Need Help Flying Backwards and Inverted

[ChitownMatt]

Can anyone provide tips for practicing backwards flight and inverted?

I keep practicing and practicing in Phoenix, but I just can't seem to get my head around it.

Thanks for any advice.

[Nycatt]

Put yourself into a nose in inverted hover first. Now gently push the elevator forward to move the heli away from you. Move it for about 10' then pull back on the elevator to stop it, then turn the tail around and do the same to get it back to you.

[Aeolus1]

Put yourself into a nose in inverted hover first. Now gently push the elevator forward to move the heli away from you. Move it for about 10' then pull back on the elevator to stop it, then turn the tail around and do the same to get it back to you.

+1



One thing that help me was turning down the sim speed to 60%, once I got the hand movement I return the settings back to normal. Another tip, if you're in upright hover left rudder-left aileron makes your Heli go left, in inverted it makes the Heli go right, vice versa.

[flybar_mike]

Practice practic & more practice. Eventually things start to work right in your head as muscle memory kicks in. I still place a high focus on smooth control movements and keeping things level. I also found it easier when i had forward (or backward) momentum to start with. As soon as I slowed to a stop my brain got confused.

[LN400]

Another way you could go about it to learn backwards flight:

First, use the hover as the starting point and return to start often, like really often, for the first times. You should be able to hover in all orientations. Let's start with upright hover.

Next, no need to take on all controls at once when you don't really have to. From the hover, play with tilt. Work on how the cyclic makes the heli tilt and how that tilt will cause the heli to move IN WHICHEVER DIRECTION you tilted it. Bring it back to hover often and repeat.

Since you can make it move in whichever direction you tilt it and down cyclic will tilt it tail first, making the heli move tail first. Do just that. Make the heli move tail first. Back to hover. Then nose first back to start. Back and forth until there is absolutely nothing strange about how the heli moves.

Work it into your mind what you're doing here is controlling the tilt and the heli obeys, no direction is more special than others. The disc is round and has no front or rear side. Pick a part of the heli, like the tail and say "tail first", down cyclic to a small tilt will cause the heli to move tail first. Make corrections to keep the heli move along a straight line.

Next up is yaw. First scrap left VS right and replace them with counter clockwise VS clockwise. Yaw is rotation and CCW/CW makes more sense for rotation.

Now think about this for a few minutes (Captain Obvious at first but bear with me):
You're in forward flight and want to make a left bank turn. We'll also assume you have a hh gyro here. First of all. Left turn, what does that mean in the first place? It might not be the obvious answer. Left turn is relatively to the flight direction, the flight path across the sky, NOT where the nose is pointing.

Ok, so your heli is in forward flight, nose leading and makes a nice flight path across the field. Now that left turn.Which side of the heli is facing the left side of that flight path? The left side, right. So, left+back cyclic to start the left turn. However, the nose is still pointing in the same direction as before because we haven't told the hh gyro to change that. Now we'll tell it but we need to know what to tell it.

A straight line curving off to the left but the nose still pointing in the old direction. CCW or CW yaw to point the nose into the turn? CCW right?

Back to hover. Backwards flight. Again the heli is on a nice flight path across the sky tail first. Left turn.

Which side of the heli is facing the left side of the flight path? The RIGHT side!
Ok, so right+up cyclic to start the left turn.

The tail however is still pointing in the same direction as before (thanks to the mighty hh gyro) so we need to tell it to yaw the heli. CCW or CW? Again, CCW!

So backwards left turn, right+up cyclic and CCW yaw.

In upright flight, all left turns (that's left of the flight path, not the nose remember) take CCW yaw. All right turns, CW yaw. Nose first, tail first, whatever first, makes no difference. Always CCW yaw for left turns and CW yaw for right turns. Remember yaw is to rotate the heli to keep the same side of the fuse leading through the flight path.

Try sideways flight:

Let's pick left side of the heli leads into the flight path. Let's make another left turn.
First, which side of the heli is facing the left side of the flight path? The tail. So down+right cyclic and CCW yaw. Right turn: The nose is to the right of the flight path so up+right cyclic and CW yaw.

Bottom line is, keep track of which sides of the heli is facing the left and right side of the flight path and which side is leading and which side is trailing the flight path.

[clicky]

As before: don't try to imagine this or that. Put youself in heli or watch your body from height...

Just practice slow pirouettes. Nothing else. Slowly rotate helicopter around main shaft trying to keep it stationary. Slowly as not faster than 6s a rotation, but preferably much slower (10-15s per full revolution would be even better).

Practice it on sim and with real helicopter. First on sim of course.

I have practiced it with real heli (Mini Titan) a few inches of ground. The moment I felt uncomfortable or was of impression it is going to be out of control I would just sit heli back to the gorund. Nothing else.
If you get to learn how to do them (both direction) then moving helicopter around at any direction (nose first, tail first, or sidewise) is going to be easy. Flying it backward or pirouetting all the time, flying it sideways - all will using muscle memory you built up learning slow pirouettes.

Exactly the same applies for inverted. I learnt upright pirouettes and then moved in inverted flying around (I was able to hover nose in and fly lazy 8s nose forward inverted), but didn't really learn to fly inverted and be comfortable with them until I took mCP-X and started pirouetting it senselessly inverted until built up muscle memory with slow pirouettes.

And extra bonus (at least for me): the moment i learnt to slow pirouettes (upright) I didn't have any crashes due to orientation (upright). Same was applied on inverted - did crash a few times - even my beloved MT while learning inverted flying. But not after - not due to orientation issues!

[PauloG]

Matt,

Just wanted to clarify your question... Which one are you asking:

1 - Backwards flying
2 - Inverted flying (there are 2 variation here, nose in and tail in)
3 - Backwards inverted flying aka inverted tail in

[Icanfly]

flying backwards is like a nose in hover. the right stick is opposite of normal, while pulling back on the right stick will send it tail first, the left stick will steer the heli to the opposite direction than the stick

Normal flight= sticks to the left or sticks to the right'
Backwards= left stick reverses flight direction,
flight to the left = left stick to the right, right stick towards the left (sticks together),
flight to the right = left stick to the left, right stick to the right (sticks out).

Try this and I'll follow up with the similar but slightly different inverted stick orientations, but they aren't hard, I just want to say it as simple as it should be.

Also practice the rotating hover, but make very slow pirouettes.

[txheli15]

I think it's best to learn one orientation at a time because learning to fly (or learning a new orientation) is really nothing more than developing muscle memory. And if you're trying to learn two or more orientations at the same time, it confuses your brain, and slows down the process of developing muscle memory.

How is your forward flight skill? Do you still need to think about which stick to move in which direction? If so, you should stick to forward flight until it becomes second nature (that's when your muscle memory takes over).

Learning to fly backwards (or any other orientation): Learning a new orientation is not like going back to step 1, it's going back to step 1. Do the exact same thing you did when learning to fly forward. Learn to hover, learn to hover in every orientation, learn to hover from point to point, learn to hover in a box pattern without changing your orientation, learn to hover in a box pattern while the heli is pointed in the direction of travel, slowly introduce banked turns to your box, turn the box into a continuous banked turn, etc.

[Swedishe]

Hey,

I've been working backwards flight for 6 months on the sim and IRL. I am only now getting comfortable with it and moving to backwards hurricanes.

For me, nobody has really been able to 'help' me learn to fly a particular maneuver, other than giving me the basic stick movements. My learning is basic on memorizing weird 'rules' in my head and applying them until they feel natural. I'm sure if someone could read my mind, what was going through my head when I was flying would make no sense to them hahaha!!

[ChitownMatt]

Hey everyone,
A million thanks for your time and thoughtful responses.

IRL, I'm still working on slow upright piros.

Its in the sim that i am trying to seriously experiment with inverted and backwards.

Its funny because I can fly backwards just great tail-in.... Heck, I could do that even before I could turn. Lol. But as soon as I try backwards nose-in or in a turn, my thumbs turn into clubs. Inverted, I can sorta get around, but not very well. No where near well enough to try anything more than just holding my flips for a few moments, IRL.

Thanks again for all the help....
BTW, coming up on my first anniversary of CP, in January. Been lots of fun learning this great hobby. Just re-read some of my very first HF posts and my entire evolution from just trying to hover through FFF, first flips and rolls, etc. is very well documented here. A year from now, i'll probably look back on this post and laugh.... Hopefully. Lol.

[colcha]

In addition to practising slow stationary piros, if you fly Mode 2, one tip when learning circuits is to think of your left and right stick movements as either coordinated or uncoordinated in relation to one another.

For example, when you are flying upright forwards circuits, your left stick will tend to move in the same direction as your right stick ie. the sticks are coordinated. When you are flying upright backwards circuits, your left stick will tend to move in the opposite direction to your right stick ie. the sticks are uncoordinated.

Upright forwards - Coordinated
Upright backwards - Uncoordinated
Inverted forwards - Uncoordinated
Inverted backwards - Coordinated

Hope this helps

[ChitownMatt]

Colcha,
Yes, that is exactly the help I needed. It is starting to click now.

And everybody else' post suddenly make a whole lot more sense to me. When I read them last night I felt like I was reading a scholarly journal on theoretical mathematics.

Nycat's
Suggestion to keep it in front of me and go 10' forward and then bring it back also helped me a great deal with getting my head around the elevator control.

But the coordinate/uncoordinated advise really helps me get my mind around the turns. I'm kinda thinking about it as Backwards and Inverted sticks are opposite of each other. Backwards the rudder leads the turn, and inverted the aileron leads the turn.... haven't gotten to backwards inverted yet.

Now that I can do it, its just a matter of practice until my thumbs learn to do it without my brain instructing them.

Thank you all for your help. I'm sure I am going to come back to this thread and re-read all the posts over the next few days as I keep working on it.

Thanks

[HelisRock]

I found that backwards wasn't too hard, but nice backwards banked turns were difficult until I changed my strategy in the Sim. I didn't get anywhere flying straight then trying to turn. Instead, I tried flying in a continuous circle around me and experimented with each stick (very slight movements at first). It really helped me see exactly what stick movements did to the flight path (turn on smoke). When you feel comfortable doing that, turn the circle into a box, with 90 degree turns, then into a triangle with 120 degree turns, then into an elongated oval with 180 degree turns. After that, figure 8s in all orientations in front of you.

The Sim is the perfect tool because you can experiment and crashes are free. You can also slow the sim speed down to 80% (or less) if you need to, and then work up to 100%. Work on it until you feel comfortable before trying it on the real thing, otherwise you'll spend more time fixing than flying.

[Bbknucks]

I am just about a year in as well my friend and am about the same stage as you... When I first started backwards upright flight u was putting it in the dirt a lot and I just stuck with it remembering to push through the turn instead of pulling (elevator) I did it so much that when I would try forwards flight I would crash!! But once I got the hang of it I I started inverted forward flight witch was about four days ago and I am able to fly inverted circuits now pretty easily but then I couldn't do backwards flight!! So since yesterday I have been doing a couple minutes of figure 8 in each orientation and i feel its helping me retain and sharpen my skills in each orientation...

But backwards inverted is really kicking my sorry butt! Haha

Good luck to you and maybe ill see you in phoenix

Mark

[HiVolt]

The realization that I had to come to (because I'm not too bright) is that in backwards flight I fly with the tail. If I want the tail to go up, I push the elevator up. In inverted flight I fly with the nose. If I want the nose to go up, I push the elevator up. May not work for everyone, but seemed to get me over the hump.

[newhelliguy]

Originally Posted by Bbknucks

I am just about a year in as well my friend and am about the same stage as you... When I first started backwards upright flight u was putting it in the dirt a lot and I just stuck with it remembering to push through the turn instead of pulling (elevator) I did it so much that when I would try forwards flight I would crash!! But once I got the hang of it I I started inverted forward flight witch was about four days ago and I am able to fly inverted circuits now pretty easily but then I couldn't do backwards flight!! So since yesterday I have been doing a couple minutes of figure 8 in each orientation and i feel its helping me retain and sharpen my skills in each orientation...

But backwards inverted is really kicking my sorry butt! Haha

Good luck to you and maybe ill see you in phoenix

Mark

backwards inverted is the same as forward upright except it turns in the oppisite direction

[Itzo]

To break up the monotony of practicing piro hovering, you could try to rotate the heli 90 or 180 degrees while stopping it from forward flight. After playing around a while with that, I found that I could piro hover quite decently without ever really practicing it.

I've found that the more I think about inverted flight, the harder it gets. Just fool around. Your thumbs will learn it before your brain does. That's my philosophy, at least