How i learnt to hover

I've been enjoying the Huey for several months now but there was a pretty major aspect that, no matter what i tried i just couldn't master. Of course i'm talking about hovering. While i saw a little improvement I couldn't keep anything like a steady, stable hover or transition back to, erm what i could do in the way of hovering.

I have been using a HOTAS Warthog just sat on my desk, today i received a Helicopter extension from a UK seller on ebay. What can I say but

WOW!!!!

Last night i was unable to hold a hover 3 feet off the tarmac, today - 10 minutes after installing the extension i was about 20 feet off the deck at Nellis holding a steady hover, I then flew over to the race track and flew a circuit, landed pretty much where i planned to before flying back entering another hover and landing back on the helipad where i took off from.

I was sceptical that this extension would have little, if any bearing on my (lack of) flying prowess but instead i'm flying better than i ever have after having it for less than an hour. Money well spent.

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Extremely jealous. :joystick:

It has made such a difference. I really struggled to fly Helicopters with anything close to competence. This has changed that, I have already seen massive improvement. Pretty amazed really.

It has made such a difference. I really struggled to fly Helicopters with anything close to competence. This has changed that, I have already seen massive improvement. Pretty amazed really.

Congratulation :thumbup:

Flying helicopters really depends on a good control tup.

Great to see that kind of extension. Is this original Thrustmaster?

The longer arm increases the sensibility of your control inputs by 3 times and you also have the chance to rest your arm on your knee, which increases stability.

If you add a collective, it will be again a lot more ( easy is the wrong therm) natural and thereby your already developed skills showing up suddenly.

This might exactly be what I was looking for so long, but: Can the TM base hold the stick in center position when the grip is offset from the center due to the curve? That's a very heavy grip on top of a very long lever.

Don't know what seat you're using, but if its an office chair consider cutting out a small section of the seat base between your legs to allow you to pull the stick back all the way, costs nothing other than some black tape and allows you to get your forearm resting on your right thigh. You'll soon get used to just manipulating the cyclic with your wrist and fingers only.

Sweet! I'm jelly :)

Yep,

To see how better it is, I first duck taped a (half) broom stick to a TM1600 to just see what it would be like. A LOT more control.

Now I have the VKB Gunfighter 200mm. Makes for a huge difference with choppers and aircraft. Good balance around the 200mm if your into both.

Extensions work like any lever force, doubling the length of the arm will half the input for same movement, so you need to move twice the range to get same original input.

So if original lever distance was from gimbal axis to grip base a 4" (as example) and with extension it goes to 16", then it is 4 > 8 > 16 and so on quarter of the input with same movement.

This makes very huge difference when considering that with helicopters pilots fly with fingertips, using wrist mainly for larger maneuvers like tight turns or fast stops.

So considering that when in hover and balancing for a centimeters position, you are moving cyclic just millimeters if even that.

That just ain't possible with table top length stick.