How Do I Learn To Fly R/C Models?

When R/C model aviation is featured in movies or TV, the storyline frequently depicts an inexperienced cast-member picking up the control box, and flying a model airplane around the neighborhood cul-de-sac or schoolyard.

Reality:

• Most people will totally destroy a typical glow-fuel-powered model aircraft within 30 seconds of assuming the controls without skilled intervention.
• Typical glow-fuel-powered model aircraft fly far too fast and use up far to much real estate to operate out front of the house or even in a school yard.

OK-- there are those 1 in 1000 James Bond types that can do anything, and have successfully taught themselves to fly model airplanes. But piloting a R/C model is extremely difficult. Far more difficult than piloting a full-size airplane. When you are setting in the cockpit of a fullsize craft, you have all your seat-of-your-pants senses to tell you if the wings are level, if you are climbing, descending or turning. With models, you only have a distant view of the object as it moves through the sky. If a wing or the nose drops in a full-size airplane, you see and feel and hear it immediately. You feel it in the pressures on the stick or wheel in your hand.  With a model, you only see the action, then your brain must translate the distant vision into a proper control correction.

And here comes the real gotcha-- if the model is moving away from you, the control correction for that drooping wing is one action, and if the model is moving towards you, its the opposite. For example, if a model moving away from you rolls to it's right (right wing drops, left wing rises) then left aileron is used to correct that roll. However, with model coming at you, when the model rolls to the right, it appears from the pilot station that the roll is to the left. Instinct says to correct with right aileron, which worsens the problem.

Instruction from a skilled pilot is the key to keeping the model in one piece for more than a few moments. For the first few flights, the Instructor performs the takeoffs, landings and other low altitude flight, then gives control to the student once the model is in straight and level flight, 2 or 3 mistakes high. The student learns how to control the model, coming and going, in turns, climbing and descending, until he/she has mastered basic flight. When the student looses control, the Instructor takes over long enough to bring the airplane back into control.

Typically, it takes from 8 to 16 days of instruction, with several flights each day, before a student has the skills to fly the model "solo" or without an instructor ready to take over. Our field lease requires the club to maintain liability insurance, and our AMA insurance requires that all flyers be certified by a instructor prior to solo flight.

This page last updated 08/18/02 01:11