i,ve been flying on afp for 5 months. doing at least 1 hour a day.i can hover for a good couple of min,s , do blenders ,waterfalls etc etc. come to think about it i,m very good. hav,nt crashed it on landing in months. but the trouble is i,ve never flown the real thing. so what i want to know is.am i going to have much joy with the real thing, or am i going to have to learn all over again?.

You are doing the right thing by using the sim before you fly an expensive and fragile plane. You're sim experience is totally transferable to the real flying. Especially using AFP. There will be some minor differences but if you are using the transmitter that actually use to fly, it's even closer.

Keep practicing. People will be amazed how you can fly so well for such little real flying time. The thing I'd say that changes the most in real flying is the wind and wind gusts. That is one tricky thing to master since it's pretty much random. You can set the sim for wind and wind gusts but the real thing is better practice. The best thing that the sim does for me is insures that I don't get my stick directions reversed when I'm in critical situations (rolling into a knife edge at 1 foot off the deck).

Joe

cheers bud. the wind is my next step then the sim speed.the plane i use is the hype 3d, its class for snap rolls, knife edge a couple of feet off the ground.the tx i use is a sanwa 600vg. i,ved turn the end point ajustment up a little on the elevator. so i must remember to turn it back when i transfer it back to the real thing .the plane i have got for thr real thing is a ripmax 40 trainer, with an os46 engine .

The only difference between AFP and the real thing is fear factor. It's a little mechanism tied into your brain that will make use decisions because of our fear. That in time will go away.

Constant wind speed actually makes no difference. That just means you have to fly your plane inside the mass of air that is moving. All your turns and controls have to made accordingly based on the winds direction.

Gusts, micro bursts, thermals however are something, well at least to me, adds extra excitement in the hobby. Give me 20 knots and gusts ... now I am having fun.

All of the good airplanes on AFP fly just like the real thing or within 90% of it. You won't have to learn it all over again ... just keep using your sim as much as possible. When you hit the field I can guarantee you will say "Wow this is just like on the sim".

Also ... if you are not crashing on the sim ... you are definitely not trying hard enough. You should be crashing as much as possible. You need to fly the plane until it reaches the break point so you will know how to react to save it just in time. Don't expect to recover everytime. I lost 7 planes last year alone, but I basically tried as hard as I could to crash most of them.

"Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure." - George E. Woodberry

I agree with STLPilot. At the flying field, sometimes it almost feels as if the big blue sky is like a giant computer screen. That's after I got hooked on AFP ! LOL !

STLPilot, keep up the good work on the website. I really enjoy your excellent selections

Oh well...You got me quys! All I have to do now is to spend my night on AFP.

Serge

rajul LOL ..... and when I go to the real flying field this spring I hope that a new plane pops out of the ground after I crash [8D]

LOL ! Put a reset button on your Tx