Is flying a heli backwards really hard or do I just have some kind of mental coordination difficulty with it?

I practice it everyday on the sim, but I still have some crashes there. And in the real world, every time I try it's a near disaster - and I get in trouble with it before I even attempt a turn. I can bring the heli into me with the tail toward me from way out there, but when I try flying left to right or right to left, I have trouble.

I'm hovering inverted and even doing easy circuits inverted, but backwards flying seems impossible.

Was wondering if others had a lot of trouble with backwards and maybe someone has some tips.

Raptor 50
Hyper 50
GY401

A heading hold gyro helps keep the tail in one position. If the heading hold is not on then the
tail will weather vane around while going backward.

I'm just don't like to fly a heli backward. It doesn't seam natural. If it was naterual then they
would have mirrors.

I always fly in HH.

What happened to the reply from BarracudaHockey that was here?

Anyway BH, thanks for the encourament and tip about the horizontal fin. So this fin doesn't really do anything except cause trouble?

Worked on a little bit again today. For some reason when I try tail first flying the heli always ends up coming at me. I tried just going a few feet backward and then a few feet forward today. Just gotta put in more sim time and burn more fuel.

I didn't catch Barracuda's response but he is correct. The fins have a lot to do with how the heli responds
backwards. They are made mainly to guide the heli while flying forward. Solid fins will weather vane more
than 3D fins. 3D fins are only the basic outline of a fin and really do not do much. The verticle fin will
protect the tail rotor a little. I have broken horizontal fins and thrown then away and never replaced them.
I wouldn't recommend that with the verticle fin because of how it protects the tail rotor.


When you fly tail in, are you flying facing the wind? That will make flying backward a lot easier.

I said ditch the horizontal fin because it will push the boom downwards when flying backwards.

I think my post got whacked in the roll back this weekend.

Hi BH,
Is ditching the horizontal fin common/standard practise for backwards flight? Or is it normally a case of putting on the open 3D type?
Its nice to have RCU back again, well done guys

I use the 3d fins and it works ok, the solid ones are a nusance though.

Thanks BH,
I have always wondered why the 3D guys used open fins, I just assumed it was for the tumbling moves. I never would have thought about the fin effecting backwards flight.
So much to learn, so small a brain. []