Okay, you have your helicopter and you are ready to fly, but realize you don't know how the helicopter will react once you get it in the air or even on liftoff. The most stressful time of flying for me is the maiden flight. And when you don't know how to anticipate something going wrong on the first lift off, it will more than likely end up in a crash.
So, you are asking, "Well isn't putting the heli in the air the best way to learn how to fly?" Well yes and no. Yes because it's "Real World" and no because you will probably crash and crashes cost money. I have seen a lot of great people get their helicopter, charge the batteries, crash on the maiden, and put it in the attic never to be seen again. They realize flying these may be a little more than they can chew. Well, I'm here to tell you, you can fly these helicopters, but you have to stick with it.
Here is where the Flight Simulator comes in. I know you’re saying, "Simulator, those are really expensive." You would be surprised. You can get a 6ch flight sim controller online for $15 and it comes with a sim called FMS. The sim is free; you are only paying for the controller. If you don't believe me, Goggle "FMS Flight Sim". You can download it and give it a shot on your keyboard. You will realize really quickly just how hard these are to fly and why a sim is so important.
When you get your flight sim, DO NOT TREAT IT LIKE A GAME. Treat it like it's a real helicopter. If you treat it like a game, you will be banging the sticks around and "playing". But once you get your helicopter out into the field, you’ll be lost.
Before you do any of the steps that follow, do it on the sim first. If you practice what you are about to do your fingers and mind will know what to do. This is what is known as "Muscle Memory". And, the more muscle memory you have, the better you will do. One of the biggest mistakes that I made was, I got on the sim, just played around, had one successful landing out of dozens of tries and thought I could fly. I then went outside, took the helicopter up, and it came down in a rather quick manner.
So, practice every single thing you are going to do on the sim. Once you can do it over and over again, then go outside with your helicopter and give it a shot. Doing it this way has helped me more than anything else. Another thing to think about is weather conditions. I'm not talking about rain or snow, I'm talking about wind. If you get a sim and set it to where there is no wind, you are going to get a surprise when you go outside. There are only a few days a year here that there is no wind and it's the perfect time to fly. The other days you can figure on 5-10mph winds with gusts up to 15-20mph. These will make your helicopter do all kinds of weird things, like rise and fall without any stick input. I will get more into this later.
The sim that I use myself is Clearview. For the price, you cannot beat it. The latest release has new weather conditions that are pretty darn real. I keep mine on the really windy day, because here in Oklahoma, it's usually really windy. They have all kinds of helicopters that you can practice on as well as planes when you just want to relax. If you are into cars, they have those as well, but this is a flight sim, not a car sim, so they are not that realistic.
If you are running a Mac with OSX, then from what I hear, Heli-X is your only option unless you want to run a dual boot with Windows. I do not own a Mac so I can not confirm this, but it's what I have been told by a few others.
Do yourself a favor and get a good flight sim. FMS will teach you orientation, but beyond that, I don't like it. And, for the price of Clearview, it will pay for its self pretty quick.
