Gaurav asked in another thread : http://www.rcindia.org/helis/good-heli-for-beginners/

Quote
Meanwhile, i intend to spend time with my RealFlight Simulator.
Please provide me with tips on what to practise. I believe hoverings is what i should try ?
Right now i have my heli all over the place when i lift off. But after an hour or so at the siumulator, i was much better. Maybe i should try to stick to the sim and get my hoverings perfect before moving on ?
One big difference i notice right away in flying planes and helis is that helis seem to require constant stick movements to keep them in place. With an airplane it was like point and go !

Let me know the best approach to practise helis

-Gaurav

RealFlight's hover training is pretty good test to see if you are ready for next step.

Yes, you will be forced to practise takeoff, hovering and landing.  Actually the need to land properly will kind of force you to hover !

The important thing again is to set progressive targets (just like in airplane flight).

1. Take off  and land in a predetermined spot.

2. Hover within an imaginary "box" (no more than 3x the size of the heli) for like 1 or 2 minutes.

3. Move to the left and right with the tail still pointed at you.

4. Take off with tail pointed towards you, turn 90deg left, move to the left with the nose straight to the left, use rudder to make a 180deg turn (now nose will point to the right), fly straight until the heli passes in front of you and ends up on your right, make another u-turn with rudder (now the nose again points to the left), fly straight till the heli is right in front of you, turn 90deg right (tail is now pointed towards you), land.

5. Hover, make 1 (then 2 then 3) VERY SLOW pirouettes (rotation with just the rudders) in both directions, but with the heli not moving laterally at all.  Turn up some wind in the sim, if you can.

6.  Figure 8s. Remember that helis require some amount of rudder to turn.  If you are in the habit of using slight amount of rudder to turn even on your airplanes, this will be easy.

7.  The most important thing is the ability to hover "nose-in".  This is what has caused most beginners to crash.  The moment the heli is nose-in, they panic.  At the very least, one should learn to apply rudder quickly and make it point away from themselves.

If you are able to hover nose-in at one place for couple of minutes and then come into land (still nose-in), you are pretty much ready to fly on your own without apprehensions.

Thats a nice list, and i am following this. One question, how do you properly turn a heli ?
Like suppose i have my heli going forward, now i want to make a 180 degree turn. Do i need to first stop the forward motion, and then turn with the rudder and then get it moving ahead ? Or do i just use the cyclic to bank and keep flying forward ?

When practicing on my sim, i sometimes use just the rudder and it kind of gives an ugly appearance to the turn.

That is the one core difference between flying helis and planes, that you end up applying rudder on all turns. 

These days, all of these happen automatically for me (without me really thinking about it in my head); but it looks like, for a left turn in forward flight, you will apply left aileron, a bit of up elevator and left rudder. 

If applying rudder makes the turn ugly, you must be overdoing something

I still cannot do the turns in forward flight on a sim very nicely. Like in an airplane, to do a turn, i give aileron input , a little power and some up elevator with some rudder. Now this does turn the plane, but the up elevator causes the heli to slow down in Forward flight. So suppose i want to do circles, i hold little aileron and little elevator, but the heli just stops !

I want to move on to do some forward flight with my mini Titan, but holding off till i do it correctly on the sim.
Hopefully it will be easy for me, with all the airplane experience i have.

Hi Gaurav,

Watch this video it will help you



HellyFlyer

I was waiting to see somebody else can figure out what you wrote better than me. To me it wasn't clear what the issue was.

Quote from: gauravag on February 09, 2010, 06:30:08 PM
So suppose i want to do circles, i hold little aileron and little elevator, but the heli just stops !

Sounds like you are not giving the rudder during the turn. Since you are familiar with airplanes, it is same as a coordinated turn. You can't do the bank and yank routine as in a plane to get a proper turn.

But then you also mentioned that you do use rudder

Quote from: gauravag on February 09, 2010, 06:30:08 PM
I still cannot do the turns in forward flight on a sim very nicely. Like in an airplane, to do a turn, i give aileron input , a little power and some up elevator with some rudder.

Quote from: anwar on January 20, 2010, 12:28:31 PM
If applying rudder makes the turn ugly, you must be overdoing something

It is obvious that something is being overdone. If I were to put this in numbers (again, wild guesstimates), try something like 15% aileron, 5% elevator and 7% rudder.

Iam able to do turns properly. , but for some reason, i feel like I want to hover inverted, so practising more on that. I can now almost fly heli any number of minutes in any directions almost w/o crashing.

Looks like I know how to fly heli by 1% now.

99% to go.

Going to jakkur this sunday, got to fix the Heli this Saturday.

Vinay,
did you get your 450MT parts ?

Ya, I ordered on 31st and got it yesterday. Its a record shipping taking only 10 days(Considering that I ordered on sunday and they are closed on sunday). Long live HK.

Not exactly sim practice, but I just went through the exercise of training a seasoned airplane pilot (close to 10 year of experience) on heli flying.  The gentleman was extremely motivated, and diligently put time on the sim. 

The end result is that on the 13th flight, he did inverted hovers     The sequence was something like this :

1.  The first 2 flights were plain hovering
2.  The next 2 were side orientations
3.  Another 2 flights of circuits including figure 8s in both directions
4.  The next 2 was a mix of circuits, stall turns including 1.5 stall turns and nose-in hovers
5.  The next two were rolls and loops (starting the rolls).
6.  The 13th and 14th flight involved inverted hovers.  They are not clean inverted hovers, needs more sim practice for that (and that is currently ongoing).

The duration was about 3 weeks.  I was on a buddy cord all throughout, and there were about 6 times when I had to take control. At least couple were due to low light, as we were flying close to sunset on most days.

Just wanted to let all airplane folks know that with a bit of local help, heli flying is just a few weeks away

Quote from: anwar on March 08, 2010, 06:29:32 PM
Just wanted to let all airplane folks know that with a bit of local help, heli flying is just a few weeks away

Depends on people as well!

On a RealFlight, whats the best heli model, I should be practicing on ? Considering that I plan to fly my Raptor 50.
There's a Dominion 90 3D model, but it seems pretty quick and responsive. Is the Raptor going to behave similarly ?
I intend to practice sport/3D flying on sim and apply that to the Raptor 50.
Thanks for your advise. !

Main difference would be the power available is nuch lesser on Raptor. You'll need to reduce the use of collective and allow time in between loadings to allow the head speed to recover. Especially so without a governor. It will also be a little slower with the standard black paddles.

Ok, so what would be a good model to practise on ? I saw that there is a Raptor 60 in one of the RealFlight upgrades. Would that make a better choice ?

The last thing i would want is to know all my sim practise is not usable on my Raptor !

I remember tweaking the Dominion 3D 90 for someone to make it less sensitive for someone (like putting on dual rates). 

The sim and the field are going to be different anyways, so there is no question of sim time going to waste.  One cannot realistically expect one to match the other closely either.

thanks for all the info I needed this to practice on sim.

look up the links below:

the guy seems a desi+chink mix...guess he's somewhere in China
though he may not seem a pro
he's a good teacher and explains heli-flying in steps
for Duh! like me (RC heli flying for dummies kinds)

sometimes guys are pro but bad at teaching
they expect you to fly like them on the 1st hover
i had a tuff time with my instructor
so look up these

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeUTh3iWRec&feature=fvsr
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI2SvXtx0t8&feature=channel

hv fun

Hey Vinay, could you please help me on how to set up an FMS Sim with the FMS controller for 4 channel use?  Help will be most appreciated.

Come home on weekend. You will get a lot of tips and tricks as well   I stay in jayanagar near southend circle..

You can google as well. Giving instructions over here is difficult.

Guys, just wanted to know, as I do tail in aileron tic tocs on the sim, the heli moves backwards slowly. what extra inputs do i need to give to counteract this? 

Just realized, i have forgotten how to hover inverted after a long gap 

it not only moves back word, now it chages direction as well. Doh  will i ever be able to master tictocs 

I wish bangalore was a place with lot of heli gurus around.

Start with ensuring that your calibration is correct.

Even the pros do small adjustments while doing multiple tic-tocs (in any direction), to keep the heli in one place (or between two places... as in this case).  Mostly it is about timing though.

On the real heli, it is important to dial out any collective-cyclic interaction.

It would be fun (and beneficial) to see a video of what exactly you are experiencing