We talk a storm about newbies to buy a sim and practices like there is no tomorrow....

Question I have for those that have flown before the making of SIMs...

What did you do to make yourself ready to fly a RC Heli or Plane?

The first R/C pilots had to teach themselves.

In general, though, we went out to the flying field with a trainer and let someone else get it really really high up and then hand us the transmitter. We'd hand it back if we got confused. Repeat over and over and eventually you can fly well enough to take off and land on your own.

The average R/C pilot now is a much, much better pilot than the average pilot of 30 or more years ago. Simulators are on important reason, but it's also because planes come pretty much ready to fly and are much less expensive than before.

Jim

As Jim says the first RC pilots had to teach themselves. But it's perhaps worth bearing in mind that almost no-one started out flying RC. Most people will have worked their way up to it having built, trimmed and flown chuck gliders, rubber-powered free flight models, perhaps control line etc. So they already had a good idea of how planes flew, the effect of CG, of control surfaces etc.

A bit later when there were plenty of people around who had already taught themselves to fly most of what you did to get yourself ready to fly was build your own 40-size IC trainer from a kit and join a club. At the club there were always willing helpers to do the tricky bits like taking off and landing, just passing the transmitter over when the plane was well up in the sky (because buddy leads took a while to be invented too so passing the TX back and forth was how it worked).

Life is a lot easier now with simulators and small cheap planes that almost fly themselves anyway .

Steve

Lots of repairs...partically with Helicopters.

But Helis in the 70's and 80's were toughter and easier to repair.. & easier to setup to fly basic manouvers.
Schluter Helis were easy to repair.

Buddy boxing was OK, if you could find somebody game enough to take you on.

M

This is a six year old thread, but it seemed like a fun subject. In the model plane magazines, writers usually suggested a learning curve much like in full-scale aviation. Start with a 3 channel trainer, and then progress to 4 channels with ailerons. Start off with planes that try to right themselves if you get into trouble. Ultimately the goal was to be able to handle a go-where-you-point-it plane with neutral stability.

You need to remember that really old folk learned how to make a plane fly before RC was around or at least affordable.
If you can trim a plane to fly without any control then the jump to RC is not so great.

Originally Posted by mgfiest

We talk a storm about newbies to buy a sim and practices like there is no tomorrow....

Question I have for those that have flown before the making of SIMs...

What did you do to make yourself ready to fly a RC Heli or Plane?

Well, I sat down and created a flight simulator and taught myself to fly helis with it (I could already fly planes). It eventually became marketed by Dave Brown Products. It was the first R/C flight simulator.

Holy Cow. You're the trailblazer! Does anybody remember those tilting table helicopter simulators? I remember the construction article back in RCM. They would still make a fun party game.

Never tried the RC Heli simulator, but I did try the Dave Brown R/C simulator (after my wife and I'd been flying for a few years). It confused the *** out of us --the reference to the runway was useless. The best we did was set it up at a public event and let kids try it -- they thought that the cost of the worst crash was the score and tried to get the best score they could...

I can see how modern simulators can help, but, honestly, I learned to fly long before they came about (and taught my wife how to fly long before they came about). For us, simulators are very unrealistic, not giving a good feeling for where the model is in the sky, nor do they show the fine details of what attitude the model is in. Yes, we've tried later model simulators, on large TV screens, but they still don't match reality.

CD

My hat's off to all those pattern champions of yesteryear who learned to fly by...............well................flying.

Originally Posted by kallend

Well, I sat down and created a flight simulator and taught myself to fly helis with it (I could already fly planes). It eventually became marketed by Dave Brown Products. It was the first R/C flight simulator.

It was the first flight sim I ever had! As a kid, my dad and I used to go to the big hobby show in Chicago, which is where we first saw DBFS. I was more into cars then, but only because my folks wouldn't buy me a plane.

Dad took me with him when he would go flying when I was a kid. One day he handed me the transmitter and I landed .It was a fast pattern bird. The next day I was taking off and landing.on my own,simple as that. Before that he would let me taxi airplanes up and down the driveway ,maybe that helped I don't know. But it was nothing no big deal I just started flying like it was second nature.

flat

Are you suggesting it's not flat anymore? I reject your so-called "scientists".

Originally Posted by kallend

Well, I sat down and created a flight simulator and taught myself to fly helis with it (I could already fly planes). It eventually became marketed by Dave Brown Products. It was the first R/C flight simulator.

Dude I loved that simulator, taught me how to fly inverted and also got me interested in Helis. I remember it ran on the Apple II+ computer. Good job sir good job. I think Dave Brown did a great job of marketing it (RIP). I assume he's RIP don't know for sure. I talked to him on the phone a couple of times.