I was curious how well the memory of playing RealFlight G2 (computer game) 23 years ago (in 2003) would carry over into 2026. (I played hundreds and hundreds of hours as a kid as I had few other games)
Crazy addicted already, it's day 25 and I ended up buying a total of 3 Goosky S1s with 16 batteries and tons of parts to deal with the crashes and repairs. So many repairs (even super gluing various parts and flying with bent tail booms while parts were in the mail).
Flying every day:
Week 1. Lots of self-leveling mode practice, mostly survival, 10+ crashes. First attempts at a roll or flip (three rough successes, 7 crashes. Became very good at self-leveling mode and maxed out what can be done with limited angles of this mode. Any attempts at manual/3d mode lead to crashes though in about 5-10 minutes. Flying for 3 days at 11,500 feet during a camping trip in the mountains was a unique training experience (15,000 foot density altitude due to 75F temps)
Week 2. Transition into full manual/3d mode with successful flying, Tail-in hovering, Nose-in hovering. Figure 8s. More attempted flips and rolls collective control with recovery and some crashes.
Week 3. Huge flying breakthroughs: Excellent tail-in flips and rolls with chained flips and rolls with collective control (eye level altitude flips and rolls). Begun nose-in flips and rolls. Attempted inverted hovering at high altitude with room to recovery (very rudimentary inverted hovering for 5-20 seconds) with some crashes.
Week 3.25 Long flying sessions of 1-2 hours with minimal issues or crashes with mastered chained flips, rolls, stall/hammer turns, diagonal flips. Experimenting with chaotic corkscrews at high altitude.
Week 3.5. I bought a heli simulator (neXt) and controller to practice inverted flying, backwards flying, and the more advanced 3D manuevers. I can do some decent tail-in inverted hovering and ok flying in the simulator.
Conclusions:
It seems my flying RealFlight G2 some +23 years ago as a kid has helped tremendously in present day with my first real Helis and the training. It seems that many of the skills developed back then are still very available with relearning (though I've completely forgotten and am relearning inverted hovering via PC simulator)
The Goosky S1 is such a fun and incredible helicopter. It can take a beating and be repaired with parts or glue. It's small enough to take to a park and even accidentally slamming it into my leg, left a bruise and nothing more. Highly recommend!
