Hello all. I'm thinking of buying the G3.5 Sim. I've built a trainer, but that was years ago. Never flew it

My question is, if I learn how to fly on the sim, will I be able to successfully solo with my Trainer?

NO

A sim, and G3 is a good one, is a training aid which can accelerate learning and sharpen proficiency. If used diligently, it usually shortens the time taken to solo, but it isn't a replacement for training in acccord with a sound syllabus and good instruction.

Would you recommend getting the Sim anyway? I'm thinking it would still be a good learning aid.

And should I get G3? Or another one? Cost really isn't an object. Any sim software I get is going to be cheaper than smashing a home built airplane.

Yes, the sim is very helpful, especially in learing orientation. I still find it helpful now as a tool to learn to get out of trouble (i.e., what to do when you get your plane in some crazy orientation way too low...). It will definitely shorten your time to solo.

As far as soloing with no real instruction...maybe, maybe not. Depends on too many factors to list, so why take the chance of destroying your airplane? Find a club and get some instruction there. Clubs dues are cheap, and any decent club will provide free instruction.

I flew a sim for several weeks before starting with a live instructor, and soloed after 5 flights with the instructor, but I would not have wanted to try it without him there. I found that the biggest difference between the sim and the real thing was me...I was much more nervous and jumpy, which made things seem to happen much faster.

Chris

No. You will crash before counting to 10 (and that is if you will be able to count at that time...)

Your plane must be inspected by a competent RC pilot for secured battery, radio components, control rods, prop spinner, control throws, CG, range checked with collapsed anthena, the engine must be properly set and tested at full power, for leaning out or quitting ritch at the low end.

At the maiden flight, the trainer pilot will trim the plane, adjust the CG if needed and just then he can release control to you via trainer Tx.

The simulator will help in that respect: If you had a proper sim training (spending half an hour a day for 2 weeks on trainer plane) you will be able to do circles in two-tree sessions and may be (if tallented) solo in the third session. Without a sim, many people need many more sessions to solo. They also progress much slower after that.

Stefan
http://rcflightsim.com

Most emphatically. I'd encourage you to do so. Regardless of age, all my students who use a sim progress notably faster than they ordinarily would without one. Sims are one of the best things ever to happen to R/C training.

Your thinking is spot on. As for RF G3, it's not so much which sim you choose, but how and how often you use it. That said, G3 is up there with the very best of them, is inarguably the most popular probably after FMS's freeware, and sets the standard others try to emulate or exceed. Highly recommended, with the single caveat tha it requires a fair bit of PC grunt to run it for satisfactory performance. You don't need the latest bleeding edge Core 2 Duo or a Radeon 1950XT, but it does require something in the order of a GB of DDR, a 3Ghz P4 and a 6800XT (AGP or PCIe) or better to meet the sort of performance I'd find acceptable. Good luck. Have fun!

Pick a airplane that is very close to the REAL RC trainer plane you are going to fly. Get so you can land on the sim 10 out of 10 times in a row. I mean nice smooth landings. If you can do that...you are on your way to doing the real thing. Only the real RC plane things can happen like engine stopping on take-off ect. So practice dead stick landings on you simulator also. I love my sim and I learned to fly knife edge on it and then tried it on my airplane I had for years...and flew good knife edge the first time. It is nice to have a flying friend to help....its not fun doing things like this and not sharing the experience. Good Luck. Capt,n

I would say go for it and get the sim, i used 3.5 for a while before flying, well on my 2nd flight i was landing and then soloed my mates park flyer, still learning my glow tho, soi think it was money well spent. but like everyone said u really need someone with experience to make sure it flys ok and trim it out.

goodkuck mate

Here is a Good Idea Go to your local RC Hobby Shop in many cases they will have the Sims up and running for you to try. I would suggest Great Planes Real Flight.
Also a little Tip.
My First plane was a ARF Trainer that all I had to do was put the wing on, fuel, and Break the engine in simple huh NOPE The fuel tank wasnt mounted right and shifted to the back $400.00 went through the roof of a building. Get some help

By all means go for a Sim, it will speed the learning process greatly.
Also, as WillieSims sez, get help Check out the local clubs in the area, if you think $58 bucks for AMA dues is too much, see what it costs if you do property damage, or injure someone[X(] Learning to fly without some mentoring is not a good idea.
Pete

With a sim, it helps if you know the basics theoretically first (like power to adjust altitude changes and elevator to adjust speed).

The sim plane will not behave exactly like your real plane. My strategy would be to fly several sim planes so that you might better adjust to a plane that does not behave exactly the way you thought it would.

Buy it, no question, and see if you can practice with an insturctor. I like trying advanced stunts on the trainer for the first time then trying after i have it figured out, works great!

YES!

Just to give you a different perspective,

I bought G3 about a year ago, and i have used the sim relatively diligently since I bought it. I think it totally depends on how you train on the sim.
I learnt how to land almost every plane in the sim, and I played with doing so in different conditions. Turbulence, wind ect...

Two months ago I bought my first model, a Hobico Avistar 40, and solo flew it since no one would train me without an AMA license.

I went out to a narrow dirt road and solo’d my very first flight and landed the plane with ease and no bouncing. I think formal training is BS and overrated, im sure a lot of instructors feel threatened by the new sims and heavily promote their business. But if you practice the sim correctly for a long enough period of time, than the answer to your question is yes, absolutely. I did it myself.

Now, two months after my first flight, I have solo’d a TT40 H9 twist, and a ¼ scale Edge 540.

All with ease, no problems. Maybe im a natural, dut I don’t see what all the fuss is about.

What all the fuss is about is ALL THE OTHER STUFF OTHER THAN TWIDDLING THE STICKS...............

A sim will definitely help you learn how to twiddle the sticks.

It won't teach you spit about balancing the airplane,
installing the equipment so the servo's have a chance to work the surfaces correctly,
install the pushrods so they won't disconnect in flight,
rig all the stuff so the surfaces work slowly enough you've got a chance of controlling the airplane,
rig all the stuff so the surfaces work fast enough to fly the airplane,
get the engine to start,
get the engine to start without hurting yourself,
get the engine to run after it starts,
get the engine to run worth spit,
get the engine to run good enough to keep the airplane in the air long enough for you to find out how badly out of trim your model happens to be,
get the engine to run well enough that it doesn't fry itself,
....................
that ought to be enough.

It's not just about twiddling the sticks. Not even close.

Getting help from an experienced modeler covers far more than some people seem to think. It's not BS. Not even close.

Ok I'll agree with you, I was over exaggerating saying it was total BS.

But every thing you just pointed out was clearly stated in my models Manuals. Step by step instructions and very simple to follow.

Total BS, no your right. But it's not necessary if you take your time and are thorough.

If you practice trimming a plane in the air, practice landing in windy conditions with a large cross section of models, you will be prepared, if your experience is anything like mine.

Aside from anything else, im sure that all here would agree that flying at a club is a social thing too. I began flying on my own in a farm field but soon got bored. Club flying is about sharing views and making friends as well as getting instruction AND insurance.
So,,,,,,,,,,dont go it alone, join a good club and enjoy the brotherhood of our great hobby.

BTW, scriptt what you did takes a lot of smarts. I congratulate you for doing it. And you and a lot of others (me too) have proven it is possible by doing it. But it's not even close to being the right thing to do for the vast majority of people who would like to get into the hobby. And the instructions in the manuals might as well be Hieroglyphics for some of the people. And those being the percentage who actually read and follow the instructions.

Trust me, the people who can succeed by themselves don't need encouragement and support from anyone. But the ones of them that actually do succeed are going to need some luck. And no amount of cheerleading is going to give that to them.

There is no "business" in teaching anyone to fly R/C, as I've never heard of anyone profiting from it. Except if you want to think of the joy of having a student solo for the first time, after a good deal of flying sessions full of hard work, as profit, then yeah I guess it could be. The reward is teaching and passing the hobby on to others with a similar interest. SCRIPTT, you've got guts to do what you did, and you are the top percentile that takes up R/C. Being a private pilot myself, and growing up with my dad being in R/C (but not really caring enough to teach my brother and I to fly), I might have done it alone had sims been around in '93 like they are today. But like others have pointed out, most people who jump into this hobby probably don't have that kind of self-assurance and need a good team of support members (healthy local club) to aid them along in making the right choices. Because lets face it.....a few costly, wrong choices and a budding R/C pilot could be discouraged enough to drop out of the hobby all together.

Keep punchin' holes in the air,
~Ronbo

Well said ronbo
Pete

i say yes also i recently got 1 and im almost ready to fly, it also builds up your confidense

Let me get this straight. You won't pay the measly $56 for an AMA membership, yet you'll got fly a 25% scale plane off of a dirt road? You're likely to give all of us a bad name when your number comes up--and it will. Please have the courtesy to consider how your actions might affect others who intend to enjoy the hobby for a very long time to come.

You must go into more detail, im confused? Are you suggesting that mowing down a few alfalfa crops is going to give you a bad name? What exactly are you asserting? The local airfields (in the city) are for example, are very near High school Softball fields, and parks. Oh but its cool if we moe down some kid as long as we got the insurance to pay for it right?

What ever man, id prefer to be near nothing. Esp, busy highways and recreation areas where people congregate, even if it is only the fellow flyers at the field.

Hey, as long as where getting outlandish I guess I can understand the lazy selfish perspective your coming from, it's al gravy crippling someone for the rest of their life as long as the AMA has your back right? Better than driving 15miles out of town to a dirt road any way.

Those kids and their evil dirt roads in the middle of nowhere, they’ll ruin us all I tells ya…

scriptt you are very arrogant. only a few are good enough to solo after sim work before learningggg to fly right and be safe at doing it. the have been a few clubs here that have been shut down through bad habits from just a few people. a sim is very helpful when you are learning to fly. it cuts the time learning down.I am a instructor and i recomend that students spent time on sims.
doing what you are doing here ie flying off gravel roads which here are owned by the shire of that town can land you in jail. because here we come under casa {civil aviation service which states the rules part of. there is a man in nsw doing 10 years

Definitely go the sim route, spent a month with phoenix until I could fly and land any plane in the sim, then put together a twinstar II and successfully solo'd it at a mates farm twice, then 2/3 at another property with a much tighter field (surrounded by large trees) - I ran out of strip on landing first attempt (hit a tree just before touching down), supa glued the elevator back on, configured spoilerons, and then had much less trouble getting her down.

Before I give you too much confidence, I did a private pilot license 20 years ago, and still remember flying and the theory as if it was yesterday. I'm also pretty patient and technically inclined when it comes to any kind of project. Spent lots of time trawling the net for info on everything from build tips to get the CG right, to what is expo. I was also lucky not to crash a couple times during those flights.

So I'd definitely back up the notion that sim time reduces the training required to solo. It's also cheaper to get a sim to test the waters, so to speak, prior to diving in.

If your flying is as poor as your English, you're in trouble. It's pretty obvious what I mean. Our hobby is a vulnerable one, particularly post-9/11. All it takes is one or two bad accidents by poorly prepared, irresponsible individuals (such as yourself) to start the process of restricting or eliminating the hobby for those of us who are a bit more responsible in our participation.

If you can't understand those simple facts, you shouldn't be flying.