Learning to fly

[scotty40]

As a noob,  just thought Id post to see how long it took people to learn to fly a multirotor. .?

Specially interested in ppl starting from scratch :)

Scotty

[guest325]

If you';ve had no rc experience at all then it will take a while, main thing is to learn that stick movements are gentle and small otherwise your model will go faster than you can cope with. Patience is the main thing, set yourself realistic goals and do your best to achieve them.
In your case learning with something like the Hubsan x4 indoors initially will be a good grounding and until you can move it around confidently don';t risk a more expensive model - it will end up broken!!!
Good luck and take care
D

[Gaza07]

I agree with the above take your time learn to hover at a safe distance but not miles away and lear to hover tail in then each side and eventually hover with the nose facing you,
Once you can do all that you should ave a try at flying lazy eights. it takes time to learn to fly and there is no magic fast track some learn faster than others, the main thing is have fun 

[scotty40]

Thanks for the replies..I Seem to have mastered hovering the hubsan tail in and small manoeuvres.. Gets awfully interesting tail out tho
Pheonix rc sim is due today so hopefully that will help too :)

[teslahed]

In terms of learning to fly, i started March last year. I spent a couple of years before that flying radio control planes which will help a bit too.

To start with you want to take off with the nose away from you. It is much easier to fly with the nose pointing away from you and the back pointing towards you. You can make the quadcopter go slowly up and down with the throttle and use the aileron and elevator (stick on the right if you fly ';mode 2';, which i do) to tip the quadcopter forwards and backwards, left and right, to slowly move it around.

Here is an example of one of my early flights, although i was struggling partly because the quadcopter i was flying was badly made;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9JkOBlNOMc

I turn the thing a little bit but mostly keep it pointing in one direction and go backwards and forwards, up and down. This is good practice to start with.

Flying with the nose pointing towards yourself is much harder at first because the controls are reversed. If you';ve flown any rc aircraft before, or even just driven a radio control car, you';ll be familiar with this effect. Even some computer games will do this if you are controlling a character in third person perspective and make them run towards you. You have to learn to think of yourself from the quadcopters perspective rather than from your own, which is difficult to start with.

You want to build up to this slowly by flying around in slow circles using the rudder to slowly spin the quadcopter. When it';s coming towards you don';t panic and just keep going around slowly until it';s away from you again, where it will seem easier to control.

Once you can do circles, figures of eight are also good to practice. Here is an example of me doing figures of 8s to practice, again quite a while ago now;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWL3zvRNGhQ

Not the most graceful flight - but i was still new to quadcopters at that point and my quadcopter was still quite badly behaved back then.

With a quadcopter when it flies slowly it';s very similar to flying a radio control helicopter, only a bit easier because you don';t need to worry about blade pitch angles or the gyroscopic effects of the tail rotor. As you build up speed and momentum you will find it starts behaving more like a plane.

It';s very easy to get the thing moving too fast - then you can lose control if you are not careful. As speed builds up the quadcopter will start sliding sideways if you turn just with the rudder and you will want to use the aileron to bank the quadcopter around the turns to keep them tight and well controlled. This will seem tricky at first because you will need to control all 4 stick axis and balance rudder, throttle, aileron and elevator control to keep it going around properly. The faster you are going the more you need to think about all these things, so keep it slow to start with.

Keep things slow to start with and fly over nice long grass if you can find a big field to practice in. Ideally away from roads and other people, especially children - who are likely to come running up behind you to ask ';how high does it go'; (too high) ';how fast does it go'; (about 60mph - depends on straight up, straight down or sideways) and other such predictable questions, whilst standing where your quadcopter wants to fly. If you hit someone at speed it wont be pretty - the propellers could do a lot of damage and even just the weight of it wouldn';t be nice if moving fast enough.

[scotty40]

Good advice  and the practice flights look familiar :)

When it comes to fields and space there';s no issue, this is out my back garden ..lol