learning to fly before you fly
 

so i have friends that now want to fly my planes but i dont want to just hand over the controls but i cant afford to get an expensive simulator. can anyone uggest any games or sims out there that also have a sort of 3rd person view? anything at all to help people learn the whole reverse-controls-when-coming-at-you thing. that g3.5 doesnt work on my system.

RE: learning to fly before you fly
 

The "reverse-controls-when-coming-at-you" concern is exactly what drove me to buy an inexpensive RC Car (electric), some years ago. Up/down aren't reversed, only the left/right, same as a car. Some decent-sized RTR models are now less expensive than the simulators.

RE: learning to fly before you fly
 

FMS is free and there are tons of free planes to add to it.

http://n-old.ethz.ch/student/mmoeller/fms/index_e.html

RE: learning to fly before you fly
 

You young whipper-snappers have it to easy these days! Back when I was your age, I had to walk uphill both ways to the RC field, carrying a block of ice, to fly my planes!! We'd go to the Wal-Marts and buy an armload of planes, and crash all of 'em just to learn how to fly. I made a nickel a day and had to save for months to buy a plane! Kids just don't appreciate the value of a nickel anymore...



Sorry about that! I skipped ahead 50 years and was practicing my old man wisdom!!! :-))

RE: learning to fly before you fly
 

LOL.............. sounds like you had it pretty easy growing up. When I was a kid we had to walk to skool in 5 ft of snow barefoot and yes......it was uphill both ways! The worst part was having to work 24 hrs a day also (We had to get up a half an hr before we went to bed)
that being said........ FMS is a fairly decent flight sim to learn orientation, but isn't too good for much else. I tried it and immedaitly went to the LHS and bought FSOne with a controller. I had about 10 hrs logged in on the J3 Cub before i ever even tried to fly my plank. I flew my gf's first and was able to get a shakey circle and a beautiful landing because I had my orientation down as well as learning to flare just before landing.
Now we come to the meat of my point........... after flying hers once, I decided I knew how to fly planks and went and bought myself the exact same kit. I built it way to fast and cut so many corners I was destined for failure before i even installed the motor and ESC. Needless to say, it flew great for about a half a lap, then decided the ground looked inviting and nosedived from 40ft into the ground. I rebuilt it and repainted it (more weight) and took it out again, this time i made it a whopping 300 ft and just started to bank when it nosedived in again. I couldn't even get it to rise above 10 ft. Since then, I have been putting in alot more sim time and have flown in winds up to 8mph steady with 14mph gusts and successfully taken off and landed. Without a sim, I would be nowhere near close enough to be building my second plane today and hoping to fly this weekend over in Eastern WA. We will see how well it goes and if sim time really does pay off!


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Of all the things I ever lost....................................... I miss my mind the most!

RE: learning to fly before you fly
 

okay. thanks everybody. my girlfriend wants to fly a yak-50 my friend got and...[X(] we were at a loss. we told her it was incredibly hard so now she wants to fly my plane and while it isnt nearly as nice as the .40 size my buddy has its still the only plane i got. its a dinky little 4 ch cessna i got for about 120$. so maybe now i can get her to fly this sim before she wrecks it.:)

RE: learning to fly before you fly
 

Getting Started with a Flight Simulator
http://www.wattflyer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3893