RCaero Aerobatic Trainer

RC Aerobatic Trainer started with a pretty simple question: how do you show someone what RC aerobatic maneuvers actually look like, how they can flow into one another, and what both the airplane and the transmitter sticks are doing along the way?

The reason was personal. My son was learning to fly RC planes and wanted to understand more than just the names of the maneuvers. He wanted to be able to picture them in space, see how one move can lead into the next, and get a better sense of what the pilot is actually doing with the controls.

So I built this little trainer.

You can pick maneuvers such as loops, rolls, Immelmanns, Split-S, Cuban Eights or hammerheads and combine them into your own sequence. Then you can play the whole thing in 3D, pause it, scrub through the flight, or switch between different views to see the shape of the path more clearly.

While the plane is flying, the trainer also shows what is happening with the ailerons, elevator, rudder and throttle, together with the stick positions on the transmitter. You can switch between Mode 1 and Mode 2 and adjust things like the size and shape of individual maneuvers.

It is not meant to be a full flight simulator. The idea is simply to make aerobatics easier to understand and easier to imagine before trying them in the air.

Even the 3D scenery has a personal connection. It is loosely inspired by the real place where we go flying. The runway, road and surroundings are based on that airfield — and there are two tiny characters in the scene as well. Boy is standing there with the transmitter, flying the plane, while I am sitting nearby in a camping chair watching him.

That part obviously does not make the trainer any better. But it does make it feel a little more like ours.