Well I'm on to my second aircraft a Top Flite Contender, and I was wondering what the next steps I should take to prepare myself for a jet? Any suggestions on aircraft that I should build that will help me gain the flying skills necessary to fly a turbine?

Look at something bigger, faster, heavier, and more complicated (flaps and retracts)
Since you don't really need to worry about tailwheel experience, something like a loaded T-34 or T-28 will help you on your way. (heavier is better, you don't want a floater) EDIT :Twins can be good because of the extra built in stress factor. Seriously, something like a hobbico twinstar can help. They are fast, have small fuel tanks, handle like a much larger plane (surprisingly) and have a very high sink rate without power. But you would still want to move to something with retracts and flaps afterwards...............

For practice, if you have a radio with a servo slow feature (like the JR 9303), you can slow the throttle servo so that it takes 2-3 seconds to go from idle to full throttle, and vice versa.
Then when you can handle that, raise your idle speed to twice the normal RPM..this will give you a feel for residual thrust.
And finally, only put 6 minutes worth of fuel in it, and then set your timer for 5 minutes.

That should get you close...

I would work towards faster, heavier, more complex planes. Practice on planes that have a stall speed that is significantly higher. Landing a plane at half throttle is good practice. It forces you to fly the plane onto the runway rather than cutting the trottle and letting it settle onto the runway at slow speed. The other key element is to fly a plane with a tapered wing which will tip stall if you slow down too much for landing. Fast, heavy, and high stalling speed is the next step. Prop jets are a cheep next step.

Yeah I was leaning towards a prop jet for my next plane, any ones you would recommend that are clean, fast, and challenging flyers?

patriot, dc f-20, cermark f-16. If you want to get a lot of info on the prop jets check out the threads in the extreme speed prop forum. I have projets that come close to 150mph. the cermark f-16 flys and lands like a jet and does a little over 100 with the right engine and prop.

video of mine http://media.putfile.com/rc-f-16-in-flight

Wow that is sweet. Definitely will look into that thanks for the help guys!

Patriot man. And don't try to make it extra light, extra weight is good.

If I were to build my Contender a little heavy do you think that might help a little with my progression? It has a flap on it, just no retracts, and I'll see if I can do that servo delay on the throttle.

Hello all,

Interesting question about how to proceed to a jet! I Always thought the way would go through an impeller... EDF or glow. But this seems also to be a good thing! And - In my hobby room there's an old (say, at least 20 years) Hawker Hunter hanging at the ceiling! I "inherited" from a member of our club, a somwhow strange man... the epoxy is still as wet as it was when he put it in!
I think that one would be a good one: Wingspan about 1,4m , lenght about 1,8m, initially designed for a .61 two stroke engine (without reso pipe!!!), fitted with pneumatic retracts and flaps. Times ago I started to modify the nose for a .91 two stroke engine... I guess with some work I can get it airborne at about 6kg wet!

Well, thinking about it it would fit all the recommendations you have done in this thread!

regards

Chris

PS: will have a search for some pics of the hunter.... looks really nice!

Oh those are sweet airplanes! You're lucky!

Some impressions of the hunter (before the restoration process started)....

Chris