Why am I so bad at piro flips even after 2 weeks of training? need help (video)

[wab223]

Good for you. We are just jealous.

[jmtyndall]

Man I thought I was moving quick. This guy piroflipping at 6 months is impressive. Im at 15 months and I have on and off days. My good days I can do 2-3 continuous on the deck. Off days I can't get any to look good. Congrats man

[FailureToFly]

Remember Kodak has done what normal people would do in 2 years in 6 months. He's pouring himself into the flying and simming. Mode 2 and that level of dedication will reap considerable rewards in this timeframe.

This IMHO is why we sometimes see 12 yo kids that can fly amazingly inside 12 months. They don't have much else to do so sim all the time and naturally get really good quickly.

The main thing is to progress and not burn yourself out!

[jmtyndall]

I slowed the sim down to 50% last night. I take back everything I ever said about being able to do piroflips. I must just get lucky a lot lol

[kodack10]

Originally Posted by FailureToFly

Remember Kodak has done what normal people would do in 2 years in 6 months. He's pouring himself into the flying and simming. Mode 2 and that level of dedication will reap considerable rewards in this timeframe.

This IMHO is why we sometimes see 12 yo kids that can fly amazingly inside 12 months. They don't have much else to do so sim all the time and naturally get really good quickly.

The main thing is to progress and not burn yourself out!

For the record I'm 40, have a full time job, and several other hobbies. I do have a passion for flying though and that translated into a lot of stick time after work for real, and late into the night on sim.

You can 'learn' to fly 3d by reading and watching how tricks are performed but you won't be able to do them. You fly 3d by doing something enough that your mind is able to know what to do in any orientation without thinking about it. The only way to get yourself to that point is constantly seek to get outside of your comfort zone. If you don't feel a little overwhelmed after 10 minutes of doing it, then you're making it too easy.

That being said I'd probably still be stirring like crazy and calling them mad pyros if it weren't for the fine gentlemen of HeliFreak and excellent youtube videos by some damned good pilots who take the time to slow it down and take the equivalent of drifting a car through a rally course while continuously doing donuts at 100mph, and break it down into achievable steps that while difficult, are not impossible to do.


My latest 'just for fun' video.




When I had trouble doing controlled piro flips I started taking inputs out of the flip to simplify it. Got comfortable doing that with control, then switched to different inputs and took the others out. IE no aileron. Elevate to tail down, 180 piro, elevate to nose in inverted. You're never piroing at the same time you're moving collective but if you do it fast enough, it looks like a piro flip and since there is no aileron involved, you can easily control the flip and mostly hover in place. Then you do the same thing instead of elevator you use roll. When those get comfortable, try to blur the lines a little and start working the piro in sooner and sooner while trying to keep the flip under control. That was the eureka moment for me that took me from trying to time it, and concentrating on the stir, to being able to do it with some control and at varying speeds.

Sometimes we can fake ourselves out and think we're doing it right when we're only getting lucky. The way to test yourself, try varying the piro speed and see if your thumbs adjust. IE start a very fast piro flip routine and make it go slower and slower each flip and see if you're staying in sync or not. If you can do it fast but can't do it slow, then you're cheating yourself and trying to 'memorize' a timing.


When you're not practicing, set full rudder trim to force the heli to continuously piro. You will crash a lot. You will curse all things heli. But at a certain point you will just find yourself flying like normal even as it spins around. Then you start over doing the same thing but inverted.

Basically learning to piro flip an a lot of other piro moves is kind of like flying with a bad rudder servo but you are expected to be able to compensate for it with the other controls.

[jmtyndall]

Our piroflips look pretty similar, but I'm doing 720/360 piroflips. I'll keep working, Im sure ill get it some day.

I don't think he was calling you 12. I think he was saying that when us old hacks see a young guy flying for 1year who can smack on the deck and we're flying for two years and can't fly half as well, we get mad. But it's about how much time is put in.

For the record, this old hack is 25 :p

[FailureToFly]

I know you're not 12. Figured you were in your mid 30's from your vids but what I posted is because people all the time forget the investment when it comes to wunderkid flyers. People our age often say the young are better but don't consider the dedication and sheer time they put in. You like I said a month ago are compressing the hobby so you get good quicky.

You have likely already done similar work to what I did in 2 years! I am at 2 3/4 years atm and 'need' another year and a quarter of hard work to knock off the piro moves like globes, all orientation piro circuits, pogo's etc and get my smack moves really happening. Then probably another year to really tighten up the stuff so I can compete. Now this would clearly just be for fun, but this is a goal for me even though I'm middle aged. It's fun, you meet people and it gives you something to work towards in the hobby.

[kodack10]

Yep, it takes years to get really good an the way I look at it, I now have a good foundation upon which to build my skills. I think the thing I like about heli is there is a little bit of danger, more so than with planks, and it's very challenging. I like challenges and it's partly because it's so difficult that I'm drawn to it. I think if it were easier, like some of these GPS enabled quad copters I would have lost interest quickly. On the other hand, give me something like a Stingray that can fly in any orientation but crash in a heartbeat and I'm hooked.

[wab223]

Personally I do not feel I could have gotten to where Kodack is in 6 months even had I made that commitment. I think it takes a certain skill set as well as dedication and desire. I don't think I necesarily have all 3 of those things at the same level. I am quite content with the way the hobby is progressing for me. But to be honest it would be great if I was better. I think just knowing how to go about progressing at certain sticking points is a skill in itself.

Well done Kodack.

[kodack10]

Originally Posted by wab223

Personally I do not feel I could have gotten to where Kodack is in 6 months even had I made that commitment. I think it takes a certain skill set as well as dedication and desire. I don't think I necesarily have all 3 of those things at the same level. I am quite content with the way the hobby is progressing for me. But to be honest it would be great if I was better. I think just knowing how to go about progressing at certain sticking points is a skill in itself.

Well done Kodack.

Thanks. Lol, if you only saw where I was at when I started. I almost gave up and that was just trying to hover. I must have gone through 4 tail booms just trying to get the heli to hover without crashing. It was pretty bad.

Then I got the Nano cpx and if it crashed I could just pick it up and try again instead of waiting for parts. Great little heli. I'm not good at flying but I'm trying to be. My moves are still quite sloppy.

[DoubleCH]

All roads leads to Rome. There are different methods to learn and master piro flips. Some methods work better for certain people but not for others. My ways of learning things (not just flying heli 3D) have always been unorthodox. What works for me may not work for you but I like the way I learned piro flips because I progressed pretty fast IMO, I hardly relied on SIM (hack I even practiced mostly on my 300X which is darty compare to bigger birds like my Protos 500, and most importantly I hardly ever crashed learning it (once I was cocky doing constant piros fast and low and once I was cocky doing it close to a tree and had no room to bail out, both cases could've easily been avoided).

Before reading my boring lengthy post on that, perhaps this will spark more interests when you see what I achieved in 3.5 month's time since beginning, especially considering I didn't need to learn inverted hover in all directions (and I still don't bother to learn inverted hover tail-in to this day). In the following video, the first 40 seconds I piro-flipped my stretched protos at only 2000rpm HS which was so slow the motor couldn't maintain HS under load so collective management and stick movements overall had to be smooth. The rest of the video was piro-flipped at 2250rpm HS which was still low consider the 470mm blades.

My Stretched Protos Piro-Flip Over White Cloud Background (2 min 10 sec)

Like many, I started learning piro flips by doing half flips and then stop piroing. However, that's when I stopped there using that method because learning half flips is one thing, transitioning it with constant piroing is a MUCH harder job. With continuous piro flips you don't start out with tail-in and have the tail flipping straight up. The tail is rising up at an angle because the heli is constantly piroing. As a result, I was rushing the transitions like OP and many people do and it just went nowhere. That's when I figured I had to do it a totally different way.

I then started by practicing constant piros, both upright and inverted, and I had to be able to maintain the disc pretty much flat most of the time plus able to move the heli back to towards pretty much center where I started. Despite what everybody suggesting to learn hover in all directions before learning constant piros, I skipped that step. To me learning constant piros is actually easier than learning to hover in all directions. I don't have to worry about tail-in/nose-in, reversing aileron/elevator directions, etc. All I have to do is to keep the tail level. On upright hover, I note the tilting disc. When the tail drops towards the lowest point of the tilting disc, I quickly blip forward elevator to bring the tail up. Vice versa on inverted hover, I wait for the tail to drop towards the lowest point and I quickly blip back elevator to bring the tail up. Similarly, when I want to move the heli into a certain direction, I wait for the tail to spin towards the opposite direction to the intended travel and then blip elevator to raise the tail. Whenever I feel like out of control situation I just remember to get to zero collective and wait for the tail to drop towards the lowest point and bump elevator to level it. If I fly high enough I usually get the tail to drop to the lowest point at least 2 or 3 times for me to correct. If I miss the 1st one I have the 2nd or 3rd chance (except for that 1 time I got cocky and did it low and fast). Just remember don't panic and don't try to use collective to save it which will usually go from bad to worse.

Once in a while during constant piros when I feel confident I'll do a "half stir" to flip from upright constant piros to inverted constant piros. I call this method "connecting the dots". Since I've been practicing to maintain a level disc during constant piros, my "half stir" can be however rough resulting in the disc totally not flat and I'm still able to correct it -- by noting the tilting disc and raising the tail when its getting to its lowest point. That's it! This is what it's like on week 1.

My Blade 300x Flight #1624 Keep Practicing Inverted Piros... (4 min 50 sec)

Week 2 was just to keep practicing and doing more "flips" in between. Since I can take my time between flips I don't have to rush transitions like I would do in the other learning method by connecting "stopping half flips".

My Blade 300X Flight #1652 More Piro Practice (5 min 10 sec)

By week 3, I was already using my Protos to practice which BTW is easier than with my 300X because Protos is bigger, much more floaty and more like slow-motion, just more scary because of the bigger crash cost factor. From there, I just needed to be confident to be ready for flips quicker so I could flip more often between constant piros.

More Piro Flips Practice with my Protos (4 min 18 sec)

Before the 1st month was done, it's time to start thinking about finessing the flips. Instead of doing a quick stir to quickly flip from upright piros to invert piros or vice versa, I started thinking how to make the flip take longer duration of the piros. That means I can up the piro rate, bump collective before flip to buy more "hang time", and I had to shake what I called the "flip and catch" habit and replace it with slower cyclic magnitude smooth stir. That was when I started to focus on matching the stir frequency and phase to the piro frequency and phase. At the time I was experimenting different things so it took me longer than expected to advance. The key is actually simple. Just match the height of the tail to the height of the elevator. When flipping from upright to invert, cyclic stick should stir to 12 o'clock position (elevator at its highest point, only forward elevator no aileron) when the tail is at its highest point and similarly stir to 6 o'clock position when the tail hits the lowest point. Vice versa when flipping from invert to upright, cyclic stick should stir to 6 o'clock position when the tail is at its highest point and similarly stir to 12 o'clock when the tail hits the lowest point. The higher the stir magnitude, the sooner the transition between upright and invert occurs. Soon, aiming to stir 1 full rotation for a flip becomes aiming to stir 2 full rotations.

My Blade 300X Flight #1710 Connecting the Faster Dots Slower (5 min 26 sec)

By the second month, I started practicing with faster piro rates which is harder to get the timing right but helps making the flips take longer duration of the piros (i.e needs more cyclic stick stir rotations). Since I have been practicing the timing for so long it's time to ramp up the piro rates to make things "easier".

My Blade 300X Flight #1837 Piro Flip Practice at Faster Piro Rate (2 min 23 sec)

This one before the second month ends

My Blade 300X Flight #2016 Testing Narrow AOV Lens on Super Hot Day (5 min 41 sec)

From 3.5 months on as I posted the video in the beginning of this thread, I''ve not been focusing on finessing my piro flips any more. I just do it as I feel like it and I don't even care too much if I can piro flip it at 1 spot as long as I can move the heli back towards center while piro-flipping.

Here's how I do it now, quite a bit over the place but I can do more continuous piro flips and do it lower with more confidence.

Piro Flips Are Best Watched in 60fps (2 min 54 sec)

Here're some sloppy ones I did yesterday because it was windy and blowing in the worst direction -- in my face, but at least I accomplished the goal of making a stick-movement PIP video which I hope is informative. Note the cyclic stick stir frequency/phase matching that of the piro's.

My Stretched Protos Showing Stick Movements (2 min 40 sec)

[Colin Broughton]

Nice post Chris thanks for sharing

Flying is improving and what your doing is working by the looks of it.

Your transmitter holding is very unique, sometimes pinch, sometimes thumb, sometimes hybrid switcher haha.

[kodack10]

Originally Posted by Badhelipilot

Your transmitter holding is very unique, sometimes pinch, sometimes thumb, sometimes hybrid switcher haha.

I haven't quite decided on a grip either. I've tried both and find myself switching stances for different moves. The thing is the thumbs are very fast and they can cover the entire stick range very easily. But pinch is precise but less fast and is a stiffer movement. I think if you only used pinch and your fingers loosened up and got used to it that you could get very close to the speed of thumbs but switching works well for me. I do my flips with thumbs and most everything else, but certain moves like the funnel tic tocs and precision flying I will switch to pinch grip. I can do any move in either stance but some just feel right and others feel forced.

As far as not learning the orientations, it seems that might limit you in the long run. I look at what I've learned as building a solid foundation and it will support me in whichever direction I decide to go, rather than learning specific moves from the get go and only practicing them to the exclusion of everything else.

I could piro flip after a few weeks of practice at it, but the orientations becoming subconscious is what allowed me to have the control I wanted and to branch out into other moves like piro loops and funnels, somersault figure 8's etc. Some of the stuff I'm doing these days I don't even know what they might be called hehe.

[DoubleCH]

Originally Posted by Badhelipilot

Nice post Chris thanks for sharing

Flying is improving and what your doing is working by the looks of it.

Your transmitter holding is very unique, sometimes pinch, sometimes thumb, sometimes hybrid switcher haha.

You're welcome. It's my pleasure.

I started way back with pinch for precision but some time after that I somehow transitioned to thumb-on-top-with-index-finger-on-the-side so I could use wider range of stick movement with just thumb. I didn't even realized that at some point I transitioned to what I do now which makes sense. It's pretty much thumb for big stick movement and index finger to feel center stick position when needed or when precision is desired.

[DoubleCH]

Originally Posted by kodack10

As far as not learning the orientations, it seems that might limit you in the long run. I look at what I've learned as building a solid foundation and it will support me in whichever direction I decide to go, rather than learning specific moves from the get go and only practicing them to the exclusion of everything else.

I just merely suggest that I've seen many many people get stuck at the stage doing half flips like you in the beginning not able to smoothly transition or rushing to transition to continuous piro rate flips and too focused on moves like inverted tail-in hover that aren't prerequisite IMO. It's not like inverted tail-in hover is hard to learn. It's just boring to learn for me. There are many many more interesting moves to learn than inverted tail-in hover and like piro-flips to me these new tricks don't require inverted tail-in hover as a pre-requisite.

Talking about learning hover and constant piros, it's funny a friend of mine is learning to hover his msr clone with not much success for some time. One day at the field I told him the trick above leveling the tail in constant piros. It's like an instant "click" to him so I pulled up the sim at the field and right there he was able to do constant piros without losing control or runaway heli much longer than he could hover!

I don't usually force myself to learn a particular move I just do whatever I feel like. This piro-flip challenge started off with one of my buddies wondering who in our group would pick up the piro flip skill first before the end of the summer. I've seen/read about people when they learn a new trick they learn the move in it's mirror-image. Not me! I have great respect for them but I would rather learn new easier moves. Did you know that it's easier for the heli to do fast funnel moving to the left side which means CW-nose-down-upright, CW-tail-down-inverted, CCW-tail-down-upright, and CCW-nose-down-inverted? These are the directions where a heli with CW-rotating main rotor naturally wants to move into. Did you know that it's easier to do piro-circuit with the piro direction the same as the circuit direction? It's like throwing a curve ball where it naturally wants to curve into the same direction is spins. Sure it's challenging to learn every trick both ways, but again like I said there are many more interesting moves to learn to force myself learning certain moves the mirror-image way. And again, like I said, my way of learning things are always unorthodox, but I chose them because those are the ways I feel most comfortable in the process. YMMV of course.

[jmtyndall]

This is a common way to do piro hovers but it's really a bit of a handicap. With that said a ton of really good pilots only correct in one orientation when doing a piro.

[Kap'n Krunch]

Originally Posted by jmtyndall

This is a common way to do piro hovers but it's really a bit of a handicap. With that said a ton of really good pilots only correct in one orientation when doing a piro.

waiting to correct in one orientation that sounds like a re-kit waiting to happen

but i could be wrong

[kodack10]

If you piro fast enough it would take an expert to spot what you're doing if they can't see your sticks. The hand is definitely quicker than the eye and that holds true to a heli spinning around like mad. One of the things I would do with the sim is record it at 60fps with Nvidia shadowplay and play it back at a lower speed so I could see what I was really doing. I think everyone corrects at some points and not others but at a certain point it doesn't matter. IE very little difference in most piros correcting in 4 orientations VS 8. Slow piro though, you can't fake it. I remember the first time I did a super slow piro flip and kept it going I felt on top of the world.

[DoubleCH]

Today's vids with stick movements:

Human slow-mo piro flips.

Piro Flip Stick Movements Human Slow-Mo (3 min 52 sec)

Stronger pack (too bad the vids missed the hard flying parts).

Piro Flip Stick Movements with My Strong Pack (3 min 38 sec)

[DoubleCH]

Originally Posted by Kap'n Krunch

waiting to correct in one orientation that sounds like a re-kit waiting to happen

but i could be wrong

When I do piro travels I correct in only 1 point. Like i said, that's when the tail drops to the lowest point. You can even see it in my stick movement videos. Like I said I've only crashed twice thru' the entire learning process from piro travel to piro flips. And those 2 crashes were only because I got cocky and flew low.