Well, since I am a newbie in helicopters, I must say that this is harder than I thought. I can throw away 45 years of airplane learning. I have never had to use my left hand except for throttle (3 ch flyer all those years). My left hand just doesn't want to learn anything except use the throttle.
I can at least hover around 6 ft off the deck without crashing, but the drifting is taking all my time. I have it balanced to perfection right under the main shaft, tracking is perfect, and am even using the dual rate function to slow down my controls, but, God is this hard.
Today, I figured I'll just spend more money and bought a CoPilot. I have searched this site and others, and the great majority swears by this thing. I have all their names, so in case it doesn't do the job, I'll find out where all these people live.
Anyway, It will be here in two days, so I'll let you know what transpires. My Futaba gyro is flawless controlling the tail, but I need more help.
Cheers.
Dick

Hi Dick,

I too had "donkey's" years of fixed-wing experience before learning to fly helis. But for many years I have made used of all four functions, so maybe this made it a bit easier for me. The best advice I ever had, and which I pass on to you, is: "Get a flight sim"

There are good and there are not-so-good flight sims, but any one of them will give you the opportunity to learn helis without all that goes with learning on the "real thing." You probably think it's an unnecessary expense (like I did), but you will definitely find lots of benefits from getting a sim

At first I thought I'd never be able to fly a heli sim - but now it has become so easy that I wonder how I ever thought it was difficult. I stil fly a sim to try-out new manoeuvers, and to get some stick-time during spells of bad weather, so I wouldn't be without mine (I have four of them), but if you wanted, to you could sell yours once you've learned to fly a heli

Good luck,

Tony

When you mention simulator, is it one that would allow you to use your transmitter?
I have Microsoft FS but it uses a generic joystick.
I need to learn the left stick.

Yes, what you need is a simulator which either lets you use your existing RC Tx, or one with which you get a control box which looks and works in the same way as your RC Tx

Tony

Tony,

I just bought the G2 flight simulator yesterday. I figure it'll help polish my flying now that the cold weather is here. Do you have this one? I have a couple of questions about the LMH download.

Mark

Hi Mark,

I have RealFlightDeluxe. But, like you (probably) I downloaded the LMH and found that it doesn't work! The error message tells me I need a model (can't remember which one) which is on one of the "Add-On" discs . . . . but I have that disc already and still LMH doesn't work. Mind you, the Finch is quite close to an LMH, especially if you dial-in a slight nose-weight to stop most of the "ballooning" (which I only discovered yesterday!)

Tony

rms59,

There are a couple of r/c sims that include helis that are free to download. Look at www.preflightsim.com and http://n.ethz.ch/student/mmoeller/fms/index_e.html

Cliff

Hi Cliff, Does either of these have anything which reponds like the LMH?

Tony

Tony, Thanks for the tip about dialing in the nose weight. It baloons way too much when I try to do simple forward flight.

I'll try that!

No problem Mark, pleased to be of some help. You'll still need to push some forward cyclic in fff, but it's definitely better with a little noseweight

Tony