Fear of losing orientation. Any advice?

[Ringo]

Hello!

New fixed wing pilot here! I just started flying RC around the very beginning of 2017. I started with 5" quads that I built, running 4C. I learned very quickly how to fly them by crashing quite frequently in my field, but luckily those frames take a heck of a beating! I am very comfortable and proficient with it now, but mainly FPV or keeping the rear of the quad facing me (even doing crazy acrobatics that way.)

I've since kind of gotten bored of quads and am very much more interested in fixed wings. I found and joined a flight club near me and have had instructions on how to fly fixed wing. The hardest thing for me is overcoming my fear of losing orientation of the plane and crashing it, or worse, flying much further away and losing it over an area I don't want it to go.

Does anyone have any tips for this? With a quad I would just blip the throttle up and down while giving it a roll direction like say right, and then if I saw it go left I would give yaw to correct until the rear was facing me. Or if I noticed it went down when I gave it throttle, I knew I was inverted and could correct quickly. This is much much harder for me with fixed wing as you don't get that luxury, hah! I have a hard time telling if it's inverted or not and which way it's pointed (away or towards) but that might also be due to my fear and lack of confidence.

I appreciate any help! Thank you (ps, looking to get some of those FT scratch build kits and use my unused 2204/2205/2306 motors for them ...should be cheaper to fix these planes or replace if I crash.)

 

[Geeto67]

unless you are flying a flying wing type aircraft - just look at the airplane. Airplanes are not symmetrical, It's pretty easy to tell the direction which one is pointed. You should not be learning to fly fixed wing from an FPV perspective.

If you are piloting a flying wing, paint the different sides of the aircraft different colors. not just top and bottom but left and right as well.

you should be able to tell the front of the airplane, airplanes don't fly backwards.


As far as flying too far away, pick 4 landmarks at your flying field. don't fly past them. You are required to maintain visual contact with your aircraft at all times so pick landmarks that you can see clearly. you should not be trying to fly your airplane a half a mile away by fpv.

 

[Ringo]

Definitely not flying that far. I fly on about 22 acre farm.

Maybe I might need to go see if I need glasses then or something, as it can be difficult to tell if the plane is facing me or not.

 

[TexMechsRobot]

The hardest thing for me to overcome was when the plane was flying towards me. I would want to turn the plane to my left and so I would push the stick to the left and the plane would bank to its left which was my right. Even though I knew this logically, it wasn't second nature.

The way I got over it was to fly lazy ovals or circles in a way that at some point, the plane was flying directly at me. But since I was already giving it input to stay in the predetermined pattern, I was able to force my brain into doing the correct things with the stick. It's a little hard to explain. Mostly though, it was just a lot of practice with docile planes. A high-wing trainer that isn't twitchy will give you more time to react so you have time to think. Once it become second nature, you can move to planes that move faster since your reactions will be faster.

 

[Geeto67]

Definitely not flying that far. I fly on about 22 acre farm.

Maybe I might need to go see if I need glasses then or something, as it can be difficult to tell if the plane is facing me or not.

If the plane is flying directly at you, it's probably too low.

I get it though, If you are flying on a farm then you are looking at an airplane against a wide open sky with nothing else in your field of vision to provide a frame of reference. That can be a little disorienting, It's the problem I often have with simulators, but being an east coaster/mid-westerner I'm usually by some tall trees when I fly in real life.

Something that might help is to paint the nose of the airplane red, orange, or another bright color different from the fuselage color to make it stand out. In the Golden days of flight before radios were a common thing, a lot of airplanes had the nose, wings, and tail painted a different color so that ground spotters could see how the airplane was oriented. This is especially true of training aircraft and where the military trainer paint scheme comes from. Case in point:




As you can see, some designs, like the tiger moth, would even point the direction of the airplane.

Even as an experienced pilot, the thing that I still struggle with is when the plane is flying close to me overhead, it's sometimes hard to judge it's attitude. I sometimes can't tell if it is climbing or diving when I am looking almost directly up at it. The way to get rid of that is practice. I find when I am in that situation I start looking at airspeed - if it is speeding up then I am diving, if it is slowing down then I am climbing. You'll never have 100% orientation all the time with an airplane, the secret is to be calm for those moments until you can re-orient.

 

[Geeto67]

double post.

 

[Ringo]

Awesome! Thank you for that info. Looks like I'll be applying some paint. I think I'm going to buy a couple of those FT DIY planes and use my dusty, left-over quad parts. I'm hoping that the lighter plane will help me buzz around more and give me more practice, but I worry about my wind as it's usually always windy here (currently 16 mph.) Will these small, light planes be even flyable in that kind of wind?

And hopefully the 4S 1500 lipos and 2306/2205 motors won't be too much power or weight.

 

[TexMechsRobot]

.....but I worry about my wind as it's usually always windy here (currently 16 mph.) Will these small, light planes be even flyable in that kind of wind?

Not very well. An experienced pilot could possibly maintain control if the plane had some penetration and could even feasibly have fun with the challenge of flying in that kind of wind. FT planes are usually too light with too much drag to fit that bill though. I wouldn't recommend flying, especially learning to fly, in that kind of wind.

 

[Bricks]

For me the easiest way to tell if plane is coming towards me or away is give a touch of aileron and see which way it banks. If I give right aileron and it banks left it is coming towards me, same for rudder.

 

[ElectriSean]

I found that logging a bunch of time in a simulator helped get over the problem of orientation. My first 2 days I would crash every time I turned left, it was pretty painful lol. Once you build up some muscle memory you'll be fine.

 

[JimCR120]

For me it's always a mind game. I constantly picture myself in the plane and fly from that pseudo perspective. I first learned on cars when the same thing happens and soon realized that I just have to steer as if I'm in it. Planes do add another dimension. Heli's and multirotors mess that thinking up though when I don't fly forward.

 

[foamtest]

I would spend a ton of time on a simulator, even if you cant afford a nice one get a free one on your phone. Even though it won't be as realistic it will give you the core muscle memory to get you flying more than crashing. Plus lots of sims have wind that you can use to practice flying in wind, but I would wait until you're proficient at flying in no wind before this though.

 

[Ray K]

For me it's always a mind game. I constantly picture myself in the plane and fly from that pseudo perspective. I first learned on cars when the same thing happens and soon realized that I just have to steer as if I'm in it. Planes do add another dimension. Heli's and multirotors mess that thinking up though when I don't fly forward.

I think Jim has the right of it. I too am an experienced pilot and it's much easier to imagine you're in the cockpit, just another flight. It'll come to you.

 

[PsyBorg]

I learned in the last 6 months flying the Gremlin line of sight so much to not care about orientation and watch the direction it moves more. If I get disoriented I do a smooth fine change on one axis only and then adjust from there once I reorient as it continues that smooth change. The key as stated above is to take that deep breath and not panic. This is harder then regaining control at first. Quick changes in that panicked state will lead to a crash every time.

 

[Ringo]

I found that logging a bunch of time in a simulator helped get over the problem of orientation. My first 2 days I would crash every time I turned left, it was pretty painful lol. Once you build up some muscle memory you'll be fine.

Mind if I ask what simulator you used? I've just now started looking, and hopefully whatever it is I can use my Horus with OpenTX on it.

 

[SlingShot]

For me it's always a mind game. I constantly picture myself in the plane and fly from that pseudo perspective. I first learned on cars when the same thing happens and soon realized that I just have to steer as if I'm in it. Planes do add another dimension. Heli's and multirotors mess that thinking up though when I don't fly forward.

I'm with Jim here. I try to place myself in the cockpit as well.

Currently using RF-X and RF-8 here. Both are great, but the RF-8 takes user created airplanes also. You can fly some FT planes on it.

 

[Ringo]

I learned in the last 6 months flying the Gremlin line of sight so much to not care about orientation and watch the direction it moves more. If I get disoriented I do a smooth fine change on one axis only and then adjust from there once I reorient as it continues that smooth change. The key as stated above is to take that deep breath and not panic. This is harder then regaining control at first. Quick changes in that panicked state will lead to a crash every time.

The very first time I flew fixed wing (with never picking up a simulator or getting instructions) was one of those rare times I felt an adrenaline rush in my life anymore, especially having been airborne infantry and deployed (keep in mind I did this safely on 22 acres that's in the middle of about 200 acres of farm land with nothing to hurt during a crash.) I went in knowing I would most likely crash.

Now I just get frustrated with crashing because it means I can't fly again until I fix it, and I've developed almost like a "flinch" when shooting, but where I pre-panic at the slightest bit of orientation loss, and I think that really magnifies it.

I'm going to look at simulators to figure out which one to get and hopefully I can use my Horus opentx radio with it.

The approach you said for orientation is what I use with 5" quads that go 70+ mph and I can zip those things around everywhere, but I don't have a fear of breaking them ...due to how much stick time I've gotten with them to just get the muscle memory.

My fixed wing RC instructor actually had to "fix me" by cutting the throttle on a glo trainer at high altitude to show me that cutting throttle wouldn't mean an instant crash, as I was used to quads hah! He said it was the first time he ever had to do that.

Anyways, I do appreciate everyone's input. It makes sense that I should get a simulator and just practice on there to get comfortable and not ingrain any bad habits (makes more sense now that I think about it ...as people should dry fire pistols way more before shooting live ammo in order to train the brain on what to do before adding that stress of the "bang" which most often leads to people flinching and pointing the muzzle down right before.)

 

[ElectriSean]

Mind if I ask what simulator you used? I've just now started looking, and hopefully whatever it is I can use my Horus with OpenTX on it.

I have RealFlight 7.5, the version that came with a Tactic 610 radio. I think there is a version that will work with other transmitters, using some sort of adapter, but I didn't really look too hard into it. I'm not even sure if 7.5 is still available, but I've heard that the newer versions require a lot more computing power.

 

[rfd]

others prolly have already posted this - get a LOT of stick time on a flight sim and aircraft orientation will become second stick nature.

 

[Tminak]

Awesome! Thank you for that info. Looks like I'll be applying some paint. I think I'm going to buy a couple of those FT DIY planes and use my dusty, left-over quad parts. I'm hoping that the lighter plane will help me buzz around more and give me more practice, but I worry about my wind as it's usually always windy here (currently 16 mph.) Will these small, light planes be even flyable in that kind of wind?

And hopefully the 4S 1500 lipos and 2306/2205 motors won't be too much power or weight.

If someone has not pointed it out to you I highly recomend you DO NOT use any spray paint or and paint that uses an aerosol propellant as the aerosol will melt your foam on the model. Learned this after trying to prime some terrain for my warhammer table :s