Any good learn to fly sites ?

Your best bet would be to download FMS - its a shareware flight sim and put in lots of practise with it.

Ed

Simulator Links:

Thanks everyone for your responce. I have a copy of FMS that I bought on ebay a while ago, but I couldnt get my TX gear to work with the lead I bought to go with the CD, so I just wrote the whole thing off as a waste of time. I may have a rethink.....

Thanks again, Joe

As you probably already realize, you can't learn to fly by reading something. The only thing that will get you the skills you desire is to practice practice practice, and practice some more.

If you're totally convinced that the club is a big group of mean people that exist just to make your life miserable (It couldn't be that they are in the club to fly their own planes... Nah! They're there for the express purpose of teaching me to fly, even though when I've developed my flying skills, don't expect me to do the same for the next newbie to come along. This is MY hobby, and I can't be bothered to give up my precious flying time to teach some stranger to fly.), a lightweight electric park flier and lots of trial and error are the order of businiess.

About my little diatribe: So many people complain about the "lack of service" they receive from clubs when trying to learn to fly. If these people are so angered by the treatment they get, why do they do the EXACT SAME THING to the next newbie to come along? Answer that question, and you'll hit on the EXACT SAME REASONS the people at the club have for not giving you their undivided attention. They're in this hobby for their own enjoyment! They have precious little free time in which to enjoy their hobby! They spent lots of money on their own planes, and they want to fly them, not let them sit around collecting dust while they fly other people's planes! They don't feel comfortable teaching someone else because they doubt their flying skills!

| Thanks everyone for your responce. I have a copy of FMS that I | bought on ebay a while ago, but I couldnt get my TX gear to work | with the lead I bought to go with the CD, so I just wrote the whole | thing off as a waste of time.

Just for the record, FMS is free. You paid for the interface cable, which is really quite easy to make yourself.

Still, a simulator can help, but it's not everything. You might want to give the club another try -- I don't know how people are on that side of the pond, but around here every club I've visited has been full of very friendly people.

Let me add my comments to your diatribe..... I got awfully tired of teaching newbies that quit within a few months after solo because it didn't hold their interest. These people expect free and on demand service from club members and then don't support the club afterwards. As I look around our club (180 last year) we probably have about a 25% turn over rate each year. If 1 out of 10 newbies last 3 years it's a miracle.

Dan Dan Thompson (AMA 32873, EAA 60974, WB4GUK, GROL) remove POST in address for email

Hi Eamon and group,

Can someone advise on why I can't start crrcsim? I did all instructrustions for windows install, however, I get error message "application has failed because glut32.dll was not found". I put glut in directory "c:\crccsim" and also "c:\windows\system" and either way it does not work. I am not so computer expert so maybe one can help/advise, please....

OK, thanks, I am now enjoying FMS and need lots of practice and have no equiptment yet so no rush. My goal is to some day fly WWII fighters; Stuka, ME 109, Zero, Mustang, Spitfire, etc... Maybe even B-17and other multi engine bombers????

Have fun, Karl. email to: honda Ruehs At cOx Dot nEt aol email is shut off! :(~

Hey Karl,

I'm no computer expert either, and it has been a looooong time since I installed CRRCSim, so I can't recall the details of what I did.

However, at

======================

Step 3: Dowload the latest glut library from

Step 4: Unzip the glut-3.7.3-dlls.zip using a program like WinZip. You can put them into the directory where you unzipped crrcsim (make sure that winzip doesn't try to create a subdirectory within the crrcsim directory), or the c:\windows\system directory, whichever you prefer. If you plan on running other programs that will use glut, put them in the c:\windows\system directory.

======================

Okay - my ***recollection*** here is that I downloaded

Program Files\CRRCSim\glut.def Program Files\CRRCSim\glut.h Program Files\CRRCSim\glut32.dll Program Files\CRRCSim\glut32.lib

I checked my drive, and yup, the files are there. That's really all I can say! I've got an OpenGl compatible video card with whatever driver is required for OpenGL, the glut files above are on my disk in the CRRCSim folder, and it runs okay. I know nothing about graphics programming, and so I'm just a passive user of whatever these files are doing for me.

Regret that I can't be more definite. A brief Google search didn't turn up anything really helpful. I do recall floundering a bit with the CRRCSim installation, but in my case, when I eventually followed the instructions to the letter (I know, I know, RTFM) it went okay.

Hope this helps in some way!

On the plus side, sounds like FMS is running well for you. I hope that it helps to get you in a "flying mindset", like it and CRRCSim did for me.

Eamon

I wouldn't refuse to teach someone to fly because of that, and I hope you wouldn't either. You never know, the next one you teach might become club president some day :)

My main beef is with people who think they should receive the same kind of service from an R/C club as they expect from Wal-Mart. Yes, clubs should be working to bring on new members and get people into the hobby to make up for annual turnover, if not grow. This must be balanced with the individual members' own enjoyment, though. If you spend all your time at the field helping out newbies, and never get to fly your own planes, the hobby is no longer fun. When the hobby is not fun, it becomes very easy to give it up completely, and we've lost another modeler.

It's not all about bringing in new people. It's also about keeping the people we have.