How do I learn to fly?

[chall]

I have an old Futaba transmitter connected as my controller, and I'm hoping FMS will be a shortcut to learning to fly my R/C airplane. Unfortunately, I don't seem to be getting much better. I can fly the slowest airplanes OK, but even the Super Cub gets out of my control after I've flown a short while. It's easier if I switch to "Chase Camera" view, but I don't think that will help me at the flying field, will it?

Any advice on learning to fly? This is the first flight simulator I've ever tried to master. Maybe it's just slow going?

Thanks for any ideas! Or suggestions for books, videos, other simulators, etc.

[Danth]

Hi chall!

You're right about chase cam; won't help you at all!

If you really want to learn how to fly (this remember me of that Foo Fighter's song) and you have the equipment, you should look for an instructor. Learning by yourself can be bad because you can learn something wrong and maybe in the future, lost a competition or a model.

Look for an instructor and have fun!!

Ahhh, and don't worry, flying in the computer is harder then real flying!

Seeya!

[Rekvin]

Practice makes master.

I don't think it's nescessary to have an instructor if you get used to the controls. You should practice so much that you always know what direction to pull the sticks.

If you practice with a very difficult model on FMS, then it will seem very easy to fly a trainer airplane in real. If you master something very difficult on the pc, it's more likely that you can handle something quite easy in real.

However, FMS is a very easy simulator. The airplanes always behave very kind, and you don't experience that the airplanes goes into a deadly spin... which you can't recover from (often caused by too low airspeed.. or that the airplane is too heavy in the tail). The gravity and the speed also seem a bit slower than in real. You will neither experience heavy turbulence in the air.. which might get you a bit sweaty in real.

I would just recommend lots of controlling/steering practice, and also some landing practice (for example simulate that the engine stops etc.).

[lego]

Chall,

I've too learned to fly on my own. FMS can be a good help and you should continue practising.

First of all you should try not to fly tight curves, but only wide ones. You also should try to stay at one hight level.

First concentrate on keeping the same hight while flying very wide turns. Then, if you mange that for more then a couple of minutes, try to fly smaller turns. Fly wide circles. But allways try to keep the same height.

Then, if you mage to fly circles in one hight, try to start and do a 180-degree-turn to get back parallel to our airstrip. Try to find the right direction for that.
Try to keep the air-strip's orientation in mind when you fly away from it.
That will give you more orientation, which is important to find your way back for landing.

Do not try to fly like a hero, don't do everything at once. First - if you climp, dont turn. Then if you reached your desired hight, fly straight and then turn.
Try to fly 90-degree or 180-degree turns. That helps again with the orientation.

Later on you can get more and more keener and combine different manuvers like climbing and turning.

If you want to practise landing I can give you this tip: Landing is nothing special. You just have to try to fly parallel to the ground and low. Reduce speed long before you reach the landing zone. Fly slow (not too slow). and then finally when you come over the landing strip just reduce power a bit to let it drop on the runway.

Landing is easier if you get the idea of doing a slow and very low flyby and right in the middle of the flyby you reduce power...

For descending it is helpfull to reduce power a bit, because if you take the plane's nose down it becomes faster, reducing power the right way will maintain speed constant.

I will upload a Basic Trainer model for FMS in a few hours today (when I'm back home). Just have a look onto my webpage (see link below) from time to time...
With that trainer model you should be able to learn to fly very qickly, because it has a very good handling.
But be aware, not to reduce power to less then 25% during level flight - it will stall then. (thats intention for teaching stalling planes).
Eaven during landing you should not reduce power to less than 25% for more than a few seconds.
If you keep that in mind you can train yourself really good with that model because it has very realistic flightbehavior!

[chall]

Thanks to all. This has been very helpful and encouraging!

Charles.

[Vince101]

Lego,

I am new to FMS! I dowloaded your file for the Basic
Trainer. It seems to take a long way down the FMS
runway for it to pick up speed before it will take off
with the throttle wide open. In fact it is pass the runway
before I can get it in the air! Is this normal with this model
or am I doing something wrong?

Thank You,

Vince101

[lego]

No, thats normal with that model. I adjusted the flightmodel that way.
Well - if it passes the runway, then the runway is too short

I tried to make a realistic Trainer with a not too strong engine. You also 'feel' some weight, that means the plane behaves like a real one. That was important for me because many FMS models are much too light - so they don't stall.

But that was one of the points I wantet the plane to do, because that trains good if it suddenly takes it's nose down during aproach if you become too slow (that's what most reals planes do)!

If you want to fly a similar plane with a bit more power, then try the Phoenix Scanner. They both have a similar behavior but of course the Scanner has much more power.