Last night was screwing around trying to get a helicopter up off the ground and steady using the RealFlight controller that comes with the software. However, I could never seem to get the trim adjusted to where I could just get the heli to go up and hover. It was always severly going in one direction and I couldn't find a happy medium.

Is there something in setup or what not to get it a helipcopter to pretty much hover with the sticks in neutral?

Thanks.

Hmm...

While there could be something wrong with your setup, you must remember that heli's do NOT just sit there in a hover. I've got a little bit of time in full scale heli's and the simulator is quite close in the amount of effort required to hover. My Blade CP is more difficult to hover than either full scale or the sim.

My flight instructor on the full scale heli described hovering like this; "it's like trying to stand on a basketball" and he was right. A stable hover requires constant minor corrections of all controls to accomplish. Getting it trimmed right will help, but it won't make it just "go up and hover"...

Were your trims centered? Have you calibrated the controller lately? If so, then you should still have to work the heli to get it to hover.

Ok, maybe my understanding is off. I would have assumed with proper weighting possible a gyro etc that a helicopter would hover with controls in a neutral position. I could imagine a little variation because of wind and such but not as much as I'm seeing. This is a new install, just got the software yesterday and have set the trim settings to center and calibrated several times.

I'll keep playing with it but would have thought there would be better adjustments to make a helicopter more stable for the hover position. Plus the book with G3 states to properly setup the hover as everything is based off that but it doesn't go into details. Thought maybe there were some tips or tricks i was missing and i hate reinventing the wheel.

Thanks.

You have to fly a heli all the time. It wont just hover.

Best advice anyone can give you about flying a heli. "Forget that your transmitter sticks even have a center"

There's that word which always seems to get us in trouble "assumed"...

The gyro's function is to keep the tail boom where you put it, not keep the heli hovering.

Try different heli's on the sim, some are much easier to fly than others. The high performance ones capable of 3D are really touchy and you won't get far trying to learn with them. Try the one listed as a trainer, it has the training gear attached and it's much easier to hover than anything else I've played with on the sim.

Calibrate your controller with the trims centered. What I like to do for trimming is to gradually increase the power until it starts to just slightly lift, note what direction it tends to go and trim to offset that tendency. Once you get it to lift pretty straight, and that's immediately off the ground, the trims are probably as close as you'll get until your flying skills improve.

Hovering is one of the toughest new skills to learn so some recommend lifting it and learning to fly it around keeping the tailboom behind you and accepting the crashes until you get familiar with the stick movements. Most people I've talked to about it say you should learn to hover with it pointing away from you, I prefer it facing me but the stick movements are reversed for left/right movement as they are with a fixed wing model.

There is a tutorial a lot of people refer to as being very good, but I can't find the link to it right now as I've not tried the tutorial. Perhaps someone here can direct you to it or offer other better input as I'm not an expert on heli flying by any means...

Thanks Zeeb,

Your rational you described is exactly what I was trying to do. Just enough throttle to where it starts moving. When I posted though, say it would start going left, I would adjust the trim and there was no happy medium. It would start going hard right. I couldn't find a balance where it would just slightly move. Same with all the other directions as well. It's like it's all or nothing.

One thing I did do is adjust the physics down to 50% which put it in slow mo. That way at least I can fly it and train how to react. As I get comfortable I'll up it until I get to 100%. Actually I may do like I do with my planes, adjust it up to 115 to 125% so I'm learning everything faster than what it's like in real world so hopefully real world will seem like slow mo.

Thanks for the input.