Beginners, learn from my mistakes!!!
Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 4:17 pmIt looks like I get to devirginize this section, I'll share some tips and hopefully will help the new people learn from my mistakes.
Before you begin, make sure you are abiding by the AMA rules, they are not only there for safety sakes, it provides practical advice that benifets you as a pilot, from saving your plane and gear from destruction and loss, to avoiding hurting others and yourself in the process. You might think it's common sense, but many people don't realize how this hobby can become dangerous if addressed carelessly.
Get as much sim time as you can put under your belt, crashing a virtual plane is much less expensive then a real one, master the planes on it and you are going to save a ton of money at the field. Your first plane will not be state of the art feature wise, even though it may seem slow from an outsiders perspective, in a new pilot's hands, it feels like you are flying a turbine jet, it only takes a hiccup to go from flying at a decent altitude to smacking into the ground, this is why people tend to reccomend certain planes, even though they may not look as nice, knowing full well, the new pilot is not ready for a war bird or jet, of which, the latter I had both and it proved counterproductive. Listen to the board members with experience, they tend to agree on this matter and will have their personal favorites to learn from.
Altitude is your friend, it allows you to recover from a mistakes. Wind is your enemy, wait until dawn or dusk if you can, those are the least windy times of the day. If you can afford it, get mainstream gear, RFT "ready to fly" planes tend to have junk in that area and people tend to throw them out since the gear is not compatable with the mainstream stuff, of which is much higher quality and a much better experience to be using. If you know of another local RC pilot that has some experience, have them come out to the field with you, preferably with a buddy box, this allows them to control the plane and transfer controls over to you after it's trimmed out.
Your first flights are simply going to nudge the plane along, just short nudges on the sticks to get the plane to go the direction you want it to, let it fly itself for the most part and WOT "wide out throttle" is not necessary, keep it fast enough to maintain altitude and for recovery, yet as slow as you can go to help with reaction time. Don't oversteer the plane, this is a common thing, and if it's going awrigh, don't pannic, it's just like a car that's getting out of control, steer into the direction it's going into then nudge it to where you want it to go, trying to oppose it's direction out right tends to make things worse.
If it just feels really off where the plane is badly out of trim, it's ok to land early, regain your bearings, adjust your trim a bit and relaunch.
Always keep the plane upwind, otherwise you are fighting to get it back and this is largely the case when people lose their planes.
The cheap brushed and nimh gear is perfectly fine for a new pilot, they don't need to waste a ton of dough on the latest and greatest, they will be likely abusing the gear long before they are able to fully take advantage of it, and in fact, many of these trainer platforms such as with the slowstick for example, have ample speed on their own, once you upgrade it becomes an entirely different animal and the experience changes from night to day, as in you are used to a moped and now you are flying a rocket sled.
Don't go in debt on stockpiling replacment parts if you get a RTF, again, not transportable to mainstream planes and to be frank, a complete waste of money, the manufacturers make their money off of the replacement gear for a reason, and they specifically engineer it all for only their application, making it proprietary. I still have some parkzone cub gear laying around I'll never use for example.
Always ask the major boards before you make your purchases, we have the experience and we have no commissions to be made in this area. I trust my LHS about as far as I can throw them for this reason. Now, I teach my LHS on this matter, and it's because I learned it the hard way, after having spent a ton of dough there, only to find out the sales guy was making commission and could care less if I was ever going to come back or continue to enjoy this hobby.
Learn to build your own as soon as possible, this will open up a whole new world of fun, both in the building process as well as being able to take the same gear and transfer it from plane to plane. I stopped counting my fleet at 30 planes, I tend to only keep 3-4 planes fully outfitted, the rest are airframes I've geared up, or are awaiting to be geared up and depending upon my mood and the tendacy for whether conditions, I have my pick of pretty much the entire gambit. Many of my planes only costsed me a few bucks in materials, and in fact, the current one I'm building now, a p51 from plans, I'm only in it $12.00 in balsa, and it will cost me another 12.00 for covering and that's about it, the equivelant ARF "almost ready to fly" would be around $100.00 or more, and it would not be nearly as robust as what I'm assembling because I make my planes my own to my own specifications. You can carve out a chunk of foam or even make them out of crafts board foam, and you are spending even less in that process. Learn to fly on the cheap before you waste money on something sophisticated. Your initial stage, it's about the gear and less about the airframe.
If you have never flown anything RC before, it's reccomended to get a cheap 30.00 toy rc plane, airhogs aeroace is a good one to begin with, at least it teaches you orientation, be it, it can't handle any form of wind, it's practically indestructable.
Well, that's it for now, I'm sure others are going to chime in with their own tips, I can go on forever, I just want people to learn how to fly without having to make the same mistakes as I.
Before you begin, make sure you are abiding by the AMA rules, they are not only there for safety sakes, it provides practical advice that benifets you as a pilot, from saving your plane and gear from destruction and loss, to avoiding hurting others and yourself in the process. You might think it's common sense, but many people don't realize how this hobby can become dangerous if addressed carelessly.
Get as much sim time as you can put under your belt, crashing a virtual plane is much less expensive then a real one, master the planes on it and you are going to save a ton of money at the field. Your first plane will not be state of the art feature wise, even though it may seem slow from an outsiders perspective, in a new pilot's hands, it feels like you are flying a turbine jet, it only takes a hiccup to go from flying at a decent altitude to smacking into the ground, this is why people tend to reccomend certain planes, even though they may not look as nice, knowing full well, the new pilot is not ready for a war bird or jet, of which, the latter I had both and it proved counterproductive. Listen to the board members with experience, they tend to agree on this matter and will have their personal favorites to learn from.
Altitude is your friend, it allows you to recover from a mistakes. Wind is your enemy, wait until dawn or dusk if you can, those are the least windy times of the day. If you can afford it, get mainstream gear, RFT "ready to fly" planes tend to have junk in that area and people tend to throw them out since the gear is not compatable with the mainstream stuff, of which is much higher quality and a much better experience to be using. If you know of another local RC pilot that has some experience, have them come out to the field with you, preferably with a buddy box, this allows them to control the plane and transfer controls over to you after it's trimmed out.
Your first flights are simply going to nudge the plane along, just short nudges on the sticks to get the plane to go the direction you want it to, let it fly itself for the most part and WOT "wide out throttle" is not necessary, keep it fast enough to maintain altitude and for recovery, yet as slow as you can go to help with reaction time. Don't oversteer the plane, this is a common thing, and if it's going awrigh, don't pannic, it's just like a car that's getting out of control, steer into the direction it's going into then nudge it to where you want it to go, trying to oppose it's direction out right tends to make things worse.
If it just feels really off where the plane is badly out of trim, it's ok to land early, regain your bearings, adjust your trim a bit and relaunch.
Always keep the plane upwind, otherwise you are fighting to get it back and this is largely the case when people lose their planes.
The cheap brushed and nimh gear is perfectly fine for a new pilot, they don't need to waste a ton of dough on the latest and greatest, they will be likely abusing the gear long before they are able to fully take advantage of it, and in fact, many of these trainer platforms such as with the slowstick for example, have ample speed on their own, once you upgrade it becomes an entirely different animal and the experience changes from night to day, as in you are used to a moped and now you are flying a rocket sled.
Don't go in debt on stockpiling replacment parts if you get a RTF, again, not transportable to mainstream planes and to be frank, a complete waste of money, the manufacturers make their money off of the replacement gear for a reason, and they specifically engineer it all for only their application, making it proprietary. I still have some parkzone cub gear laying around I'll never use for example.
Always ask the major boards before you make your purchases, we have the experience and we have no commissions to be made in this area. I trust my LHS about as far as I can throw them for this reason. Now, I teach my LHS on this matter, and it's because I learned it the hard way, after having spent a ton of dough there, only to find out the sales guy was making commission and could care less if I was ever going to come back or continue to enjoy this hobby.
Learn to build your own as soon as possible, this will open up a whole new world of fun, both in the building process as well as being able to take the same gear and transfer it from plane to plane. I stopped counting my fleet at 30 planes, I tend to only keep 3-4 planes fully outfitted, the rest are airframes I've geared up, or are awaiting to be geared up and depending upon my mood and the tendacy for whether conditions, I have my pick of pretty much the entire gambit. Many of my planes only costsed me a few bucks in materials, and in fact, the current one I'm building now, a p51 from plans, I'm only in it $12.00 in balsa, and it will cost me another 12.00 for covering and that's about it, the equivelant ARF "almost ready to fly" would be around $100.00 or more, and it would not be nearly as robust as what I'm assembling because I make my planes my own to my own specifications. You can carve out a chunk of foam or even make them out of crafts board foam, and you are spending even less in that process. Learn to fly on the cheap before you waste money on something sophisticated. Your initial stage, it's about the gear and less about the airframe.
If you have never flown anything RC before, it's reccomended to get a cheap 30.00 toy rc plane, airhogs aeroace is a good one to begin with, at least it teaches you orientation, be it, it can't handle any form of wind, it's practically indestructable.
Well, that's it for now, I'm sure others are going to chime in with their own tips, I can go on forever, I just want people to learn how to fly without having to make the same mistakes as I.