General flight training questions

[chall]

[ggunners]

[KenM]

chall,
What problems are you having with real R/C planes?
Are you a beginner who is having problems such as landing or are you an intermediate skilled pilot looking to polish your skills with the the aid of a simulator?

[Eric Brouwer]

Me and my son both made use of FMS when we learned how to fly our real planes. There is a major difference between any sim and in real life. The single biggest thing is that you are not as stressed when flying on a sim than in real life. Crashing only requires you to press a button on the sim, but at the field, it might mean a loss of a model.

In real life, there are other planes around you, you can not hear your own motor running, the wind, etc... Also, your view at the field is totally different than to the sim. Flying on a sim, will give you a very narrow point of view, but at the field, it's different.

One thing the sim does not teach you, is the general rules of flying. Each club will have it's own rules regarding order and safety, and this is where one can learn bad habbits if one only learn on the sim.

I always suggest to my pupils to complement flying at the field with practicing on the sim. This gives them the best of the two worlds. What the sim does teach you, is co-ordination. After a while, you will notice that you do not have to think anymore before you do certain moves. You can fly away or towards yourself without even thinking which way to move the sticks.

My suggestion is to go to your local club, and get as much stick time possible. It will greatly improve your skills, even on the sims.

[chall]

Thanks to everyone for the advice! It's all helpful. To be more specific about my own skill level, after many weekends with a buddy box, I'm now solo and can take-off my trainer and fly gentle circuits around the field and make a pretty good landing.

I crashed my trainer when I lost concentration in a turn and spiralled into the trees. Pure rookie pilot error.

My replacement plane is a Kombat40, sort of an intermediate plane. My problems here seem to be overcontrolling immediatley after take-off. With luck, I manage to get control and fly around the field, but sometimes it spirals into the trees immediately after take off. I think I'm over controlling and doing a roll or something, but it happens FAST. The Kombat40 is pretty rugged. I think it has a few more crashes left in it!

By the way, how important is it to use your regular flying radio with the simulator? I have a second radio, an old one that's a different brand that I leave on the computer. I was thinking everybody's joysticks are equal, but maybe I'm oversimplifying?