Sitting in the plane or not ?

[Ed Alt]

Xavier:
Wow, really interesting question about where you look and how you picture things.  I don't know about others, but I can't even put my finger on what I do most of the time.  It becomes fairly automatic after a while I guess.  I know that when I was trying to learn rolling circles at first I had to think well ahead of the airplane, in terms of where it was going to get the circle and cardinal points right and also what was going to keep it from just wacking the ground.  What began to help for me was to picture how I wanted to push the tail of the airplane around with the elevator and rudder.  If I focused on that, I usually didn't scare myself too much and eventually it became fairly well engrained.  However, it seems like at the end of every winter, it takes a few outings before that becomes comfortable and automatic again.

BTW, this is one of the few things that I believe that a simulator can really help with.  Although you can't really picture a 3 dimensional box and place things properly, you can get stuff like where to push the tail into "muscle memory" fairly well. 
Ed

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Xavier Mouraux 
  To: discussion at nsrca.org 
  Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2004 8:49 PM
  Subject: Sitting in the plane or not ?


  Hello again,

  I was reading Don Lowe's column in RCM and was surprised at his recommandation to beginners RC pilots: "establish yourself as in the cockpit ... and then the control motions required never change".

  I havn't flown outside for a few month now so I can't try to verify what I do. I am asking you guys who may have notice it before. Do you fly like you are sitting in the airplane or you look at the plane and move the sticks automatically ?

  Another question related to flying: Were do you look when you pilot an RC plane ?
  a) The plane in general
  b) The nose of the plane
  c) The tail of the plane
  d) Some distance in front of the plane (were you want it to go) 

  Thanks 

  Xavier

  note: I have not been in this hobby for very long so I don't know everybody's history. If someone could give me a small resume of Don Lowe, I will appreciate.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.f3a.us/pipermail/nsrca-discussion/attachments/20040207/e6f14005/attachment.html