How to fly the tail?

[BrokenRotor]

Can someone give me pointers as to how I fly the tail when using a head holding gyro? I have tried on the sim but it's like bashing my head against a wall.:arrrggghhh: I just don't get it. There must be a secret no one told me yet.:confused:

If I only had a brain.:doh:

[Eric Lewis]

the gyro should do most of it for you

if you are getting that spin at first just throttle up slower so the gyro can initialize

[BrokenRotor]

I am refering to when you are flying around doing banked turns.

[Jake]

Smoothly :) There's no secret, just point the nose where you want it to go ;)
You might want to try getting used to the tail with piroettes first, so you get used to how fast the tail moves with different amounts of rudder input. To get a smooth turn you have to sort of mentally preempt your final heading, and coordinate the right amount of yaw rate with the right amount of aileron/elevator.

I think the real secret is practice.

[MikeB]

Careful of the term Flying the Tail and Flying the Nose as most people use the terms to reflect Rudder servo reverse or normal flying.

I specifically avoided the tail at first as it forced me to learn how to fly in any orientation I ended up in. I'm just now getting better with it.

Get used forward flight and the turns will start to feel more natural. Slow banking turns are hard.

[MikeB]

Watch all the recorded training sessions on heli's if you have G4+. (not sure what the others have). Most of them are pretty interesting.

I'll let you practice flying circles with my CX2 if you'd like. The concept is the same only much easier.

Crash in the sim as many times as it takes, just don't quit trying. Eventually you'll "fly the helicoptor" instead of "flying the sticks". Like jake said, after lots of practice you stop thinking about what commands your supposed to give it to do something. You'll be focusing on the helicoptor and whats its doing and reacting accordingly. Flying in a circle means mixing stick commands based on the current orientation and speed of the aircraft. You don't actually need to use the rudder to fly in a circle in all cases ;)

[BrokenRotor]

Maybe I should have asked, how do I fly a figure eight pattern with my heli using the swash and tail rotor controls?

I have been trying to do it in the sim and I always end up sliding out of the turn with the heli going off at some strange angle. When I fly the Blade CP the tail mostly follows along behind the heli and I do not have to give lots of input to it.

I have read that the scale guys fly in normal mode so they get the same type of flying behavior. I want to be able to do both.

I guess I am expecting too much, too soon. Time to put another quarter into the sim and crash some more.

Thanks for the input everyone.:)

[Pete]

The way I learned was to do circles and figure 8's flying real slow so your barely using any aileron or banking in. If your doing a clockwise circle just get the heli moving, give it a LITTLE right ailron and slowly bring the tail around. Don't worry about doing a perfect circle, just get it around and it will get better. It is really hard at first but you'll get it.

Just remember, if your turning to the right your moving both sticks to the right and both to the left if your turning left.

[MikeB]

I still can't fly perfect figure 8's.

Sorry for over complicating things. It's similar to trying to tell someone how to drive a manual transmition hehe. Try turning down the physics speed under settings. It will make everything move slower.

[MikeB]

I have been trying to do it in the sim and I always end up sliding out of the turn with the heli going off at some strange angle.

You have to bank into the turn, which means your on your side a bit so you have to bring the nose up into the turn. All you need to do with the tail is keep it in line with where you want the heli to go. You can't stay level the whole time because your have to use the rotors thrust to make your forward momentum change from a straight line to a curve. Keeping your forward momentum constant is very hard.

I can never keep things simple :rolleyes:

Pete described it very well actually.

[BrokenRotor]

I can never keep things simple :rolleyes:

Must be the programmer in you. I don't mind a complicated explaination at all, as long as it's gets me the answer I am looking for.

Everyone's feedback is good. I just need to run it through my 4.40Hz 1 bit processor I call my brain and see what I get from it.:arrrggghhh:

I know it takes lots of practice, more for some of us, less for others. I am still working on doing a good hover.:)

[MikeB]

Parking the car and driving the car are very different ;) Just don't get discouraged. I still think hovering and fighting momentum to try to stay still is harder than a turn. You just have more practice hovering. :)

Edit: I learned how to fly in a circle about a couple months ago. VERY recently. Up until then all I did was loops and rolls. Once I had them down I moved to the tail. You can fly around quite well without ever touching the tail. To this day I think it worked out quite well.

Edit 2: Tell me to put my helicoptor where my mouth is hehe. *crash*

[Doug]

I usually tell people to start out with the hover, and slow move to small cyclic movements side to side with the tail in. Then start putting in small tail movements (very small) to where you're just seeing the back quarter of the helicopter while doing these small side to side. I call it the "fish upstream" move. As you get comfortable you will naturally start moving further and further side to side and giving more tail to see that back quarter of the heli. Eventually these will get wide enough that you'll be doing a figure 8 pattern and seeing more of the side of the helicopter working into forward flight.

[jprocai]

fish up stream leads to fish runnin across the feild and havin some else take over

[Pete]

For me hovering perfectly steady on the sim has always been hard then doing it for real. I don't know why, it just is.

I've found that the simpler moves automatically get easier once you learn then next harder move. I might be wrong but I wouldn't worry about perfecting one move before you go onto the next.

[BrokenRotor]

I will never get discouraged.:) I will keep trying until I get my fingers to do what my brain says.

For me the sim is harder than real life. Something to do with the perspective of me to the heli and the surroundings.

I know it will come with lots of practice and a bucket of spare parts.

Good advice from all of you, thanks. :D

[mflander]

I prefer to have new guys take off and go straight into forward flight. While there success at the hobby will be limited, it sure is a great way to draw spectators.

This usually results in getting the spectators active in the hobby also. As in actively running for their lives.

[Doug]

fish up stream leads to fish runnin across the feild and havin some else take over

The trick is to not actually let the fish GO upstream... and then go further.. and further. ;)

[MikeB]

The sim gave me two impressions about my flying right away.

1.) My helicoptor was going to fly away into the sunset.
2.) I was going to loose a limb.

Correcting those became my focus pretty quick.