• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

Helicopters are TOUGH!!

I found the Nemeth EC-135 to be the most stable helo I've tried, though my favorites to fly are the default R-22 and Alphasim Seasprite.

One way to help with helo practice is to find a scenery area with very high resolution ground textures, such as FlyTampas Kai Tak. That way you can practice hovering and moving around in the hover and with the super high res ground you will get a much higher fidelity sense of movement.

I taught my self choppers with the EC-135 and Kai Tak, and now I can do nearly anything I want with them. One training thing I did was just to practice a take off on one end of the field, shoot down the to other as fast as I possibly could, and then set her down, again as fast as possible. That gave me an excellent sense of what was needed for acceleration and deceleration, and once you have that you have a sense of where she is going so you plan accordingly and put it where you want.
 
Hovering is indeed a tough task to master; the 'copter dances left, right and every which way. You think your hovering nicely and then realise that your drifting backwards! :)

Someone mentioned a gentle hand on the controls goes a long way, and it does.

But I find landing even more difficult than hovering. If I start to lose it hovering I just advance the collective and rise up outta danger. But landing!? :isadizzy: I'm finding it damn hard to avoid dropping the last 10-15 feet with any sort of control.
 
Pips said:
Hovering is indeed a tough task to master; the 'copter dances left, right and every which way. You think your hovering nicely and then realise that your drifting backwards! :)

Someone mentioned a gentle hand on the controls goes a long way, and it does.

But I find landing even more difficult than hovering. If I start to lose it hovering I just advance the collective and rise up outta danger. But landing!? :isadizzy: I'm finding it damn hard to avoid dropping the last 10-15 feet with any sort of control.
Click to expand...

the 101 that comes with acceleration is impossible for me. i have yet to complete a single mission with it. great looking model, but i cannot control it well enough to sling a load.
 
Helo practice is something that I do to unwind or if I only have a little time to fly.

I have 2 basic routines.

1) I fly over to the tower & establish a firm hover in front of one of the windows. Once established I start to skid left as I rotate 90deg until I am in front of the next window of the tower & then reestablish a firm hover. Repeat around the tower.

2) I start in the centerline of the runway & establish a firm hover about 5ft up. Then I start to fly forward at 5ft & 10kts. While flying forward I pivot 90deg so I am flying sideways at 5ft alt & 10kts, hold that for a 10 count while maintianing the centerline. Then I rotate 90deg so I am flying in reverse at 5ft alt & 10kts while maintaining the centerline hold that for a 10 count. Then another 90deg pivot so I am once again sidways & at 5ft & 10kts and another 10 count while maintaining the centerline. Laslty another 90deg pivot so I am back to forward flight. This is the most fun & most challenging exercise. The transition to flying in reverse is very difficult.
 
....all it takes is a ham-handed approach to the rudder and the willingness to accept a "crash" as a landing, so long as it is in approximately the right place, attitude, and airspeed....:faint:
 
:wavey:

Heli's are my number one Fav, Nap of the earth over water and super fun in a Big City Such as San Fran, Ca. Also do some practice landings on thw Rock, Alcatraz !! :iidea:

:ernae:
 
EgoR64 said:
:wavey:

Heli's are my number one Fav, Nap of the earth over water and super fun in a Big City Such as San Fran, Ca. Also do some practice landings on thw Rock, Alcatraz !! :iidea:

:ernae:
Click to expand...

i was using some add on scenery for the rock a while back, and it was unlandable. i can't remember if i still have it or not, but it was better looking than default
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top