Hi, I am not talking about moving on from the CP Pro, in fact after not using it much this summer I have had it flying the best I ever had lately( knock on wood!). I would like to know when some of you pilots decided to remove your training gear and also when you just went for it and flew it out away from yourselves? Oh, and I wonder what happened on your first free flight? I have been flying electric planes for a couple of years, not real good I still have to recover the odd flight from a tree. I have been flying heli's on a sim for four months or so and am really comfortable on the sim. I can hover my CP Pro solid for as long as I want tail in, not as confident to the sides and nervous nose in. I can move it out , back and all around myself hovering. I'll go out from myself about ten feet, turn it towards myself then come back nose in. I find I stay in the best control when I walk behind it as I go around the yard. I can hover at any height although I find I spend most of my time hovering and walking my heli around the yard waist to head high. I hope some of you share your experiences and maybe give me or others that little boost of confidence to fly not hover. I guess when you read my limited flight skills you may offer some suggestions or comments and those would be great to. Thanks in advance, Rick

I don't fly collective pitch helis yet. In fact I like my coaxial CX a lot. And I'm getting better with a Falcon 40 (fixed pitch single rotor). But there may be a couple of similarities.

First is the training gear. Neither the CX nor the Falcon like the training gear. It's heavy. It does throw the balance off and it hurts response to inputs. It sounds like you are good enough at hover to control your landing, and remember the only thing the trainiers do is to save a bad landing. No matter how far away from yourself you fly, you will return your heli to your location to land it. Unless you still land sideways (guaranteed tip over), loose the training gear and practice a bit that way to get comfortable. I even land my CX on my roof and as long as it's nose up or nose down, the roof slope doesn't tip it over. Of course the take-off must be done gingerly.

Second is the side in. Work that issue on the sim. Others will give advice on how to train. A cheat that works on the days when my orientation is off a bit (humans have good days and bad days more than helicopters do) is to rotate my body slightly the direction that the heli is flying. Move away from yourself tail in, then as you turn the heli left or right, rotate your body slightly that direction and turn your head toward the heli. It will keep your dumb thumbs oriented properly. You don't need to turn fully left or right, just a little. Your head will tell you when you have turned enough.

When I fly my CX outside it's all a matter of nerve and confidence. I don't think that it matters if you fly a CX, CP or Trex, you don't want the heli flying away or crashing in the street or smacking the neighbors car. I fly at home so the street and a river (and occasional hawk) are potential problems. There are days when I fly over the river. A goof is a certain loss, but on the days that I know I can handle it, I go for it. The street has too much moving air and turbulence from passing cars. And the heli is a terrible distraction to the drivers and I don't want to cause a wreck. Mostly I fly twenty feet up and fly over my house and the neighbors house and maneuver between the trees.

It's all about confidence. If there is an open area, that's good, but you need obstacles to work with so your head learns depth perception. That was an issue for me. From 40 feet away, can you tell whether your heli is going fly on this side of the pole or the other side. If you can't tell for certain, you'll second guess yourself at the last second and fly into the pole.

You have mastered the hard part. Hover serves no purpose other than landing and taking off. Beyond that it's a waste of battery power. And you know that you can land it when it comes back to you. Just go do it. Set a pylon out 30 feet and fly out and back. Then fly figure 8's. Then move the pylon out some more. Blow the leaves off your driveway with the heli. Annoy the neighbors. The heli doesn't have any idea how far away it is. It won't be afraid.

Soloboss

hey wportsman =)

I would say you are probably ready to take the gear off for alteast part of your flying =) Take the gear off and fly hover in and gradually go through the steps again to get to the other kinds of flying. In the first bit it might not be bad to fly over grass, but take off of something like a peice of cardboard. It's quite difficult to take off of grass, and can cause alot of damage if you catch on something. If you feel uncomfortable, then just put the gear back on for a bit. I would just say take it slow and easy until you are comfortable with it.

When you are taking off pop up the colletive, and get her a foot or two off of the ground pretty quick. If there is one thing these small heli;'s do not like it's easing up on the throttle. Break free of the ground so it doesn't get too tippy and fall over or something. Don't give it so much goose that you flip the tail around either though =)

BTW it sounds like your flight skills are comming along quite well =) sounds like you err on the cautious side, let yourself have some credit and go out and have some fun flying!

Thanks mrasmm & soloboss, I glad you replied and I will use your advice. I'll start with removing the training gear and go from there. Thanks again Rick

Rick,
I wish I had your natural ability to fly these things. I first purchased a CP (standard model) on the assumption that it would be easier to fly than a fixed pitch. Because the head spins so fast it should be stable by nature. So I went to ebay and found a deal. The seller was entiely honest, telling me that he had never successfully flown this CP. And the first owner had not successfully flown it either. I figured that it couldn't be that bad so I paid a reasonable sum for it. I wasn't long in finding that I was victim #3. So I took it to my LHS and the guru offered to check / tune it for $10. So here's another $10 on top of the blade set I purchased. Heli boy was good enough to put the new blades on for me and he checked the heli. Two servos were reversed. Easy fix. Next try he found servos adjusted poorly so he set those. On flight #3 he lifted within the aisle of the store and hovered the heli - hands free. It hung in the air fairly stationary and he was able to keep it out of trouble by pushing it around with his finger. Obviously the heli will fly (I thought) so I happily paid the man and went home. Next trip by the LHS to get more blades I asked if the heli was worth anything in trade for a CX. He answered that if he sells a used CP he misses a sale on a new CP so he wasn't interested. My wife offered that I should keep the CP, get a CX to learn on and then go back to the CP that was just proven to be a good flier. Nice thought, but I'm not that confident. Back to ebay where I pretty much got my money back.
So that's how I came to fly the CX. I'm working with a Falcon 40 (same as a walkera#4 and Saber FP) and I'm getting this hover thing figured out. There may be another confounded pitch heli - oops, that's a collective pitch heli, but I doubt that it will be a CP. I've heard many stories of craft far easier to fly.
If you can fly a Blade CP, you can fly nearly anything. If you get a chance at a Trex, go for it. They tell me you'll be amazed.
And of course we are all awaiting the arrival of the Blade 400 3D.
One thing that we on this forum try to do, is stay on topic . If you have been monitoring our conversations you already know that we aren't especially good at staying on topic. And I'm probably the biggest offender. But I've met some really great folks on here.

Questions, answers or stories, their all welcome.

We are all teachers,
We are all students,
We have been assimilated,
We are the collective.

Soloboss