Beyond My Hover

[Heliman450]

Hi all,

So, here I am ready to go. My T-Rex 550E V2 (modified) has received two new main drive gears, two sets of tail rotor bevel drive gears and a new set-up of the Spirit Pro. Since then, it has had three batteries of testing amounting to about 25 minutes total 'flying' time. Weather's looking good for this afternoon (maybe) and the next few days pretty good if the forecast with Weatherpro proves correct.

My next step is to progress towards flying a circuit and that will bring my simulator skills and real time 'flying' together. It's easy to race ahead on the simulator when you can't do real-time and then experience a crash that needs money to fix rather than the virtual world instantly doing it for you (lesson #1). Maybe I should introduce a financial penalty for each virtual crash, too....... there's a thought.

Thanks to all who looked in on my 'Piro Tuning' thread, hopefully I can publish some more progress very soon.

Bye now!

 

[Smoggie]

Good luck with the circuits Phil. You should find the heli easier to fly in forward flight than in the hover, the forward airspeed seems to stabilise them.

 

[Heliman450]

Hi all, here's my latest production. One from 13 clips taken 16.07.16 and edited down from over 4 minutes flying time to 2 mins 43 secs to avoid putting anyone to sleep . No circuits just yet but much more moving around the sky and a lot more altitude.

Beyond My Hover - YouTube

Today's session at the field also went very well. I changed the camera perspective a bit and caught more sky in the frame (very blue, too!)

All feedback much appreciated.

Bye for now!

 

[D.O.G.]

Hi all, here's my latest production. One from 13 clips taken 16.07.16 and edited down from over 4 minutes flying time to 2 mins 43 secs to avoid putting anyone to sleep . No circuits just yet but much more moving around the sky and a lot more altitude.

Beyond My Hover - YouTube

Today's session at the field also went very well. I changed the camera perspective a bit and caught more sky in the frame (very blue, too!)

All feedback much appreciated.

Bye for now!

Good job Phil. You and the bird flew very stable. Take your time and before you know it, you'll being doing your circuits. From here on in it's practice,practice and more practice. Just take your time. Remember when you have a funny feeling about flying, don't. Most of the time your feeling is right.

 

[Smoggie]

Nice safe and controlled flight Phil, good job.

You probably want to get comfortable with side on hovering before moving to circuits. The old trick when learning side on flying and circuits is turn your body to face the direction of the heli/plane, this makes orientation easier. After a while you won't need to do it but it helps initially.

You can probably put off nose in hovering until later, just make sure your circuit turns are away from you until you get comfortable with nose in attitude. The 'turn you body trick' is of limited use when nose in, unless you have a neck like an owl's!

 

[Heliman450]

Hi guys, thanks for the positive words as feedback. I've done more practise over the last few days than ever before, it really is infectious and everything is sitting there waiting to go for it.

I'm finding it very useful just keeping it simple and building the distance between me and the heli doing the same things over and over. The greatest buzz is knowing that it's almost certainly coming back to the landing pad. With using a fixed position for the camera, it's best to drop the altitude as it moves back towards the landing square. When my confidence has built a bit more, I intend to return to the square and carry out the sideways and nose-in hovering. Fingers crossed on the weather staying good during the coming week.

The biggest plus is that even my good lady was impressed seeing the videos and even says that she'd like to come along with me

Bye now!

 

[PLANETGETLOW]

The simulator is a great tool to master orientation

 

[trainrider06]

Very nice Phil, and she's pretty stable ain't she? Looks great. You've got the right idea also of repeat repeat repeat....till you get so bored you can about not stand it anymore! What your doing is building muscle memory, habit.
I used to do this on the sim also, make myself fly this way or that over and over and over! It was mind numbing! LOL Whenever I take off when real flying, I do the very same thing every time, Liftoff, hover a second, pop idol 1
Turn right, and take off. It's actually just like a real pilot flying, they have a flight plan and stick to it. It's what I always try and stick too....this way the heli and controls become comfortable and predictable...
PS: Proud of ya man! You have stuck to this like glue and continued on! Good job hanging in there!

 

[Heliman450]

Hi Rodney, unfortunately, my simulator has become almost useless to me recently as I can do much more in the virtual world than the real one. I didn't want to spend the time trying to sort it out to get synchronism, favouring the real heli with my available time. It seems to be working right now and I'm making most the use of the good weather we're enjoying. My new charger has really been earning its keep over the last week

Seriously, it was getting too far ahead with the simulator that played a major role in my two recent incidents but looking on the positive side, it also pushed me to re-programme the Spirit Pro. There's still some more work to do there but at the moment it's looking good.

Bye for now!

 

[trainrider06]

Yes you can get a false sense of security with a sim for sure! Real world confidence is where you continue to step up to the next level. I remember when I was just putting around slowly, in the beginning, then one day I just told myself just fly the damn thing, and I found it was easier to do that. Just go at your own pace, you'll be fine....

 

[sneezy007]

Great job Phil, heli is nice and stable. I'm still in the tail in hovering mode and I'm the same way on the sim and have gotten way ahead of myself.

Cheers,
Dino

 

[Heliman450]

Great job Phil, heli is nice and stable. I'm still in the tail in hovering mode and I'm the same way on the sim and have gotten way ahead of myself.

Cheers,
Dino

Hi Dino, thanks for that. What heli, Tx. etc. are you using? I found that my progress improved when I moved up to a bigger heli and invested in a Spirit pro gyro, which has come with it's own problems due to my inexperience with doing the programming via the PC. Everything was just better, size really did matter in my case but it needed a leap of faith in myself to spend the readies to achieve it. I never intended to give up and it's taken a while but looks like it eventually paid off.

Bye for now!

 

[sneezy007]

Hi Dino, thanks for that. What heli, Tx. etc. are you using? I found that my progress improved when I moved up to a bigger heli and invested in a Spirit pro gyro, which has come with it's own problems due to my inexperience with doing the programming via the PC. Everything was just better, size really did matter in my case but it needed a leap of faith in myself to spend the readies to achieve it. I never intended to give up and it's taken a while but looks like it eventually paid off.

Bye for now!

Hi Phil,

I have two larger helis, a Logo 500 with an AR7200BX receiver, a Thunder Tiger E500 with a Spirit Pro controller.
I'm pretty comfortable hovering tail in and can hover nose in fairly well on the simulator. I definitely not ready for forward flight yet and will have to practice the other two orientations as well.

Cheers,
Dino

 

[Heliman450]

Hi Dino,

I don't know if you checked out any of my other videos but if you follow the link below, it takes you to one which now that time has past, I know why the application of left stick resulted in the heli almost getting out of control. It turned out to be the 'Cyclic (tuning)' in the Spirit Pro. Once I reset this, I don't have that problem any more and at the time Steve commented that it was my error. That's true and since the change in the Spirit Pro, I can quite easily limit the helis tendency to follow its own path. I still need to work on it to keep the heli over the square with the objective of being able to transition to stable hovering in all four positions (inverted is for the distant future ).

Nose to the right is OK although I can't maintain it for very long yet. Nose to the left is proving more difficult and I'm working on limiting its runaway desire at the moment. Most important right now is tuning my brain and thumbs but my feeling is that there are still some improvements to be had from the Spirit Pro settings, too. Here's the link............ Piro Tuning (Spirit Pro) - Page 6

Bye for now!

 

[sneezy007]

Hi Dino,

I don't know if you checked out any of my other videos but if you follow the link below, it takes you to one which now that time has past, I know why the application of left stick resulted in the heli almost getting out of control. It turned out to be the 'Cyclic (tuning)' in the Spirit Pro. Once I reset this, I don't have that problem any more and at the time Steve commented that it was my error. That's true and since the change in the Spirit Pro, I can quite easily limit the helis tendency to follow its own path. I still need to work on it to keep the heli over the square with the objective of being able to transition to stable hovering in all four positions (inverted is for the distant future ).

Nose to the right is OK although I can't maintain it for very long yet. Nose to the left is proving more difficult and I'm working on limiting its runaway desire at the moment. Most important right now is tuning my brain and thumbs but my feeling is that there are still some improvements to be had from the Spirit Pro settings, too. Here's the link............ Piro Tuning (Spirit Pro) - Page 6

Bye for now!

Hi Phil,

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. Looks like you're progressing nicely. Learning to fly helis is definitely a challenge. Lots and lots of practice.

Cheers,
Dino

 

[Heliman450]

Hi all, today I managed two batteries practise time before it started to rain. I've been doing some stuff at home that needed good weather so I missed the opportunity to get to the field. Between weather and a life sometimes without helicopter it's difficult to get the stick time

Fingers crossed for the coming week!

 

[trainrider06]

The weather has for sure been a mess, and it seems the other stuff more and more gets in the way too!

 

[sneezy007]

Between the weather and life our hobby sometimes takes a back seat. Heck I thought I would have way more time for my hobby once I retired.
Boy was I wrong!!

Cheers,
Dino

 

[Heliman450]

Hi all, despite the not so good weather forecast for yesterday, I managed to get in a session using all four of my batteries

I took eight video clips of the heli as I repeated right-side on hovering. Of the eight clips, only four actually ended up as useful as the others were suffering from the shakes. At the moment, I think it's down to the sun moving round to a point where the camera was working without any suntan lotion and as such has been suffering from sunburn. Of the ones that were pre sunburn, a combination of the camera and heli position doesn't show the exercise very well at all. Next time out, I'll rectify that and fly closer in to the camera and position it away from any direct sun during the session.

Right now you'll just have to accept my word that I'm improving without any video to back it up

Bye for now!

 

[Heliman450]

Hi all, I'm back home from a trip over to the U.K. Visited the field yesterday and forgot to take my tripod for the camera so only managed to test out if I could line something up using my rucksak. I managed to get a few minutes but not enough of my training sessions were videoed. Tomorrow should work OK and I'm going to see if I can do something later today, as it's my wife's birthday, let's see...................

Bye now!