Help! My hovering sucks.. help!

[Steve_B]

As the title says; my hovering sucks. I see guys who make it look totally effortless, their control surfaces hardly move, I'm fighting my models like they are wild animals.. it's frustrating

Other than 'pratice practice practice'.. do you have any tips?

Steve

 

[njswede]

Subbed and followed with great interest! (My hovering kind of sucks too...)

 

[flylow3d]

Hovering is a lot about practice only because it's not just a set of stick inputs you have to learn. It is a maneuver that requires constant attention and corrections. On a calm day, the plane should hang fairly effortlessly and require very small inputs. On a windy day, you will have to fight the plane more to keep it in the hover so greater inputs will be required.

I think the easiest thing to do would be for me to tell you some of the issues I have seen when people are learning to hover. The first major thing is not enough throttle. I constantly see people fighting the plane only because they don't have enough power and the plane is actually sliding backwards which makes it EXTREMELY hard to stay in a hover. My suggestion for this would be to make sure the plane is climbing very slowly while you are trying to learn to hover. Instead of trying to keep the plane in one spot, let it climb vertically very slowly. The second problem I see is people over correcting. An easy way to see if you are over correcting is to bump up your expo on everything and see if your hovers are better or worse. If your hovers are more stable with more expo then you are over controlling.

Hopefully that helps a little.

Let me know if I need to clear anything up.

 

[njswede]

Thanks! I've gotten to the point where I can hold a stable hover if I climb ever so slowly, but as soon as I try to stay stationary, it sometimes starts to wobble. Most of the time, the plane falls over towards the canopy and I have to pull out. I think my problem is finding the sweet spot on the throttle. Should I try to find the sweet spot or should I rely on pulsing the throttle?

 

[flylow3d]

Pulsing usually works well if you can't seem to find the sweet. Some planes I pulse the throttle and others I just hold it in the sweet spot.

 

[Steve_B]

Thanks Joe,

that actually helps me a lot. I see guys (in videos) hovering effortlessly, their planes almost appear to be locked into a stable hover, and wonder why I seem to have to fight so hard. 'The wind' is most likely part of the answer, it's very rarely calm here. the other part of the answer no doubt comes down to skill/practice.

One thing that doesn't help is that i don't want to crash my nice balsa models, so I hover high. That makes seeing what the plane is doing (especially climbing or descending) difficult. The answer is to try hovering lower but I'm too chicken. I should probably get a foamy to practice with (but foamy models just don't appeal to me much).

Steve

 

[3dNater]

Pulsing usually works well if you can't seem to find the sweet. Some planes I pulse the throttle and others I just hold it in the sweet spot.

So would you say that this throttle pulsing idea kind of goes back to your earlier idea about hovering being a move that requires constant attention? I am getting the feeling that you just treat the throttle like the other control surfaces. If it needs adjustment then adjust it and be active with engaging the whole plane. Do you find yourself pulsing the throttle just to gain more control authority on the tail surfaces?

 

[flylow3d]

Yep, the throttle is basically another control surface. It will require costant adjustment most of the time. On calm days you can find that sweet spot and leave the throttle alone for a few seconds but that's about it. Yes, I do tend to pulse the throttle more when I notice I need more effective tail surfaces. Most of the time, full rudder might not be enough to keep the plane from falling out but by pulsing the throttle a little bit it will help make the rudder more effective.

 

[njswede]

Hey Joe!

Just checking in with some feedback. I took a break from work for a few minutes and flew a foamie in the backyard and tried to think about what you said and it made a huge difference. Here's the thing: When the plane was about to, for example, fall backwards toward the canopy, as a non-3D flyer your instinct is to give down elevator. When that didn't work (due to lack of airflow), my instinct was to give even more elevator and, voila, I started overcompensating and messed up my hover.

Instead, as you said, I treat the throttle as a control surface, so when the plane is about to fall out, I just increase the throttle a tiny bit and give a tiny elevator (or rudder) input, and it straightens right away. The key for me was to understand that the plane is about to fall out due to lack of throttle, not lack of elevator input. Kind of a "duh", I know, but I needed to have it pointed out to me.

I love this forum! Things that are probably obvious to you end up being huge AHA-moments for us mortals. Thanks again, Joe!

 

[flylow3d]

No problem at all...That is great to hear!!!!! Congrats.