Learn to Fly

TORKS Instructors give free Intro Flights to anyone who isn’t yet a Member, at any age. The club provides the trainer aircraft and the radio. Your transmitter is linked to the Instructor’s with a buddy box, so they can take over at any moment. You don’t risk anything, and you can find out whether you like the hobby before you buy any equipment.

When to come

Learn to Fly Sessions are on Thursdays from 5:00 pm until sunset, at the Field.

Training is only in the summer season, while daylight saving time is observed: from mid-March to early November. There are no Thursday training sessions in the winter. Private sessions can be arranged.

Instructors also stay home when:

• there are whitecaps on Lake Hefner (too windy to learn)
• it’s over 105°F (too hot to learn)
• there is lightning within 5 miles of the Field

To let us know you’re coming, or for any questions, call Bob at 405-812-7303.

After your Intro Flights

After two or three Intro Flights, you’ll need to join the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) and become a Member to keep training. Your Instructor can help you choose a trainer of your own to buy.

How your Instructor teaches you

Your Instructor teaches with a buddy box. Your transmitter is linked to theirs, and a switch on their transmitter decides which of you is flying the model.

On your first flights, your Instructor takes off, makes sure the model is flying well, and climbs to a safe height. Then they hand the model over to you. You fly while they stand right beside you, telling you what to do and what’s coming next. If the model gets into trouble, they take it back in an instant, set things right, and hand it back so you can try again. When it’s time to come down, they land it.

Each lesson, your Instructor hands you a little more of the flight. Once you’re comfortable in the air, you’ll practice landings with them ready to take over, then takeoffs. In the end you’ll fly whole flights yourself, with your Instructor on the switch just in case.

Because your Instructor can step in at any moment, a mistake costs you nothing but a little altitude, and you learn on a real airplane from your very first flight.

What you’ll learn

You’ll start with the basics: flying straight and level, holding a straight line at a steady height. Next come turns at each end of the Field, which make a racetrack pattern. When the model turns back toward you, left and right feel reversed at first; your Instructor will help you get the hang of it. After that comes a figure eight, with a left turn at one end and a right turn at the other.

Your Instructor is working toward one goal: you control the model, not the other way around. That means you can:

1. hold your altitude
2. make accurate left and right turns
3. climb and descend
4. correct for a crosswind
5. fly each part of the traffic pattern accurately
6. take off and land

Along the way you’ll learn the Field’s safety rules: never flying over or behind the pits, takeoff and landing etiquette, and the calls pilots make at the pilot stations. When you can do all of that safely, an Instructor will check you out to fly solo. The Field Rules include tips for Students.