One of the hardest things to do on a heli is to learn to hover. Helis are, by nature, unstable. Some have described it as balancing a marble on a large mirror. Or standing on a basketball. I think the point you should be taking away from this is that it’s FRICKIN HARD to hover a helicopter.
Once you have mastered the basic hover, you can start to learn the other hover stuff. You have to learn to react if the heli is facing left, right, or straight at you.
Straight at you is really hard. It’s all the complexity of a regular hover combined with the fact that everything is now backwards.
After a bit of time on the sim, I went to the field yesterday for some practice.
I started by getting a good hover and doing some side-in practice. Then, I climbed up to about 30′ and went out about 50′. I turned her around and held her for about 30 seconds. After a brief landing to stop my hand jittering, I flew out again and held it for another 30 seconds or so.
After that, my heart couldn’t take anymore. There was too much adrenaline in my system to fly any longer. I packed up with one dead battery and 2 still fully charged and went home.