing (about 20 feet up or so) I pull straight up into a stall and when it falls straight forward I flair out into a nice landing. (great way to bleed off speed on a fast landing)
Another way to land is start WAY up high and kill the motor. Go into small circles ( 15 ft. diameter or so) right before touch down turn rudder oppisite and glide to land. (gotta watch yourself on this one/ ya tend to get awful brave and wait to long/ hehehe)
Anyone else have any little fun things you do with your TRAINER.

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

Come in hot on the run way pull half loop invert floop her back over
with alerions due half circule and make a emergency landing.
THATS WHAT IT WILL BE A EMERGENCY LANDING. lol

Iam no means telling you to try this. YOU BETTER BE GOOD
BEFORE YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT THIS.

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

Seems that a full circle goin into one of those harrier torque roll thingy's would add a little excitement to that boring manuever your talkin about. (he he he)

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

I dont think its boring. Have you tried it ?
Boring is what you stated in your first post.
I have a 12 yr old kid that can do the tricks your talking about. LOL

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

Alright alright alright, ya kicked my arse on that one.
Another thing we do is use a timer for inverted flight. (we bet beers)
Ya ever been inverted with a TRAINER for like 15 secs.
15 Secs doesn't seem long till ya try it.
(Now remember I still consider myself a beginner)
(Take that Mr. Randy41)

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

That is pretty darn good for a beginner.
Wont be long and you will be flying inverted figure 8s. But
then agin there not that hard to do. LOL

Hers a neat one get your trainer up and go inverted and
trim your plane out to do inverted circles(Autopilot) and
set your transmitter down until she
runs out of gas and then bring her in under dead stick.
This one is also easy.

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

Yeah, trainers are big fun.
Try this if you fly from asphalt or close cut grass, or if you have big wheels on regular grass. Come in for a landing, land only on the mains and ride them the length of the field and take off again without touching the nose gear. Next, land only this time on one wheel and then the other etc. seeing how far you get on that one wheel. It takes good coordination of all controls. Do the same with a tail dragger not letting the tail wheel touch.
It's harder with a three channel plane but can be done, especially with the help of a cross wind for the one wheel landings.

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

Several guys at my field have lights on their trainers. I'll be putting lights on mine this winter. Night flying is a heck of a lot harder than it looks, espeically night landings.

We sometimes do spot landings, formation flying, and formation landing (not for the faint of heart). Haven't tried formation spot landings yet, but there's always next year :D. Btw, if you've never tried formation flying, it's a real kick. And much harder than it looks.

Doing the mains-only touch and go thing is a lot of fun.

Flying backwards in a wind is kinda neat. I've been meaning to try backwards races, but haven't yet. (get two trainers up and see who can get to the downwind side of the field first while keeping the nose in to the wind at all times).

At my field, we have a few drop offs (the field is on high ground), so you an fly partly out of sight. I've also flown around behind a couple of trees for kicks (wasn't with the trainer though, but could have been)

My trainer can't do ouside loops, and can barely climb inverted (not enough power, and I haven't really tried to set it up for it), so inverted figure-8s are really hard, since if I bank too much in the turn, it drops like a rock.

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

You can always rig a way to drop something off of your plane and see how close you can get to your target. I dont recommend ever putting your radio down during flight as mentioned above. I have done it a time or two but its really not all that safe, and if your not flying the plane and its just the radio flying it then there is really no talent involved.

Here are some things you might want to try

1. Formation flying
2. Limbo (inverted is always an option)
3. Touch and goes off of tables (A lot harder than it sounds)
4. Fly around with only your throttle to change alt. and rudder for heading (then land like this)
5. Work on the IMAC Basic sequence and see how perfect you can do it
6. Go up and do 6 loops, 6 rolls and 2 touch and goes within a cetain period of time.
7. Climb up high and shut the motor off, see how long you can glide and land it right at your feet
8. Formation Landings
9. Chase off Buzzards
10. Try some combat with streamers (or full contact combat if you dont care about the plane anymore).
11. Drop a roll of T.P. off of a plane and see if you can cut it while its falling.
12. Fix a camera on your airplane (can be disposable all the way to a real video camera)

There is an endless list of things you can do :)

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

A twist on #3 above.

- Take off from that 6 foot long take.
- Touch and go as stated already.
- Make a coat hanger tail-hook, make a "cable" with something on the table and do arested landing.

Normal stuff.

- Tow gliders
- Piggy-back gliders or free-flight planes

In the "I don't care about my plane anymore" class.

- Have your friends try to hit it with rocks as you slowly fly by. Harder than you think.
- Keep doing low passes and accidently on purpose try to hit that guy that just won't stop "hovering" right over the middle of the runway.

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

All the above only proves what we all think any old how. Why spend money on a fun-fly type airplane? Most trainers from a Senior Kadet down to an electric Slow Stick will give you enough fun to last all day and you won't feel as bad as if you crunch a year long scale project trying to do the same stuff. I'll try to remember all this post for our next fun fly.

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

we do this with gliders. try and fly it with one hand and throw a rock at it with the other! now thats difficult! i have only managed it twice

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

cabanestrut2002, that's a good one.

We must have really bad athletic skills. Ours are something like this...

- Fly by fast 20 times. "I can't hit it."
- Fly by slow 20 times. "I still can't hit it."
- Land and set it on the top of a fence post. "I'm so lame. I still can't hit."

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

Dont hit the guy hovering in the middle of the runway, b/c thats usually me. He is concentrating hard to keep that plane in one place, if you come in and hit him and he finds out its no accident then more than your plane will go home broke :) Of course there are some unwritten rules to when a pilot should hover in the runway.

Without getting too far off the subject here are the rules (just incase you try to hover your trainer (which can be done))

1. If nobody is there you can hover anywhere.
2. If one person is flying ask them if they mind you hovering in the runway
3. If two people are flying ask them both
4. If three ppl are flying dont even bother (there will be one out of the 3 that will get all huffy about you being in the flight path of his warbird doing a low pass)

Some of the same rules go for doing funfly stuff with your trainer b/c you will more than likely not be in a pattern the whole time.

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

It was a joke. I would never hit somebody's plane on purpose, but it sure the hell is iritating. The helicopter guys at my club can fly with the planes if they;re in forward flight but must stay in the designated area when hovering. Why the heck it doesn't apply to the "hovering" crowd is unknown to me. Can you come by a explain your hovering rules to your brethren at my club.

OK we're off the subject for sure now. I'll amend my idea to keep us on track and show I'm not a complete rebel.

- Fly by really close to the guy hovering in the middle of the runway and make him freak out and crash.

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

this isnt about trainers, but if you have a pbf, do a thing called prop blast. get in front of another hovering pbf and gas it. the other guy will be trying to get out of that flat spin that the wind from your prop put him in. also read this http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/Fun%...1177166/tm.htm

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

Thats better :)

Its a shame that the guys at your field don't show common courtesy. I can imagine how aggravating it would be for those of you who don't hover. I make it a point to never fly when a new guy is learning. I try to pick a time when nobody else is flying at all. Since my eyes are still pretty sharp I usually fly right at dark when everybody is putting up and during the week when nobody else is there.

Back on the subject, here are some more things that you might try

1. Flying at night
a) Rig up lights on the plane
b) Use a spot light and follow the plane around (this gets tough)
2. Do some scale take offs, don't just firewall it, use the whole length of the runway
3. Get a paintball gun out and shoot the plane (theres not as much damage as you think.)
4. If you have a tree or a bush at your field fly around it in tight circles (to the left and right).
5. Learn how to "slip" your trainer plane in and land it this way.
6. Drop some of those walmart parachute men out of your plane. This is super fun to me for some reason. I got to doing this last year and stopped 3Ding for almost a whole month.

If you can do all of this then you should go on to another plane :) ESPECIALLY if you can do touch and goes off of the table.

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

is the paintball gun thing for spads or balsa? god i wish i had a trainer right now all these ideas make me want to have fun. i do have a spad trainer but i took all the guts out for the pbf. i wonder if the parachute men will work on the spad. ive always liked dropping stuff from my planes. i made a drop box for my mini piper and dropped paintballs.

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

I think I may be a little bit stuck on trainers. I know I'm supposed to be fretting to go to high performance craft, but I enjoy exploring what these things can do with a little work. I'm flying a LT-25 with less di-hedral and dual aileron servos, have a Seniorita on the board, and am thinking about a Senior to kit bash. I'll get around to the hot stuff, but I'm having fun where I am!

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

sure take your time. i made the mistake of buying every plane i could (im 14) and i should have stayed with my first plane for a while. i spent too much money

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

rubber band landing gear on top of the wing and a tail wheel on the top of rudder and try some inverted landings

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

The paint ball gun is usually used on SPAD planes but you can do the same on balsa.

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

Great posts guys. Keep em coming.
I hope the people that are just gettin started read this. Maybe they won't be so eager to dump their trainer.
Another one to do is come in real slow and have a buddy run alongside and try to catch it before landing. (mandatory deadstick here)

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

see how low you can go inverted with your trainer! i've got a Spadet I built to do just what y'all are talking about. it's fun at fun flies because people think you're a beginner, then you take off, do a 90+ degree turn, using your rudder to kick the back end around while holding it flat with the ailerons. try holding a good crab all the way down the runway. if you've got an alternate runway (ours is perpendicular to and in the middle of the normal runway. they form a "T"), fly in to your normal runway, but a little high, then do the rudder kick and land perfectly on the alternate runway. i also love to take it up high and kill the engine, then float around for a while before making a nice, mains only landing, holding the nose up till the last second. i first rediscovered trainers when i built one for my dad about a year ago. i had to "test" it out for him and just couldn't get enough!
of course, mine's got crazy throws, so inverted flying and other maneuvers are possible. you can really wake a trainer up with a little rearward cg and some throws! if it's overpowered, you might even be able to hover it. pull that one down low when someone's got their $3000+ bird out there! all too often you see new guys just soloed going out and getting new planes, then flying them around like they did their trainer because they haven't really progressed that far yet. trainers seem boring once you've soloed, but really, they are very fun, once you set them up right!

RE: Trainer plane fun
 

At our field, while one guy is flying his trainer, another guy will hold a .12 gauge "goose" gun. Then a 3rd guy will all of a sudden yell, "PULL!!" O.k., just kidding.