Beginner Helicopter vs time

[sfornari]

How long should you spend on a beginner's helicopter (i.e., cx 1, cx 2 )before mving onto a more advanced model/make? I heard that the beginner models can teach you bad habits that are hard to break on the adv. models? True or False??

[crazy4rc]

Obviously you have a computer so if I were you get yourself a good flight simulator. They are worth their weight in gold! As for bad habits there is one that I am trying to get rid of, fly with yourself looking at the nose or canopy of the heli, not the tailboom.

[Shazz1234]

Why is that such a bad habit? I'm not one of those people that can fly on a flight sim and then translate that into real life, for some reason my brain just doesn't work that way, I've had my begginer heli for a little while now and I can hover tail in nicely, side in is a bit shakey in both directions but I can still hold a hover, I've tried nose in and it's pretty tricky but not impossible. Once I get that down pat I might move to a fully collective pitch heli so I can properly learn hovering and different flight directions.

[rocknbil]

You fly the nose because when you actually get into aerobatics its very easy to get confused. The nose is what gives you the orientation, from where you sit at the controls it's like you're sitting inside the canopy. If you watch the nose, you will always do the right actions on the sticks without thinking aobut it. Well . . . almost always . . .

The bad habits you learn from a coaxial are because it's so easy to fly. They are stable and can hover on their own. So it's not uncommon to just gas it from the ground, get it up high, and figure it out from there. Try that with a single-rotor CP and you'll only get as far as the repair bench.

Another really bad thing is that because so much of a coaxial's energy goes into the counter-rotation which keeps it stable and upright, it's actually more difficult than it seems to get it to change direction. You get trained in giving it hard jerky movements to get it to change direction, go where you want, and are actually applying more stick than you'd ever need with a CP.

A CP's movements are actually always a little bit "behind" your movements on the stick, but it is 10 times more sensitive. So a very slight push on the stick may not show its effect on the heli for 1/4 - 1/2 second after you apply it.

So add a newbie who's been throwing around a CX for a couple weeks. It gets off the ground and starts to tip over right. So you push the stiick left. It keeps moving, you think what the heck, so you push it FARTHER - about now it catches up to what you're doing, but by this time you have overcompensated by at least 4 times what you needed to correct it, so now it goes left - OH YEAH - it goes left so fast it's heading for the ground, so you jerk it back right . . .then left . . . it keeps going faster and faster, left and right, and it seems like everything you do is making it worse - which you are, making it swing higher and higher, left and right in a big pendulum swingiing motion, faster and faster - until the ground stops you. :D

That was pretty much what I learned from flight one, and a lot of other newbies too, but sometimes it takes you oh, two or three hundred dollars to figure this out. :D

[Shazz1234]

Oh thats handy to know. I dunno about the whole 200-300 dollar mark becuase I'm sensible enough not to go above waist height at the most but I do get what you're saying. When I finaly muster up the willpower to go out and get a decent heli I'll keep that in mind.