Learning a quad

[Flyboysee]

Hi All!

Okay, so I recently bought a 2nd hand quad and have put about 5 - 6 lipo's through it (not very long since flights times on 2200mah is about just less than 10 min). It's quite stable - a bit of drift on the yaw but very manageable.

So here's my schpeel. Can you guys suggest a good self training method for me to progress with. Naturally I've done a lot of hovering, swaying from side to side, front and back and rotating the platform and can do that confidently now in all kinds of wind. Since I've never flown helis I'm finding the next step difficult. That is to make co-ordinated turns. Should I put in roll, then yaw, the other way around or together? I'm finding it very difficult on the turn which I've aborted all so far and have not yet come back to myself - I get half way, decide against it, then reverse all the way back to myself.

Are led's the best way to check orientation? I've added orange props the the front but not get when it gets further away.

A couple of bullet points as an idiots guide to self quad training would be most helpful :)

Cheers!

[Coyote]

Ah nose in :) that's the first bit to get sorted. Practice nose in hovering before forward flight into nose in. Then progress to turns. You have to train your brain like flying planks left is right and right is left, which you should be fine wwith, but you have to still input forward and backwards which are reversed also. Once you can hover nose in in a controlled manor then forward flight and turning becomes miles easier

[tdmodels]

+ 1

[Zeeflyboy]

The big thing with turns is the same as with flying a normal heli in heading hold mode... The tail will try to hold its heading...

To do a nice turn, you really need to fly the tail. That doesn't really make sense on a quad since you don't have a tail, but the idea is the same - you need to keep pushing the "tail" out around the corner.

This is where they are quite different to planks, with a plank you can just bank with aileron and pull round the turn... It won't be totally co-ordinated without a little rudder input but it's not a problem. On a heli (again, HH mode, rate mode is different) or quad you need to be pro-active on the rudder.

[pk-surfing]

Invest in getting a sim and put stick time in practicing on that.

http://www.phoenix-sim.com/

I think you'll find that all those who fly helis have done / still do put time in on the sim.

PK

[venquessa]

I've not flown a quad, but I expect they are very similar to heli's.

I would counter Ian's advice and say, leave nose in hovering until you can fly around in forward flight, because there is an instinctive path from hovering to forward flight 8s that you already seem to have started onto.

Hover "tail" in and start swaying left and right, expand the sways until you are moving 10-15feet one way, then 10-15feet the other way.  Once you get this smooth, start pointing the nose round a little towards the direction of travel.  eg.  45* right and drift right, then slow it down at the end and as it starts to come back to the left, yaw round so it is point 45* left.  Keep that up for a while until it's smooth, then just increase the yaw until eventually the quad/heli is pointing in the direction of travel.  This teaches orientation, rudder control and sneaks you into forward flight.  Don't get cocky at this stage though.  See below.

A lot of heli (and I'm assuming quad) control is a battle of psychology and nerves.  There are things that you (or even your brain independently) will see as difficult or confusing.  Mostly this will be the part of your brain that "speaks".  Ignore it.  That part of your brain does NOT fly the machine.  It is the commander, yes, but the driver is the older more primitive part of your brain, the part that deals with things like hand-eye coordination and motor memory, it doesn't speak and you can't speak to it.

The only way to teach that older part of your brain is to practice.  If you had a long disablement from an accident and were bed ridden for a year.  You would forget how to walk properly.  Your conscious brain would have to try and walk.  It will be very, very poor at it, it doesn't know how to walk, it's way, way too complex to "think" through, your older brain knows (or knew) though.  So it will be very, very difficult and what physiotherapy is for; practice.  A lot of the time it will protest and say things like, "Oh, it's too hard.", "Ah, I might fall", "Damn, I can't do this."

In terms of learning a heli, this happens a lot when we hit butt clenching moments, like first forward flight, nose in hover, or first time inverted.  If you just take off and flick the heli/quad straight to nose in, your conscious brain will squeal like a little girl, "Oh I can't do this, it's confusing, which way is left?, ahh, I'm going to crash", you tense up, you freeze, you then over-react and ... you crash.  The part of your brain flying will, the first time, have an "Emmmm...." moment, forcing 'you' to fly the heli, but you can't, not very well anyway, it's jerky and slow with over-reactions and lots of tension, no flow.

The number of times I have been doing absolutely fine with my heli when I hear myself say, "Oh shit, I'm more or less nose in, I can't fly nose in yet." and immediately I lose control because I try to take control away from my older brain that is actually doing fine flying and I start to think about what I'm doing, instead of just doing it.  It all gets messy quickly, my heart rate jumps, my muscles tense on the controls and my inputs are delayed, over-reacting, sharp and jerky and I'm lucky if I can get the heli back into a "comfort zone".

Thus, I think the key is "smooth transitions".  Trust the skills you have and just keep pushing at their edges.  Try not to "think" about it and relax into the flow.  Say drifting left and right, turning the nose in further each time, if you go too far and feel that panic thing as you feel your forgetting how to fly, fly back to your comfort zone and start again.  Take lots and lots of baby steps instead of risky big steps that freak you out.

Once you can fly repeated left to right sways and the heli/quad is turning a full 180 degrees at each end, you are basically flying small semi hovering 8s.  Just speed up slowly, start getting higher, making longer passes with widening turns.  Soon you'll realise you are in full forward flight.  Here I think their may be a difference between heli's and quads as a heli once beyond transition speed behaves a lot like a plane and can be banked and yanked around, though you do have to keep the tail in check if on HH mode.  Your slowly widening 8s above will have that part programmed in already, so just let it happen.

If you feel intimidated by the rudder, a good "desensitizing" exercise is to do hovering pyro's.  From a stable hover, just slam the rudder full over. You'll need to practice not moving the throttle!  Start with moving it up, up is much better than down and do climbing pyros until you feel you can use rudder and throttle together and hold height.  Just, whatever you do the first few 10s of times, make absolutley sure you stop it when it's "tail in" or close to it, each time.  You'll stop being afraid of the rudder control fairly quickly.... and it's lots of fun and looks cool.

Paul

[Brucey]

I like your write up Paul. Its very much how I learnt to fly my quad from zero experience.
I know exactly what you mean about not thinking about it to much.

[Flyboysee]

Thanks all, especially for that very comprehensive insight Paul. I think the very reason it's such a struggle is because control nose in is very counter intuitive and it's great to hear it is mainly psychological :) that I can work with!

Surely then FPV is easier than LOS?

[FPVSteve]

FPV is easier than LOS without a doubt.

[MarkLincs]

Hum.....

Okay nip out to Toys R US  now buy the small football cones, they come in packs of 4/8 and you need 5.

Lay the 5 out like a Dice 5      around 5 meters apart.

Now learn to hover over each one at Eye Level and drift from one to another so you get comfy and yes it can seem boring and once you can do this tail in (so you see the back of the model)

next learn to do this side on both ways

now forward flight... and lazy eights

start gently and do not rush lazy eights now lazy eights are (X) in shape roughly

once lazy 8s are mastered onto true figure 8s which are OO   

now while doing true 8s you will now step upto learn nose in.

Now while doing the 8s the model flys towards you and you turn out to go round and do the 8s and complete the circuit. Now you slow down the flying towards you and you'll stop and be nose in. if you have an issue you'll just turn out and continue the figure 8 as you'll be used to the escape route.


And if you want to make nose in easier still make sure the wind is coming from behind you so the model is into wind and it makes nose in even easier to learn.


I had 1 lesson for heli flying and do not use a Sim for heli flying because depth perception sucks on Sims and I found real airtime was best I have a sim but never use it.

[Zeeflyboy]

FPV is easier than LOS without a doubt.

Aspects of it are, but I disagree with on the whole.

From a control standpoint, absolutely. The only real issues with FPV from that front are

a) judging airspeed (not an issue on a quad)
b) depth perception
c) over-controlling

by "c" I mean have you ever flown an LOS model and been very happy with it's performance, rates, expo etc, then gone to fly it FPV and found it to be wild and fast to control? I have... it's much easier to over control things from the fpv perspective imo.

But then throw on top the complexities of FPV installs, getting it all working correctly without interference, flying through dropouts and poor feed in an unstable airframe... I'm not sure it's easier overall!

[Chris in Kabul]

Very good write up from PaulC there. things do eventually become natural as he says.
I am mainly a fixed wing flyer but the same applies when flying towards you. I don't even think about it now.
I have just started flying a quad for the first time and it's like learning to fly all over gain.

FPV may well be easier than LOS as you are only looking from one perspective but what happens if/when you lose video? It's bound to happen at some time. If you cannot fly LOS confidently this is where the problem will arise and more than likely end in a crash.

A lot of LOS flying, especially at a good distance is also from memory. You cannot see the model perfectly so I find I remember what inputs I use and to counter, I seem to know how much opposite control to put in.

The worst thing at distance is knowing which way the model is going i.e. to or from you. A simple way to find out is feed in a gentle left or right turn and watch what the wings do, that will soon tell you.

Learn LOS first and then go FPV, otherwise it will end in tears one day very soon.

[venquessa]

On the point of using similies (approximations), like sims or using a little coaxial indoor heli.

They do help your older brain and motor memory, reflexes and orientational awareness through practice.

What they don't do is stop your nerves peaking when you again try the larger outdoor machine.

In the sim, you don't have the high stress levels associated with (a) ditching your multi hundred pound heli/quad into a pile of broken parts or (b) hitting yourself in the face with it!  With the indoor coaxial, you also know that hitting throttle cut and dropping it into the sofa (or through the prize plant :$) probably won't kill it and if it hits you, it might hurt, but chances are you won't be in A&E that evening (depending on the heli and where it hits you!).

You still have to battle through the psychology when you do it for real.  It is here that you must try and hold your nerve and believe you can do it.  I spend many hours hovering nose in with a sim and many hours hovering and doing slow and fast random stop pyros with a coaxial heli, but when I went back to the real heli I still got freaked out.  I knew I could fly the thing nose in, but my brain kept freaking out and screwing up my flow any time I realised I was nose in.

So in short, they are all but essential for practicing, but they won't get you the whole mile.

[hexo]

I agree with the whole brain freaking out issue!

I've been flying LOS since i was 12. I can fly continual inverted for the whole flight, easy. I can roll and loop and even with shilouettes i can still keep on flying.

BUT! After a few attempts at nose in with a heli my brain just flipped. I lost a bit of nerve and have found it hard to get myself even in the right frame of mind to do it.

I'm now forgetting about the problem and starting to fly in circles and nose in at myself without noticing it. Over time i will just be flying nose in and it will make no difference.

Gary B  :-*

[Zeeflyboy]

Absolutely agree...

I can tell you from experience - inverted and inches off the ground... if you think, you crash.