Pain in the ….

[Paul Taylor]

Wrist!

I have been struggling with getting my inverted flight down. I think I found part of the problem. I fly with palm up and have a little pain when giving up input when inverted. If I rotate my wrist to more upright it does not hurt as much.
Time to teach an old dawg a new trick. 😂

[Ken Culbertson]

Wrist!

I have been struggling with getting my inverted flight down. I think I found part of the problem. I fly with palm up and have a little pain when giving up input when inverted. If I rotate my wrist to more upright it does not hurt as much.
Time to teach an old dawg a new trick. 😂

You are going to find that one the hardest to break of all the bad habits we accumulate, but it is worth it.

ken

[Motorman]

Have you tried Voltaren? I fly palm up inverted with no problems but, I've been doing it for 58 years. 

[Ken Culbertson]

Have you tried Voltaren? I fly palm up inverted with no problems but, I've been doing it for 58 years. 

A lot of us did it that way for that many years.  Then we got old and couldn't maintain that smooth turning motion and in came the hunting.  Took me two years to make the change.   I know some very good younger fliers that do the palm up thing that don't hunt.
I wish I could be here to see what they think of it when they are in their 70's.  Fixing it is not covered by Medicare.

Ken

[AMV]

I fly inverted with my hand tilted slightly to the right -- kinda like I'm "leading" it with the thumb.  No one taught me how, it just feels natural to me.  Is that bad?  Is it better to hold the handle upright, like I do in level flight?  Is there any advantage to a particular hold?

Cheers, 
-Andrey

[Ken Culbertson]

I do not think it matters much if you are not having issues with hunting and you have already committed it to muscle memory, but it might as you get older and it is an SOB habit to break.  It has to do with the turning motion while flying the inverted laps.  If you speed up or slow down while turning, or even move your arm horizontally you will be giving the plane up or down control that starts the hunting cycle.  Others here have explained it better than me.

Ken

[John Park]

I fly inverted with my hand tilted slightly to the right -- kinda like I'm "leading" it with the thumb.  No one taught me how, it just feels natural to me.  Is that bad?  Is it better to hold the handle upright, like I do in level flight?  Is there any advantage to a particular hold?

Cheers, 
-Andrey

Interesting - I generally fly with my hand tilted to the left - at, say, twenty after ten on a clock face.  Flying upright, I feel that my control movements are dictated by my index finger, which is 'in the lead', as it were: flying inverted, and 'leading' with my pinky (or 'little finger', as we say over here), the sense of control seems to switch automatically to the little finger. Like Andrey, I wasn't taught: it has just felt natural and comfortable, ever since I started learning to fly inverted by 'stretching' a lazy eight.

John

[Jim Kraft]

  I learned to fly inverted with a Jr. Ringmaster with a Fox 15X. After crashing and fixing it about 10 times, I put my thumb on the top of the handle. When the plane started getting to low, I pushed the panic button, the top of the handle with my thumb to outside loop to upright. I kept doing it over and over until I could do many laps inverted. So, I learned to fly with the handle vertical no matter where I am in the pattern. It feels very unnatural to me any other way.

  I am left handed, but learned to fly right-handed. I do a lot of things with either hand.

[Steve Helmick]

I don't think it's good to do anything other than keep the handle straight up & down at all times. When I came back to flying CL in the late 1990's, I discovered that I habitually leaned my handle to about 11 O'Clock when flying inverted. It took me a couple of years to get that cured. Unlearning bad habits is harder than learning it right the first time.  Steve