Back to the Simulator

January 28, 2009 on 11:23 am | In Flying, Simulator | No Comments

Most people these days will tell you to spend your first $200 on a simulator instead of a real helicopter to learn how to fly. As true as this might be, I was much more interested in buying the real thing and just paying the price in replacement parts. In hindsight, which is always 20/20, I would have saved a lot of money had I done the simulator first, but it definitely wouldn’t've been as much fun. Now that I can hover in all right-side-up orientations and fly simple circuits with confidence, I’ve decided to go the simulator route to learn the next level of flying.

Learning to hover and do forward flight isn’t too difficult, particularly if you use training gear and keep most of your flying only a few feet off the ground, even the worst crash from that height isn’t going to be too pricey. The other day, I lost orientation in my Axe CPv3 at about 30ft, and I broke/bent just about everything in the rotor head. So about $50 worth of ordered parts later and I decided to start flying in RealFlight G4 to learn more advanced maneuvers and start practicing some simple 3D. G4 comes with the Axe CP, and the T-Rex 450 is available as a download from the Knife Edge website. The physics of both helicopters seem to be pretty accurate so far, and virtually wrecking the T-Rex is a lot less disheartening than the real thing. I do however try to treat each flight as if hundreds of dollars were riding on it, and have only had a few disastrous crashes.

Once I get my replacement parts for the CPv3, I’m going to try some simple rolls and flips on the real thing that I’ve perfected in the simulator. I usually try to fly with a bit of wind on the simulator too just to be prepared for what it actually is like. I also can’t seem to keep the helicopter very stable hovering inverted. I can usually keep it inverted long enough to figure out the orientation, but since 2/3 of the controls are always reversed, I haven’t been able to do it naturally like I can hovering nose-in/tail-in (right-side up). I’ll be sure to film it when I try it with the real thing. I’m sure it’ll make for a fantastic crash :)