My progress with Multiflight

[Vimana89]

I was lukewarm about simulators when I started trying to fly, but multiflight is helping me improve my skill so fast that I would totally recommend it or any other decent simulator to anyone starting out. It is not a side road, not a distraction, not another step in between me and my goals. It's a shortcut. It's a force multiplier, and a great way to improve really fast without sacrificing any actual rc planes or materials. Its also a good way to try multiple styles of plane before buying or building and diversify your talents. If I had known all this to begin with, I would have downloaded it before ever buying build materials or a RTF plane. This would have pointed me in the direction of buying or building a much easier plane to begin with, and saving my crazy homebrew delta shenanigans for a time when I had the skills to build and fly.

Ultimately, I cannot recommend Multiflight enough, and its turned me on to sims enough that I'd even possibly try another sim, maybe even one that costs money, if its got a different lineup of planes to try out. I took safe mode off of my hobby zone trojan today when I flew, and it is not particularly beginner friendly without it, but I was able to keep it in the air for quite a while before a mild crash. That's leaps and bounds after just a day on the sim, an hour or two here or there.

The planes I'm focusing most of my attention on for multiflight are the parkmaster pro, the the shark, the fun cub, the flying wing, and the funjet.
The last two on that list were the two most challenging planes on the whole sim to me at the beginning, because flying with elevons was felt very strange and intimidating at first. I had no clue how to execute proper turns this way, but I flew them as much as the planes I did good with because they will diversify my skillset, improve my skill fast, and teach me how to fly elevon builds like my slender delta. I'm in the process of working out what I'll want for a trainer. I'm thankful that Dr. Loopin' Looie offered to design a trainer with my input, and I can't wait to discuss it with him and see what he comes up with. Whatever it is, I know it will be awesome. My backup plan is a custom TT designed to feel a bit more like a parkmaster pro, using its tail and rudder configuration and perhaps a similar wing shape as well.

 

[DamoRC]

Sounds like a plan. Just keep in mind that simply adding the Parkmaster pro tailfeathers to the TT may not give you significantly different or better flight characteristics. The P-Pro is a mid winged, no dihedral wing which will behave very differently to a high wing with dihedral or polyhedral when you add yaw /rudder input. That being said, there may be some combination of the PPro/Shark and TT that will give you the characteristics you are looking for - it may take some experimentation.

 

[Vimana89]

Sounds like a plan. Just keep in mind that simply adding the Parkmaster pro tailfeathers to the TT may not give you significantly different or better flight characteristics. The P-Pro is a mid winged, no dihedral wing which will behave very differently to a high wing with dihedral or polyhedral when you add yaw /rudder input. That being said, there may be some combination of the PPro/Shark and TT that will give you the characteristics you are looking for - it may take some experimentation.

I figured that might be the case. If I want similar handling to the p-pro I might have to build a more similar plane with a mid wing, and I'm not sure how I feel about that for a trainer, although I like the p-pro a lot...something home built might not handle quite as smooth, so I might be better off with a high wing trainer with dihedrals. I'll have to see.

 

[Vimana89]

Something I just thought of, since I hardly use the rudder on the shark and its not really necessary. A plane basically exactly like the shark, with no rudder and twin booms, just a nice big elevator and ailerons. I've seen explorer variations with twin booms, and those are nice. Why not a shark?