learning inverted hover.

[khaoz]

I've been having fun with aerobatics and am a little tired of loops ,rolls, stall turns ETC and want to move into 3D flying.

Any advice from those who have accomplished this would be great.

I'm pretty comfortable inverted while the chopper is moving although the rudder catches me out from time to time, I'm guessing that my years of inverted plane flying help me here. The inverted hover has proved quite a challenge.

I am now at the point where I can inverted hover nose in with some descent control, I can safely move the heli around and have even indulged in some grass cutting. Tail is is a whole other story.

Should I be rushing to work this out at the risk of compromising my nose in inverted or are there other skills I should be working on like backwards flying that will eventually help me?

Any mental tricks that I can use to get me out of trouble when my skill fails me would be useful as well.

Thanks,

[deity]

Am I right in saying that you are having trouble with tail in inverted? I am exactly the opposite, I am very comfortable tail in, but nose in inverted scares the snot out of me.

tail in is easier in my oppinion because left and right are eactly the same as right side up, only front to rear is reversed. My opinion is to just learn the bail out like its the back of your hand (I pull the stick towards me while tail in inverted to flip the heli away from me) and just practice untill you are comfortable with it. If you have a sim just do it untill you dont crash anymore then move to the real thing.

[khaoz]

I suppose it depends on what you learn first. Normal nose in hovering was hard for me in the beginning, nose in inverted just seemed natural.

Thanks for your bail out technique, makes sense now that you've explained it. I guess I just need to put in a couple of hundred hours and everything will get easy again :).

[Chinookmark]

The mental trick I use is to steer the tail instead of the nose. Instead of thinking about which way to turn the helcopter, think about which way to move the tail.

Another thing that has helped me is practicing upright backwards flight. It helped me get used to cross-controlling the rudder and aileron, which is pretty much the same thing as inverted forward flight.