tequila_cowboy

My assistant came into my office this morning and handed me a big package.... Yup, I finally got my copy of Realflight in the mail from Towerhobbies, and just in time for the weekend! Thanks to Lisa at Towerhobbies for helping me sort everything out.

As soon as I got home (after dinner with the wife - it is Friday night, after all), I booted it up, watched the basic hover instruction, and gave it a whirl. Now, I've read Radd's manual and it says, try to stay within a one-foot box...a one-foot box?!?! I had trouble keeping it within a ten-foot box!! Never underestimate practice and muscle memory.... I was over-correcting and in all the wrong directions!

I've read that some of the other guys suggest modifying the training unit in some way to make the sticks move more smoothly. Could someone explain to me what that means, if I should do it, and how?

Ok, from tomorrow on, no more fooling around. I'm going to start from Radd's Lesson 1 and progress from there.

Thanks

Stuck-N-Da-Mud

My Feedback: (14)

you will notice your left stick has a rachet effect when you move it up & down. take out the screws on the back& lift cover off on your left stick you will see a chrome tab that rides on the left stick its plastic and is grooved you can either lift up on tab a little or slide a small piece of soft tubeing over the chrome tab, or some actualy file the the plastic groves off where the tab rides did not want to modify mine that way just put tubeing on mine . good luck[sm=cool.gif]

Hotshot Charlie

You may also unscrew it (piece of metal) and turn it over. Easy to do and works fine.

grittykitty

You don't need to start with keeping it in a "1 foot" box. Start by just trying to keep it in front of you without crashing. If it starts to go out of control, try to do everything you can to get it back. You learn the most by being outside the boundary of your knowledge. Once you begin to control it, then try a 10' box, then a 5' box, etc. The biggest thing is stick time........practice, practice, practice. It can be difficult and frustrating, but it will come, and the elation of doing it is SOOOO cool.
I would actually recommend not removing the throttle ratchet on Realflight until you learn to hover. The ratchet will hold the throttle at a more set location, where you can just worry about the cyclic. Once the hover is learned, then the smooth throttle helps with better control in forward flight transitions and 3D. GOOD LUCK & stick with it.....the rewards are bountiful.

tequila_cowboy

Ok, thanks, won't touch it for now, then. I'm having settings probs with Realflight now though. If I try to make a copy of the heli in order to add on a HH gyro, the bird won't lift off, even if I don't touch any of the settings.

I think I'm doing pretty good, considering it's only my second 20-min session. I can keep it relatively stable in the air, about 10 feet up. My prob is getting it to stop moving. Why does the heli keep wanting to fly around me in a big circle? How do I make it change directions?

grittykitty

I'm assuming you're using the Impala trainer.....

1) Stick with the default Impala Trainer for now.
2) make sure the #3 switch (top left 3 way switch) is in the center position. This is the Idle1 position, but also engages the HH on the Impala. In the forward (down) position, the tail will want to drift (nose) left, but this should stop when you flip up (back) the switch to Idle1. It wants to keep flying in a circle because the tail is drifting without the HH engaged.
3) make sure all of the trims are centered. This is usually the default trim for the trainer. Nothing is more frustrating than the trim being out on something you can't fly in the first place. Try to get it as steady as you can, then watch to see if it takes off real hard in a particular direction, and then add some corrective trim and try it again. It shouldn't need to be but a click or two, if any, but you never know.
4) The #1 switch (2-way closest to the throttle) controls the exponential. toward yourself is low rate, and away from you is high rate (makes the stick less and more sensitive to center resp.) Learn to hover on low rate first. This makes the movements and
overcorrections less severe.

The most common error to learning to hover (made by myself as well) is overcorrecting. If the bird starts to drift one way, very gently move the stick in the opposite direction. The hardest part to learning is that you are attempting to control two directions at the same time, and this is without the altitude coming into play. Remember, a heli is, by nature, an unstable machine, and requires CONSTANT work to keep it still. For me, it was easier working about 2 to 3 feet off of the ground, intead of over my head.

We have a full scale heli pilot in our club, and he has mentioned that attempting to hover a real helicopter is like trying to balance a unicyle on top of a beach ball, and that R/C is even harder. This is due to the fact that inside the real thing, the human body becomes it's own gyro, and can make corrections by sight & feel, but R/C is done by sight only, completely disconnected from the machine. This gets even more evident when you begin to turn the machine around to face yourself.

Keep at it.....It will come around.

Any other questions, just ask.

Hotshot Charlie

Just made my 4th flight with my Raptor 30, the sim does make a huge difference. By the fourth tank full, I was hovering in one spot and making the heli go where I wanted it to go. It still is a lot different that the sim, mainly because you now realize that you don't have a "spacebar" to hit, it is now real life with real money on the line.

My overall verdict is, without a sim, I would be picking up many pieces this afternoon..... Buy a G2, if you don't have one. If you do have one, fly the heck out of it, but remember to try to put more realizim in your flights. Forget the spacebar and make every flight just like it was the real thing. (as if you crash, it will cost you money)

I am excited, this has been a very good day for heli flying, even though we had winds from 5 - 15 mph most of the afternoon. I can't wait til next weekend ! Yahooooo !!!!

tequila_cowboy

Hi guys, thanks for the advice. The most difficult part of using G2 is being able to judge the angle of the bird on the screen. It took me a couple tries before I began to get a feel for whether it was tipping forward or backwards. I'm now working on getting an instinctive feel for the angle of the tail boom....when it's 30-40ft away on the screen (near the trees), it's a bit difficult to tell if the boom is facing you or away from you. That said, I think I'm doing pretty good with the sim <Watt Not> electric heli. After one weekend (3-4 sessions of 15-20 minutes each), I can now get the chopper off the ground slowly, and have it hover about 3-4ft off the ground within a 8-10ft square in front of me in a relatively stable pattern for about 20-30 seconds. None of the stock settings have been changed, meaning the HH gyro is off. I'm slowly getting the feel of how to correct the left, right motion (with the right stick), and how to keep the boom in line (with the left stick). However, that's with no wind, I still have trouble saving it once the heli starts swinging outta control around my head or around me (as it almost inevitably does when my attention wanders after a bit) - I guess I have to learn how to apply the brakes after I master how to hover and then learn controlled forward flight. And I'm no expert at soft landings!! Oh yeah, thanks for telling me about the toggle switches, I had no idea what they're for!!

grittykitty, I'm actually using the Watt Not, since I'm mainly going to be flying electric helis. For some reason, none of the copies I make want to leave the ground, even if I haven't touched the settings. Do the settings automatically change (and go out of trim) when I make a copy?

grittykitty

I don't know why it would do that. It should make an exact copy of the bird you are flying. [sm=confused.gif]
Instead of making a copy from the menu, use one of the program's helis, go up to the "aircraft" menu, and try to edit the heli - it won't let you, and will prompt you to make a copy - Click "yes", and then just put a 2 after the name. I haven't had a problem like this, so I'm just having you try the same process I used.

Play around with all of the helis, not just the electric. You'll find that some are more stable than others for learning (the Watt Not was harder for me at first, because it is a fixed pitch heli). Once I learned to lift off, hover, and set down with the Impala, I went to the Schweizer to learn my close in maneuvering, and then used the Sun Dog to get going on forward flight. Now I can open any heli in the program and fly it, with just a little trimming. Find which ones you like for learning different things, this really helps.

BTW, just to make things fun, you can go to RealFlight's home page [link]http://www.realflight.com[/link] and download new "skins" for a lot of your aircraft. At the top of the page, down the left side, put the cursor on the "download" menu, then go to "G2 Swap page". From here, you can download aircraft, flying sites, and trim schemes. It is coded as to which ones you can use (for the original G2 and additional expansion packs. You have to have the particular expansion pack to run some of them).

Good luck.

tequila_cowboy

Grittykitty, so much for the #3 switch. I accidentally dropped my radio unit off a table and the switch promptly broke off. I opened it up, and there doesn't look like much damage inside, except that the wiring clip has come off the switch ring, but I think I can push it back in. Think I'm going to take it down to my friendly neighbourhood hobby shop soon and see if I can get a spare part for it. Otherwise I'll be stuck permanently without HH.

Having said that, I took your advice and switched to the Impala trainer. Wow, what a difference in stability versus the Watt Not. I can actually lift off very gently and almost without any input on the controls, hang it very tightly in one place for a few seconds before it starts drifting. What about it makes it so much more stable? Is it just size, and if so, are all .30 and .60 birds like that? Given how much more stable the bigger heli's are, I'm thinking that it might be a mistake for me to get a Piccolo as my first heli.

grittykitty

If the local hobby shop can't help, try radio shack. It might not be the exact same switch, but they should have some small three-ways. I took my radio apart to look at this, and it looks pretty simple to replace with just some basic soldering. The #3 switch is right there at the edge of the case when you take it apart, so you don't have to go digging into the unit.
If you can't get the switch fixed, go into the "aircraft" pull-down menu, select "edit radio", then go to the far right tab "gyros and governor". The bottom selection is "Heading Hold When...", you can set this to "Always" so you don't have to worry about it being on a switch....it's always on. On my real bird, I never fly with the HH off anyway.

As far as stability goes, you have two factors at work:
The first is that the larger the heli, the more stable it is by nature. You have more rotary mass in the larger blades which enhances the gyroscopic effect, and more mass in the heli itself, which requires more effort to move it around. In this area, bigger is better, but also much more initial outlay to purchase, and greater costs to repair and run (bigger engines drink more fuel). That is why I chose the raptor 50v2 as my first bird. It is based on the 30, which is cheaper to repair, but gives almost the performance & stability of the larger 60. From everything I've read, the new 50 sizes are THE best bang for the buck. I haven't seen one at my field yet, but I hear the Caliber 50 carries the same benefits.
The second is the difference between fixed pitch and variable pitch. If you do some research here at RCU, you will see that most recommend against trying to learn on a small electric because of this issue and the light weight. When you are flying and you bank into a wind gust, the variable pitch can go negative to counter. Also, when you are trying to land, it doesn't take much breeze to generate enough lift to keep it from landing. The variable pitch can go negative to get it to the ground. That said, it is much more difficult to fly fixed pitch even on a light breezy day. With the electric, you have the double whammy of fixed pitch and very light weight, which can make them VERY touchy to fly (read - easier to crash). I'm not saying do not play with it on RealFlight, but it is highly ill-advised to start off with for your real first heli.

Sorry If I ramble with the long posts, but I'd rather be long winded than to leave somebody guessing.....Keep at it!

tequila_cowboy

Thanks for the HH advice. I snuck out of work a few minutes early today and had a whirl before dinner. It is much better with the HH on. I am now at the point where (IF I make a good takeoff) I can get the bird up about 3-4 feet, hang there for about 10 seconds (the sim voice says, "there you go!"....hehe), take it up another 2-3 feet and do the same, and then bring her down gently. I can do this maybe about 70% of the time. I wobble on the landing sometimes, because I'm preoccupied with throttling down gently (sometimes I shut it down completely!) and I forget the right stick. Also, I'm screwed 75% of the time if the bird starts accelerating and swinging, because I don't yet know how to slow her down and back into control consistently. If it starts swinging wildly from takeoff, I'm screwed 100% of the time.

About the Impala....is it a fixed pitch or a collective pitch heli? I kinda know the difference between the two....FP means the angle of attack of the blades never changes, while CP means that it has a mechanism by which they do?

Thanks again!

grittykitty

For just getting started, it sounds like you're doing pretty good (10 seconds in any one spot is good for just starting!). BTW, have you checked out the virtual flight instructor? It's in the "options" menu, or just press the hot key "v". The lessons are not in the proper order, but once you watch them, you get the idea of where you need to progress. Don't get discouraged when watching these, though. I remember when I first started, I watched these instructions, and thought "Yeah, right!! I can't even get this thing off of the ground!!" It's just like learning to play a musical instrument from the beginning......Everybody starts off the same, and the more you practice, the more satisfying the results.

The Impala is a CP heli. I am pretty sure that most (I never say "all", always bites you) nitro helis are CP. I'm sure somebody, at some time, made a nitro heli that is fixed pitch, but I have neither heard of or seen one.

I don't know if you have noticed yet, but be fore-warned, you are setting yourself up for an addiction worse than heroin..... i.e.- "I snuck out of work a few minutes early today and had a whirl before dinner.."[sm=lol.gif] (Read - I ditched work to get my fix)
Sounds like an addict to me....LOL

tequila_cowboy

Yep, I checked out the Virtual Trainer video....but before your wise words about setting up HH, I was wondering how the heck he kept the tail in place without mad inputs on the left stick. I agree it's a really good place to start, though my only complaint is that its a bit too passive. Now if Realflight could include some kind of interactive training segment in its next version, that would be really cool.

Actually, with HH on, and using the Impala, my learning curve has gotten a LOT steeper, since I only have to worry about the right stick now (mainly). You're right about over-correcting, it's newbie curse that I'm still struggling to get over. My technique to hover is..... watch the bird as carefully as possible, and if I see it begin to head in one direction, I make a slight correction on the right stick in the opposite direction. So if the heli begins to dip to 11 o'clock, I twitch the right stick to 5 o'clock, etc, etc. As I said, I 'm still getting a feel for HOW MUCH corrective action I should take on the stick....sometimes I just make the swinging worse.

My other prob is that I am staring so intently at the screen that I get a headache after practicing for 20-30 minutes and have to stop. Haha.... There really is something about the image depth on Realflight that gives me motion sickness, though, which I don't get playing other computer games. I'm a big sim fan and can play F1 or Colin McRae or Flightsim for hours without problem. I also stare at little numbers on spreadsheets on a computer screen for at least half a day if not more, every day, at the office, so it's not something wrong with me (I HOPE!). [&:]

BTW, I don't really know what trimming means. I've tried to set up the stick settings on Realflight so that they read zero at rest, and then 100 and -100 at the extremes. But this means that the tabs aren't actually in their middle positions. Does that matter? Or is there another way to trim the controls? Or am I completely mistaking what trimming means? (Sorry if I don't make sense, I don't know the 'correct' names for all the switches yet)

tequila_cowboy

Grittykitty, BTW, you're right about being addicted! I'm sneaking peaks at Deetee's website at lunch time too!

grittykitty

With hovering, you will learn to "pre-empt" the movement of the machine. You almost develop a sixth sense, if you will, as to which way the heli is going to move....before it moves. This is how you maintain a steady hover. When I hover, I'm not really moving the stick, but more "touching" it. It takes so little movement to keep it in place (with no wind). You'll see what I'm talking about once you can do it.
Once you get proficient, then you have to throw a light breeze into the mix, because rarely do you get to fly on a totally calm day. I would recommend this after you can move it around with some confidence. The wind moving across the blades generates lift, which causes the heli to pitch up and down, so you have to add throttle / collective into the mix to keep it steady vertically. Personally, I give the guys who learned how to do this, before sims were around, a ton of credit. It seem like you would have to have been a lottery winner to pay for the mishaps while learning.

As far as headaches...take a break (I know...this is hard ). It doesn't help that you in front of a computer for work as well. I work outside during the day (construction inspector), so my time in front of a computer is just about an hour or so doing reports. the rest of the time is at my leisure. One thing to keep in mind is that the program is RENDERING a 3D image, but you are still staring at a 2D flat screen. This can be kinda hard on the eyes, especially when trying to intensely concentrate on the heli. It's almost like you are trying to stare "inside", or "beyond" the screen. Your senses tell you that the object is moving farther away, or closer to you, but the focus of your eyes is not shifting (hence....motion sickness).
Another suggestion is to fly some of the planes as well. These don't seem to be as stressful on the eyes. And, at least with me, I found that while learning both planes and helis at the same time, the skills learned actually complimented each other. The plane helps a little with nose-in perspective on the heli, and the heli teaches better rudder control for the plane (a lot of people only use the plane's rudder on the ground for steering, but to learn aerobatics, the rudder is a must in the air).

The trims are the sliders just below, and to the inside, of each gimbal (stick), relative to the two major axis of travel. These make minor adjustments to the servos to center the control surfaces in flight (or hover). With the Impala, the trims at center positions should be appropriate for the trainer (except the throttle, pull this one all the way down). If you try a plane (like the PT40 trainer), you will notice that at "center trim", the nose of the plane will be pitching upward during forward flight. You will need to push the elevator trim slider forward a few clicks (down elevator) to correct for this. This is due to the high wing design. With the wing being above the center of gravity, the engine is pulling on the plane from underneath the drag point (the high wing), making the nose pull up against the drag.
Each time you switch aircraft, you will most likely need to adjust one, or more, of the trims a few clicks, but this is also good for learning.

grittykitty

I told ya....take another hit off of that crack pipe. Go on...stare at that controller without touching it. [sm=lol.gif]