A little aggravated!

[heli-insane]

Cannot believe no one has recommended buying a simulator! Real flight 6 or phoenix 4.0 would be a very smart investment!

Both will teach orientation and help to build the muscle memory required to be able to make stick movements without even really thinking about them!

I learnt most of the basics on phoenix and after trying a good friends real flight 6 decided i liked real flights physics alot better!

Add to that crashes are free and honestly in the beginning stages of this hobby could save you thousands of dollers!

Cheers Keith

[JRF79]

I would take it outside, rather than flying in the living room. Even with a little wind (<10mph) it's not too hard to control and much easier than flying indoors where you're limited by walls and a ceiling... it's the wind gusts that make it harder to control. With more room, you can make more mistakes without crashing and when you do crash, it's on soft grass instead of on your coffee table.

[ThomasHumble]

Originally Posted by JRF79

I would take it outside, rather than flying in the living room. Even with a little wind (<10mph) it's not too hard to control and much easier than flying indoors where you're limited by walls and a ceiling... it's the wind gusts that make it harder to control. With more room, you can make more mistakes without crashing and when you do crash, it's on soft grass instead of on your coffee table.

I agree with your assessment. Outside is much more forgiving. You also have more time to recover before hitting something.
The previous post also has some good advice. I mapped out my expenditures such that the simulator, Realflight 6, was the second purchase after the mCPx. However, repair parts purchases pushed that out, had to have something to fly!! It was my experience that the simulator really didn't begin to make a difference until after I could fly the mCPx.

[heli-insane]

I spent a full winter simming before even attemping to fly a rc heli! After my winter of training i was skilled enuff to skip the micro helis and went right for a 550 size heli!!!

Im now in my second season of flying rc helis and to this day i have not had one crash that wasnt a mechanical failure!

Ive experienced 2 crashes the first being the main bearings in my electric motor on my 600 exploding!

No chance of trying to auto rotate a heli when everything just locks up!

Second crash tail bearing failure! Successfully auto rotated that to the ground!

Living in northern ontario canada makes my flying season alot shorter then our fellow flyers to the south so simming has been a very important in helping me progress to the level i am currently flying at!

[PcChip]

That's awesome Heli-Insane, probably just shows that you have more patience than most of us - I was always constantly moving back and forth between the sim and real helis (even though I still crashed) because eventually the sim got boring and I just had to fly something!

[ThomasHumble]

Was a duplicate post and tried to delete... See below.

[ThomasHumble]

My thoughts exactly. Here in south Louisiana the flying season is 12 months! Very hard to waste a sunny day!

[gitbse]

Originally Posted by ThomasHumble

My thoughts exactly. Here in south Louisiana the flying season is 12 months! Very hard to waste a sunny day!

What a jerk.

lol. Gotta say i'm pretty jealous. However I'm not sure I would go flying in 95 degrees with 95% humidity.

Anyways, back to a few posts ago. The DX7 is discontinued, and for very good reason. That TX should've come with a few boxes of motrin or tylenol when you buy it, because the menus and programming on the dx7 gives everybody a migraine. I'm happy to never ever bother with it again.

Plus it's not made anymore, which is awesome. The Dx7s is the replacement, which is what I fly. It's basically a dx8, "light." I always recommend a dx6 first for budget reasons, but the 7s or 8 obviously will be better.

[Cmcdonald]

Upgrading to an aluminum swash plate. This will be the third swash plate that I've put on it, it keeps breaking where the rotor head linkage connects for some reason. I always kill the engine before the bird goes down so I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or if it's just the cheap plastic swash plate. Anyway, I'm having a blast flying it. Able to get up and hover and make some forward/backward movements. Got my DXi and 450 3D ordered for xmas, can't wait for the new radio to come in. As far as the DX7 or 8 I appreciate the feedback on it, I've been looking and reading about the 450 3D and it comes packaged with the 6i so it was just a no brainer for me to purchase since I was looking to upgrade radio's and eventually go to a bigger bird I get them both in one package deal. I'm sure when I get more adapt to the hobby those radio's will soon follow.

Thanks to everyone again for the feedback, you guys are awesome!

[ThomasHumble]

The aluminum swash is the way to go. I upgraded my early on to the Microheli for exactly the same issue, breaking. Mine would not break completely but just enough for the bearing to pop out at bad times. Never had another issue once I upgraded. One nice feature of the Microheli aluminum swash is that it captures the pushrods from the swash to the blade grips. Broke/lost very few after upgrade.

[rob.rice]

GET A SIM !!!ANY SIM!! JUST GET A SIM!!!
you can't learn to fly on a sim BUT you can learn what the controls do so you don't need to think
"I want the model to fly forward to do that I need to push the stick under my right thumb forward"
you can get a handle on orientations so you don't have to think" it's coming at me correct in the direction of error" you know what to do with out thinking about it

[13kawasaki13]

I would highly recommend a 4ch fixed pitch before you try the mcpx even though you already have it because it will help you with all the controls of the cp but it's a little more forgiving than a cp heli