I have been working on learning to hover for about six months but, seem to have made litte progress. I have read various threads on how to do it, so I am pretty sure of the things to work on.

What I would like to know is the average length of time it has taken to learn to do it? How many months? How many times do you fly a week etc.? I read somehwere it took one flyer about a year to become proficient. Is that normal, or other flyers doing it much sooner?

Hal
Hovering Novice

Long is the path you will find until many gallons of fuel you burn... help you I can... yesssss, ummmmm....

Seriously.... I've been working on perfecting my hovering skills for the past 3 years!! You start out with some high hovers that look kinda ugly... then gradually you get better control and they get lower and lower..... Helps if you fly with a bunch of guys that are waaaay better than you..... You can practice harriers and hovering together... just work on being really smooth with your maneuvers...

When I'm really practicing hard.. I'm burning a gallon a week.

goto my website www.philsrcworld.fsnet.co.uk and read the Cougar review, theres a bit at the end of how i did it.
it took about 6 months or ramdomish type practice every weekend or two, BUT!... actully getting it took one flight. up till then you just learn to hover high and drift downwind, after that it's confidence and not worrying if you break it

it took me the summer to learn how to hover when I got into funfly planes. I learned with a webra 32 piped powered Fazer. It was fun learning, but took some time to hold a good hover. At the end it was down to hovering rudder bumps!
Good luck!
Ryan

Real Flight 2 plus the planes the Profile Brotherhood have put up on thier site for downlaod have got me hovering in only 2 weeks!!!!!!


I can't recommend this strategy enuf!

Build yourself a QHOR or SPA3D, it helped me out alot of learning to hover. I can hold a pretty good hover after 6mo of trying.

They are cheap and fairly crash resistant, so you can do it on the deck and not fear about hurting it. You will learn to use the rudder very well. Which is a must!

Mine is a 36 WS 36 fuse PQHOR, but my next is going to be the SPA3D. My hovers were always shaky and short lived until this plane! 2nd tankful I was hovering no prob! Last night I burned the 27th tankful - hovered almost the whole tank. This plane hangs like it is on a string. I'm doing things with this plane that I wouldn't even think about trying with my Sudokhoi.

Jeff A

Exactly, you can see vids of these planes on my prop website in my signature. Alot with other cool vids

heres an idea i thought of that will help you with rudder control whille the belly is towards you is just stop flying your plane and go find a baseball bat or a broom stick or something and balance that on the tips of your left thumb and pointer finger for a whille then go try to hover it might help i think im going to go try that right now

How long did it take to learn to hover?.....Hmmmm,,,I remember looking down there and there was hair all over the place ......oooppss...I mean it was kinda like puberty....one day I was just doing it....Gator

Learning how to hover ? Just like Gator says
ROTFLMAO

yer, i'd go with that.
i crashed the Cougar so i didnt care if i dented it anymore.
i went out for a flight after fixing it and into high alpha for ages, more and more rudder. then i hung!
came in, refuled, upped the throws a bit more, and on the second flight tail touched, it came as quick and easy as that. it just snapps into place.
no more perfect entrys, lucky if i hold it, i can throw it into hang from any speed or direction.
still don't mean i'm that good at the rest of the stuff while IN then hang yet
i guess TR will snap too soon

I also followed the frankrizzo plan ... RealFlight G2. It helped a lot ... not sure I could have done it without G2.

I spent a lot of time on G2 practicing hovering with various modified planes. I typically use a modified Extra Special (profile)that flys pretty close to my Extreme 330. It took me about 4 months of steady G2 practice and working on the set-up of my 330 to get my first tail touch. Burned quite a few gallons in the process as well. I still fly at least some G2 during the week to keep the skills up.

Moses

What mods did you make to the extra special to get it to fly decent in G2?? the stock on is a dog... and I've never had really good luck with the stock planes...

Go here and add the palnes your real flight program. Billy Hell has done all the work for you....

http://the******************.com/RFdownloads/

Have fun

I don't remember the initial source for the modified Extra Special file that I use. I did not create it ... I must have downloaded it from somewhere. It is relatively easy to hover - especially compared to the stock G2 files.

I tweaked the plane and the engine file a bit, but somebody else did the bulk of the work. I personally never got the Extra Special to hover very well working straight from the stock G2 file. Who ever did the original modifications was smarter than I am.

I do have the files from the Profile Brotherhood, they are OK. I happen to prefer the file that I currently use - but that is obviously personal preference. I also use a modified version, set up with spoilerons (instead of flapperons). It seems to help with flips/waterfalls/harriers (I need a lot practice on these).

I could e-mail a copy to those who are interested. The files are small - the plane file is about 10K and the engine file is 1K. I did not do much to the engine file - I think I changed the prop to an 11x5 and that is about it.

The Extreme 330 color scheme is available from the RealFlight G2 download page (this is a much larger file). It definitely looks better with the Extreme 330 color scheme.

Moses

Hal,

Hovering is an art... and science. I'm still honing my hovering skills after several years of bashing fun fly airplanes (that doesn't include all the flying since the mid eighties). Absolute control is key. Hanging on the prop for 10 or 20 seconds is one thing... it's entirely different to play the plane like a marionette.

Good luck Hal. Burn lots of fuel practicing.. lots. I bought 4 cases of fuel recently; I hope that's enough for the rest of the season.

Yours,
Juhan

One word, PBF...

You can sit with a pbf and hover all day long hehehehe...

the Giant scale aerobatic planes however are much different from a nice flying fun fly.

I agree with Shortman too. Multiple PBF's hovering is the coolest!!!

All the guys who fly pattern at our club have a funfly plane of some description and we only ever brought them out at the christmas party. Once I learned how to set up a hovering plane properly, I won't say it happened instantly but I found it wasn't as hard as I thought. Then a week later I spotted a technique which was basically don't try to hover just fly vertically in a straight line slowly, this gives you the feeling of the elevator rudder and more importantly the throttle. The next day I tried it, whithin six flights I had gone from being able to point the nose skywards for a few seconds to really controlling it in a hover. I have had 141 flights since april before then I had 22 in nearly three years, I can now move the plane wherever I want and from any direction. All it takes is practice but more importantly a plan of how you are going to improve your skills.

Its very hard. 6 flights a day, 2 days a week, all solid prophanging. Week 2 done it!