Model Forum / Radio Controlled / Air Models / July 2006

The best advice you'll ever get is to join a club and find an instructor.
It's by far the cheapest way to learn to fly.

Dave

Ted shuffled out of his cave and grunted these great (and sometimes not
so great) words of knowledge:

Your best bet is join a club and get an instructor.  Clubs provide
instructors at no charge to members.

You can try teaching yourself how to fly, but it is a steep learning
curve and you will go through several planes before (if ever ) you learn
how to fly.

Simulators WILL NOT teach you how to fly - there are too many
differences between a simulator and the real world.  Sims can and do
help with instructions/lessons you have already received.

Oh, my age :)

Anyway, let's address your questions first, shall we?
-> Electric or nitro?
  * It's a matter of preference. If you're familiar with nitro engines
you should be fine with it that is.
  * Electric is more expensive up front, nitro on the other hand has
fuel costs - although you'll probably replace batteries every now and
then too.
  * Electric can usually be flown in local parks, whereas there are
usually regulations against flying nitro planes in city limits - which
also rules out your back yard, theoretically.
  * Small electrics are often lightweight and slow enough to quite
literally fly them in your back yard or even indoors - once you have
enough practice that is.

-> Which plane?
  * Personally, I like the small cheap electric RTF's available
practically everywhere nowadays for practice. They're cheap, and if you
bust it, big deal. If you're good at working with wood, foam and/or
covering you can build your own trainer for a lot cheaper though.
  * Get a high wing trainer. A nice slow plane with friendly flight
characteristics should be a lot more fun to learn on than a blazing fast
fully aerobatic 3D plane.
  * I won't recommend any specific plane, as preference depends on
where you fly (airfield, grass field, asphalt, indoors...) :)

-> Teaching yourself?
  It's definitely possible to teach yourself flying an R/C aircraft.
However, it's more difficult than having a teacher. I learned it on my
own though, and largely without destroying my planes.

Flying is comparatively easy - landing is the tricky part.

If you are indeed set on teaching yourself, invest in a good computer
R/C simulator. You _can_ learn with the free FMS sim, but be aware that
the flight physics there are not too accurate. Any of the commercial
sims does work fine, in my humble opinion. FMS can teach you the basics
though.
Once you can keep a plane in the air in the sim, practice landings. Over
and over and over until you're sick of it.
Then practice emergency landings. Shut off the engine in mid-air:
directly after takeoff, when banking, during final approach... shut it
off and try to land your plane in one piece if you can. Again, practice
that over and over until you're completely sick of it and can recover
and land your plane while drunk and sound asleep.
Resist the temptation in the sim to whip around your plane in crazy
patterns - as a beginner it does nothing for you other than give you a
false sense of confidence.

When you finally take your shiny new plane out to the field, make sure
you have a HUGE field available. Preferably one with lots of landing
area - long runway and so on.
Read up on pre-flight checks and follow them religiously. Use your brain
and don't do stupid things like getting your fingers chopped to pieces
by a spinning prop :)
Once you have your plane in the air, get it up to altitude and fly lazy
circles. Altitude is your friend there, it allows you to recover before
mother earth catches it rather roughly. :)
Then practice approaches - align for landing, slowly descending for
landing. Do not land though... fly by slowly, throttle back up, take
another round and approach again. Approach from your left and your right
- many pilots I've met cannot land equally well from both directions.
Then, when you got the feeling for approaches, land. If you did your
homework, you still have a plane. If you didn't... do the walk of shame
and go collect the pieces.

Now, if after reading this you STILL want to teach yourself... go for
it. :) Told ya, it's easier with a teacher. At least then you got
someone to land it for you if your fingers are too sweaty to grip the
sticks ;)

Jenni (too much time on my hands, writing way too long mails again)

If you have any building experience, I'd recommend the "Piece O'
Cake" or the "Butterfly".  Both are big floaters with glo engines.
You can teach yourself how to fly these.

I don't know about others, but I have found the clubs in my area to
be pretty clannish and pretty much worthless.  A bunch of old guys
who talk all day and fly about once a month.... and another bunch of
young guys, late teens early twenties, who fly all the time and
can't be bothered with newbies.  Hopefully clubs in your are will be
better.

If there are no clubs, find a field where guys just hang together
and fly several times in an afternoon.  Hang around and ask a few
questions.  After a while you'll find out who helps the new guys the
most and it's a place to start.  In my experience you'll get the
best help from a group like this.

Ron

Slow stick
Cheap, so if you find it ain't for you, no big loss
relatively crashproof
Flies almost anywhere
Dead easy to fly. No instructor needed
Safe, wouldn't kill a pet rabbit at full throttle.

THEN once you are bored with it, ask again.

Ok, how about a RTF setup ?
I checked out the slow stick but it is a kit and I would also have to buy a
trans/recvr ,servos and motor.

My first suggestion would be to find a club and an instructor. You're
definately going to need some help. Sure will save a lot of heartache
and airplanes.

If there is no club in your area , I would recommend a good simulator
such as Real Flight , Reflex and some others. Reflex being my first
choice. You can learn a lot from the sims , especially the 'coming
toward you disorientation' that most everyone gets.
There is a wide choice of aircraft and most of them fly very much like
the 'full scale' models.

I've taught many to fly over the years and it's amazing at the
difference in the people who have used simulators. I see people
soloing in very short order. I had two this year that soloed their
very first day.
I also seen one young man of about 20-22 years old come out with a .40
size Cap 232 with an OS .52 and flew without any help at all. His dad
said he had spent many hours on the simulator,
I kept sitting there watching and thinking that he would get in real
trouble , but he never did. That was 2 years ago and he's flyng great
and has never had any help.

This is the_ exception_ rather than the rule , but the sims sure make
a LOT of difference in learning to fly. So much different than a few
years ago before we had these good sims.

But.....make_ sure_ you_ get an experienced flyer to help you. The sim
is certainly not a replacement for an instructor....just an aid.

Ken

The EasyStar RTF!