Experienced instructor requires your help.

[Richard Harris]

David,

 

Maybe it's worth getting him doing some touch and goes and fly bys to get him more confident with ground handling etc? on the buddy to start with of course.

 

 

 

 

[Andy Stephenson]

8 hours ago, David Davis said:

 

If my finger tip becomes uncomfortable I always warn the trainee that I am about to change fingers and that momentarily I will retake control.

Mid to high end Futaba transmitters have a long lever sprung 2 position switch for buddy operation. I rest the switch on my index finger with the weight of the Tx to hold it in trainer mode. This makes it much easier to allow the trainee to complete a flight without interruption. It might be possible to modify the Tx by changing the button for a similar sprung switch.

[David Davis]

While I have no problem holding down the button on the DX9, I used to use a Futaba transmitter and prefer their sprung levers.

[GaryW]

22 hours ago, John Lee said:

Both the Radio Queen & Junior 60 have their undercarriages a long way forward of the CG and as a result are unstable on the ground with a marked tendency to ground loop. Unless you are 'ahead' of the model with the controls it is almost bound to veer on take off. Frans is not yet in that position of anticipation by the sound of it.

 

Short of modifying the undercarriage I'd suggest hand launching those models and let Frans get time in the air to build confidence & experience. Practice circuits with the Boomerang & its tricycle U/C.

 

I disagree,,, ive had various Radio Queens & Junior 60's over trhe years and non of them have ever tried to ground loop themselves either on take off or landing ,, & all have always tracxked straight and true Including my current Junior 60 ,,,, In my experience for these planes to ground loop the undercarraigese would need to be loose and move sufficiently to cause them to ground loop but if fitted and aligned correctly they shud track with no real issues

[Frank Skilbeck]

On the Spektrum sets, you can have two trainer modes, one where all rates, expo, trims are set on the teacher tx, i.e only the student stick positions are transferred, the 2nd  mode all the rates, expo, trims are separate on each tx. If you have been using the former mode when he goes solo all the settings may be different, so the model doesn't respond as it does on the buddy, could this be contributory?

 

I've never taught anybody who uses a different mode to me, but typically on their first buddyless flight, I'll do the take off on their tx and hand it to them once I've trimmed it out so they get the feel of the model a few mistakes high, not so easy if you fly different modes though.Sent

Edited May 10 by Frank Skilbeck

[Denis Watkins]

True on the different modes Frank, that trims may not duplicate.

But the way I was shown as an instructor was that I would fly the Master, and take off, and be satisfied with the trim.

On the Slave, other mode, a competent flyer would take the sticks and I would switch them into the model, that they then set the trims correctly on the Slave.

Edited May 10 by Denis Watkins

[J D 8 - Moderator]

Easy enough to test the above. Have an experienced club member fly with the master and then David you take control with the slave and see how it feels and set trims correct if out.

[David Davis]

1 minute ago, J D 8 said:

Easy enough to test the above. Have an experienced club member fly with the master and then David you take control with the slave and see how it feels and set trims correct if out.

The only problem is that I fly Mode 2 and everybody else flies Mode 1! I'll get an experienced Mode 1 pilot to fly it and trim it out.

[Keith Evans 3]

Hi ,some thoughts to consider .

I am very much like your beginner and have been for over20years.

Landings and take off,s are my big problems .

Why ?  Too much to concentrate at the same time ,angle of landing ,speed ,aileron and rudder control spatial awareness etc

To me it is not like riding a bike and I basically have to learn to fly all over again every year .I,m no good in cold weather and

hay fever affects me in the summer so my flying season is quite short .

Now you could say that I have useless coordination skills and to an extent that is true however I have and still am a competent drummer and percussionist where you need to coordinate four separate limbs as well as observing other band members, conductors and even perhaps singing on occasions .So I believe I am capable of quite a high level of coordination .So what is going on

 

When learning to play a drum kit and practice drum patterns and rudiments you are taught to do everything very very slowly repeat and repeat and gradually build up speed .This develops what I believe is termed

 

a Kinethetic sense and you can then do it automatically ,like riding a bike or changing gears in a car .

 

So the key is slow and repetition .However this is difficult to achieve up the flying field

with a beginner .The speed the wind and all the rest that need concentrating on are nearly all varying and perhaps there may be only the opportunity to have say four flights per session .

 

I would suggest a simulator would be beneficial to this beginner to help with repetition and the other factors

that can be tailored in.

 

I,m extremely grateful for the patience of many up my club ,South Wales Valleys Flyers ,for putting up with me for over 20years.

I realise I,ll never be much of a flyer but I enjoy the social aspect and the building side of the hobby .I.m now in the middle of building a one fifth scale VANS RV4 for one of the club members .

By the way I have directional dyslexia ,I.e left and right mean nothing to me. Do not ask how I passed my driving test !

 

Hope you found this interesting

 

You may have to bite the bullet and inform the beginner that he or she may never fly solo .I hope this will not be the case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Denis Watkins]

I wish we had a few more members in the club like you Keith. You enjoy the features your club offers, and you fly, with a positive analytic attitude. You are there because you want to be.

 

Flying a model is not easy, and I would just continue with your one input flying. You react to the model by brief one stick at a time control. This is not unusual.

Multi inputs are pleasing when they come either naturally or by practice, practice and more practice.

 

Drumming, driving or using a knife and fork are all contact sports, a direct input of hand or foot feels weight or pressure as a response produces an output.

But flying a model, we are remote, often far away, is not a contact sport.

And we have to process with our eyes, the shape we see in the air to point it a certain way at a certain speed in a certain moment ( not easy at all )

 

So continue to enjoy your flying one stick input at a time

But practice on your transmitter that this much aileron, with this much elevator at the same time is a nice smooth turn and even better with a small increase input of power coming out of the turn and reduce lower again to cruise.

That is multitasking in a simple turn, so orchestrate it in your mind 1st, then in the air, then build on this

Edited May 10 by Denis Watkins

[Andrew McKelvey 1]

I class myself as a reasonably competent flyer have a A so can’t be that bad..

 

On nice days when it’s calm I fly a Super60 Low Wing and you can never get two decent take offs in a row, ground handling is not its strong suit, but it does fly nice. I also fly a Boomerang and fly that in any weather, stick forward let it rip and normally it flys itself, it has a steerable nose wheel, I also tend to not fly it in trainer mode and have found that thumbs off if you get into difficulty it sorts itself out. You just got to fly three mistakes high.

 

My suggestion would be to get Fran some air time flying the Boomerang, 10,20 flights in and see what happens. 
 

My mentor told me all those years ago - you don’t start flying until after your solo / test when you have to figure out what you need to do, it is a confidence thing.

 

As for people sitting too close to the runway ‘jeering’ at some ones dodgy take off, they should be told and should know 50m at least

[Peter Jenkins]

21 hours ago, Keith Evans 3 said:

Hi ,some thoughts to consider .

I am very much like your beginner and have been for over20years.

Landings and take off,s are my big problems .

Why ?  Too much to concentrate at the same time ,angle of landing ,speed ,aileron and rudder control spatial awareness etc

To me it is not like riding a bike and I basically have to learn to fly all over again every year .I,m no good in cold weather and

hay fever affects me in the summer so my flying season is quite short .

Now you could say that I have useless coordination skills and to an extent that is true however I have and still am a competent drummer and percussionist where you need to coordinate four separate limbs as well as observing other band members, conductors and even perhaps singing on occasions .So I believe I am capable of quite a high level of coordination .So what is going on

 

When learning to play a drum kit and practice drum patterns and rudiments you are taught to do everything very very slowly repeat and repeat and gradually build up speed .This develops what I believe is termed

 

a Kinethetic sense and you can then do it automatically ,like riding a bike or changing gears in a car .

 

So the key is slow and repetition .However this is difficult to achieve up the flying field

with a beginner .The speed the wind and all the rest that need concentrating on are nearly all varying and perhaps there may be only the opportunity to have say four flights per session .

 

I would suggest a simulator would be beneficial to this beginner to help with repetition and the other factors

that can be tailored in.

 

I,m extremely grateful for the patience of many up my club ,South Wales Valleys Flyers ,for putting up with me for over 20years.

I realise I,ll never be much of a flyer but I enjoy the social aspect and the building side of the hobby .I.m now in the middle of building a one fifth scale VANS RV4 for one of the club members .

By the way I have directional dyslexia ,I.e left and right mean nothing to me. Do not ask how I passed my driving test !

 

Hope you found this interesting

 

You may have to bite the bullet and inform the beginner that he or she may never fly solo .I hope this will not be the case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some excellent points Keith.  However, the point you make about repetition in learning how to play percussion is what I think is missing in the flying arena.  David's student and you appear not to be able to have that continuity of repetition for varying reasons.  As you say, the wind speed and direction are always changing, especially in this country and so you need to adjust almost every flight to the differences.  You only achieve that through repetition in all the conditions in which you can fly.  If you don't try flying in conditions that you think are a bit outside your scope, you never learn to cope with them and then the number of days you can fly are numbered, and in your case made worse by having a very short flying season.

 

I think that almost everybody could reach a good  and safe standard of flying if they practice enough but that's the rub.  People often join clubs for the social aspects and, in our club, I've seen people come and assemble the aircraft and then go home without actually flying it - an extreme case maybe.  But flying 1 or 2 flights every session is not going to be enough to learn the instinctive control of the aircraft that you need.  

 

Without the continuity of flying regularly and doing lots of flights your progress will be slow.  It also depends on whether you are a slow or a quick learner.  I know that in the RAF, the will quite often axe a student if their rate of progress is slow.  The student might well be able to gain their PPL on their own and go on to fly commercially but what the military is looking for is those who can learn quickly as that's where success lies.  But you can learn more slowly and still reach good if not exceptional standards.  Application and wanting to achieve a goal is everything.

[Cuban8]

On 10/05/2024 at 06:38, David Davis said:

While I have no problem holding down the button on the DX9, I used to use a Futaba transmitter and prefer their sprung levers.

Absolutely. The buttons are very uncomfortable compared to spring loaded lever switches. I found that I could change fingers on a lever switch without any interuption but a button is much more difficult.

Whilst in no way wishing to start a forum feud concerning Mode 1 V Mode 2 - I don't believe changing modes for a beginner is a great idea. If someone is so badly co-ordinated in the first place, then adding to the confusion by a mode change needs to be very carefully considered.

[David Davis]

6 minutes ago, Cuban8 said:

Absolutely. The buttons are very uncomfortable compared to spring loaded lever switches. I found that I could change fingers on a lever switch without any interuption but a button is much more difficult.

Whilst in no way wishing to start a forum feud concerning Mode 1 V Mode 2 - I don't believe changing modes for a beginner is a great idea. If someone is so badly co-ordinated in the first place, then adding to the confusion by a mode change needs to be very carefully considered.

 

Just for clarification Frans chose Mode 1 because if I was not available one of the other instructors could fly with him. I think we have four club trainers three of which have Futaba transmitters and buddy boxes but they are all Mode 1. The fourth trainer is the Boomerang which I look after. It is usually flown by me on the master transmitter with the pupil on the buddy box. Apart from my DX9 there is not another Mode 2 transmitter in the club, indeed I am the only Mode 2 pilot in the club.

[Cuban8]

11 minutes ago, David Davis said:

 

Just for clarification Frans chose Mode 1 because if I was not available one of the other instructors could fly with him. I think we have four club trainers three of which have Futaba transmitters and buddy boxes but they are all Mode 1. The fourth trainer is the Boomerang which I look after. It is usually flown by me on the master transmitter with the pupil on the buddy box. Apart from my DX9 there is not another Mode 2 transmitter in the club, indeed I am the only Mode 2 pilot in the club.

Understood. The mode that we fly is usually dictated by the mode that the person teaching us uses. I fly mode 1 because the first radio that I bought in the 1970s was a Futaba 2 channel outfit that had its twin sticks fixed in mode 1 configuration. If I'd had more money available at the time and could have afforded a four channel system, chances are it would have came as a mode 2 and I'd have been none the wiser.

 

[GrumpyGnome]

I agree completely re changing modes.

 

On the buddy box for the Apprentice I look after, Master/Slave is activated via a two-position switch, but if a stick on the Master transmitter is moved, it automatically puts the control back to the Master tx.... these are Spektrum transmitters, and not the latest fancy ones.

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

I'm gonna disagree, choose a model to suit the man himself, what you learnt with is irrelevant, so is your love of it. For some it is difficult, they never get were you got, Franz is an old lad probably some health issues ? Get him on an Apprentice and let technology help the man have some fun.

[Robin Colbourne]

 If take offs are a struggle, is the undercarriage toed out as a reult if heavy landings bending it back?  Maybe Frans is hauling the model into the air too early simply to escape the random handling on the ground?  A short term fix is to put the undercarriage on backwards if it is removable, as the toe out will become toe in and transform the model's manners on the take off run, until the next heavy landing, anyway.
The longer term solution is to get or make a composite undercarriage.  A glass or carbon undercarriage will flex, but return to its original shape, so wont need constant bending straight.  If you fix it with nylon bolts it won't rip the bottom out of the model if the landing is really heavy.

[David Davis]

On 10/05/2024 at 12:50, David Davis said:

The only problem is that I fly Mode 2 and everybody else flies Mode 1! I'll get an experienced Mode 1 pilot to fly it and trim it out.

 

So this afternoon our club chairman who once finished tenth in the French Nats was persuaded to fly the Radio Queen and handing over control to Frans once he'd trimmed it to his satisfaction. Things didn't turn out too well. He trimmed it out and handed Frans the transmitter, then after a while took it back. He then slowed the aircraft right down and I thought he was going to land but he was considerably off track descending into a very slight breeze. Suddenly the wheels hit the apex of the roof of an industrilal building and the model flipped over. The fuselage and wingtip were damaged. Before the flight Hubert, our thirteen year-old hot shot pilot, said that the tailplane was not horizontal and after the flight our chairman said that he thought that the centre of gravity was too far to the rear. If that was so why was he flying the model at all? Having said that, the treasurer told me that the chairman was concerned about his eyesight, so that may have been a factor.

 

Frans is building another Junior 60 and also plans to fly an E-Flite Turbo Timber which belongs to his son Timmi but Timmi has lost interest in flying and never visits the flying field anymore. I've flown it and I found it very docile but then I have been flying for a few years.

 

I managed a few flights with Bertie Baron but I think I'll fly the Ukrainian one in La Coupe.

 

Picture of our runway and the building concerned below.

 

[GrumpyGnome]

That's a big catalogue of errors....

[Piers Bowlan]

I was an instructor at a flying school on C152s back in the early eighties. One of my charges was neither old nor stupid but seemed to have an inability to know what ‘right’ looked like. 

I demonstrated numerous times, as I explained and then prompted while he was carrying out an approach. He seemed incapable of assessing whether we were high of low on the approach. If we were drifting off the extended centreline he seemed reluctant to make corrective actions without continual prompting. He had had several lessons but he wasn’t really progressing in making his own decisions but happy to let the plane fly him rather the other way around. I suggested that on the next circuit I would not prompt but we would discuss how it went later. On his approach we sank lower and lower. The trees on the undershoot were looking very big and starting to obscure the runway. I asked him conversationally how he thought it was going? He didn’t know what to say. I said, ‘I have control’, applied power and climbed back onto the glide slope. 

I don’t know if it is fear of making things worse, or not recognising that positive input is required.

 

There has been speculation in this thread whether it is Frans’s  age, his eyesight, lack of practice or the wrong model. After breaking several aeroplanes it could be that he is in the wrong hobby and should try model boats!
 

[David Davis]

I must admit that when I lived in England a lovely old chap (LOC) turned up at the club with a beautifully built Fokker Eindekker about 1.5 metres in the wingspan.  He had installed the radio and asked me whether I thought that his model would be suitable to learn on. I said that it was not a suitable aircraft for real German pilots to learn on in 1916!  The best pilot in the club flew it and he found it a bit of a handful.

 

I gave him a go on the buddy box with my Junior 60 and he was so impressed that he built one. He'd made a super job of it too but he insisted on fitting an electric motor which was much too powerful for the airframe making the model very difficult to fly unless you throttled back and allowed the excess speed to bleed off, something which a beginner is unlikely to be able to do. We flew off a WW2 training drome and used the taxiway as a runway. The taxiway must have been twenty metres wide. There was a derelict accomodation block a few metres from the taxiway and if the wind was in one direction we had to take off passing the accomodation block on the left. LOC explained that he'd fitted a powerful motor to his Junior 60 so that he could gain height quickly to avoid hitting the accomodation block on take off. Unfortunately the excess power transformed the model from a very docile flier to an over-powered horror.

 

A few months later the club secretary died and we raffled off his models. These included a Radio Quen which LOC bought. One day he was coming into land when someone  called "Deadstick." LOC panicked and spread his Radio Queen deep and crisp and even all over the runway.

 

Someone gave him an A Certificate. I would never have done so.

 

As for yesterday's shenanigans, if the chairman was concerned about a tailplane which was not horizontal and the centre of gravity was too far to the rear, why did he fly the model at all? Perhaps I should have inspected it. 

[Cuban8]

22 hours ago, john stones 1 - Moderator said:

I'm gonna disagree, choose a model to suit the man himself, what you learnt with is irrelevant, so is your love of it. For some it is difficult, they never get were you got, Franz is an old lad probably some health issues ? Get him on an Apprentice and let technology help the man have some fun.

That's excellent advice - if for whatever reason a new flyer turns out to have ten thumbs and has no idea of his left or right and up or down, then if the model can be programmed to more or less fly itself with just the occasional nudge from the pilot, then why not?

Trouble might be convincing the 'patient' to accept the techy help.

Edited May 12 by Cuban8

[Paul De Tourtoulon]

19 hours ago, David Davis said:

our club chairman who once finished tenth in the French Nats

Is his name, J C Caia ,.

[David Davis]

3 minutes ago, Paul De Tourtoulon said:

Is his name, J C Caia ,.

No.