Beginner RC helicopter flying training

In the last beginner rc helicopter flying training lesson we flew large and fast figure of eight in front of your position not around your position. In this lesson you will learn how to nose in hover. This can really be very difficult for so many people but there are many not one way of learning it, we will discuss here the three effective ones.

Since you may well be flying those large figure of eight loops and that will make you think that you are not required to learn the hovering nose. But let me tell you that if you did not give enough attention in learning the rc helicopter controls in all directions and orientations, you will never be able to perform advanced aerobatics. Nose facing your direction is somewhat has been practiced by you in the earlier lesson or it will be felt the way that you are relearning flying rc helicopter. However by putting little extra effort for learning today’s lesson will be more beneficial in the long run and is very essential. Because, even if you are only keeping yourself stick to just basic flying like normal hovering and basic figure of eight loop, your rc helicopter will be forced to face nose in hover. I can be caused by gusting wind or may be a result of an engine failure, radio interference or your own error. Moreover as said earlier, this is essential to learn if you ever want to perform some simple and basic aerobatics.
You must be thinking that why am I rambling to make you understand that nose in hover is very hard. Well the answer is very simple; your rc helicopter cyclic controls get reversed when the helicopter is facing you. Try doing it yourself, turn the face of your rc helicopter towards you and turn on your radio and receiver. When you give a left cyclic the swash plate moves right. So basically the difficulty is in understanding the reversed commands you will be required to give when the rc helicopter is facing towards you. Same thing applies to the tail rotor command, it gets reversed too. But if you get yourself used to taking the tail rotor commands make the rc heli move in clockwise or anti clock wise directions instead of it being turning left or right, the direction of the rc helicopter will not matter.

However, never look at the tail when you are giving tail rotor commands. Some people may tell you to see how the tail rotor swings left when you give the left tail rotor command. Keep your focus on the nose; this is the right way of flying the rc helicopter. Having said that, it is also very easy to learn the counter clock wise and clock wise orientation instead of getting used to left or right tail rotor movement. By the time you come to this point of practicing nose in hover, you must have got the command over throttle control and collective pitch. Moreover, if you just do all the exercises learned earlier with getting the clockwise and counter clock wise orientation for tail command, it will just become a part of your reflexes and you will not face any difficulty just focusing the nose.

Before we start the nose in flying lesson there are few points which require attention:

Keep you training gear on; it will save your rc helicopter from a possible ditch and also will sever as a guide for visualizing roll and pitch movements easily.

Since you are getting another aspect of the command controls, if the cyclic duel rates are set to more or are turned off, you must reset them back to the factory settings, the same when you were doing the basic hovering exercises. This way you will be controlling the radio control heli the way it is supposed to in the hover in nose exercise.

There are three methods for learning the nose in hover, and you will learn three of them one by one. We will start from the same method we are used to i.e. the ground up hover method. Then we will see the flying approach method and finally look into walk around method.

Nose tip in Hover Ground up method:
This method is almost the same as you did in earlier exercise of basic hovering when you were a beginner rc helicopter flyer, but now you already know the controls of collective/throttle and commands of tail rotor. Stand in front of you rc helicopter keeping a distance of around 10 to 12 feet and make sure that the face of your bird is into the wind. To get the feel of the reversed commands in cyclic, safely, just give a little throttle to make your heli lighter on the skids. Just make it comfortable and then hover a little above the ground, up to few inches and practice there. When you feel comfortable start doing the backward/ forward/ sideways and diagonal commands and see how the commands have reversed effect on your rc helicopter when you are standing in front of it having its nose pointed at you. Make sure the heli remains into the wind direction. Once you have got the hang of that, try doing a long figure of eight loop, just at the end of each loop you will turn the rc helicopter towards you instead of turning it away from you as earlier. When you feel that you are comfortable doing the long skinny figure of eight loop, try doing the fast and large figure of eight circuit from the previous exercise. Keep the altitude high enough to get away from any mishap. There are many situations when you see your rc heli ditching at the ground but can avoid it through increasing the collective/ throttle and climbing altitude again to gain time for getting the control over your remote control helicopter.


You will be doing the nose in hover exercise in an open area, preferably a ground. This is good for whatever method you try for learning it but having plenty of room around you will give you enough chances to correct your skills incase you get disoriented. One more tip which is usually overlooked but is very important that choose to do fly in hover lesson in an overcast day. This way you will be able to avoid the scenario when your rc helicopter passes in front of the sun and your position. On that very instant you wilt blinded by the bright sunlight and those few seconds may cost you the expensive rc helicopter. Because losing sight of your heli will make you disoriented and by the time you will acquire the position back, your bird might get the blow of its life.

Nose in Hover Flying Approach Method:
This is another way to get the taste of reversed controls. In this method, the beginner rc heli is already flying, you just turn it slowly towards you to let your brain learn the reversal of controls when the nose is pointed towards you. The more you will practice the approach of rc helicopter towards you, the more you will get comfortable with the reverse control and the time will come when you be able to hover the heli having the nose pointed towards you. There are two advantages learning nose pointed to you while hovering. One is that your rc hlei will be flying high already so, you will be safe even if you make any mistake and the other is that the heli will already be in a forward flight which will make it easier for you to get the hang of it because rc helicopter is more stable in forward flight than in the hover.


The disadvantage to this method is that you get very less time practicing the nose is hover because most of the time the rc heli is flying and the only time you get to practice nose in hover is when the heli is coming towards you. The other disadvantage is the instant when the beginer rc helicopter comes towards you in the first few instances, those are the moments when you can get it or lose it completely, if you didn’t prepare your mind for the reverse control commands when the heli is approaching towards you. This way of learning is good for you if you are in rc airplane flying already. Since rc helicopters behave the same way as rc airplanes when they are in forward flight, it is all natural for an rc airplane flyer.

Walk Around method:
This method is a lot easier to learn nose in hover because you will be standing behind the heli when you start, the same way it was during the basic exercises. You will be at ease doing it just put the rc helicopter into the wind and stand 10 to 12 feet behind it. Start hovering 2-3 feet off the ground and gradually walk from left or right of the heli to come in front of it. This way will give your brain the gradual learning chance and you will be able to learning a better way this way. When in front, practice your left cyclic/ right cyclic/ forward and backwards.

During that practice whenever you feel disorientated, just move your position to a more comfortable one even get behind the heli to be able to control it the way you are used to. You will have to act fast for getting orientation back or you will ditch your rc hlei to ground and that will cost you moolah. And yes, try to be careful when walking to get in front of the rc helicopter because your focus will be on the heli and something may get you trip over. So make sure you clear all the hurdles you can come across. When you get comfortable being in front of the helicopter, practice all the controls i.e. backwards/forward/ sideways and diagonals.

If you have a good flight simulator for rc helicopter, make use of it because it will help you learn faster. The walk around method will not work with the simulator because your position remains fixed in a simulator. However other two methods will work just fine. Whichever method you choose to go for, just stick to it with the rc helicopter simulator too.

Here I will call it the end of the basic rc helicopter flying training lessons. With the last one being nose in front of you hovering, you are now open to some advanced aerobatic maneuvers and are even able to handle large rc helicopters. Look at you! You are now a skilled rc helicopter flyer who is able to fly in whatever direction, in other words you have full control over your rc heli. No more rc helicopter training gear needed for you, great flying there you rc helicopter pilot!

Fly RC Helicopter Training lesson

In the last post we learned how to fly rc helicopters around a fixed position in a large circuit circle at high speed. How about flying that fast and large figure of eight in front of you instead of around your fixed position? This rc helicopter lesson is quite similar to the practice we did while flying large figure of eight, just the difference is that today it is going to be fast, at good altitude and its going to be in front of you not around you.

For flying your rc helicopter today you are required to get the skills you learned from flying the transitional lift exercise and from the lesson of large figure of eight, combined and apply them for the best results. I hope I do not have to remained you to do the pre flight checks? 
I will suggest that you leave the training gear on even for today’s lesson because you will be taking your rc helicopter quite away from you and it is very much necessary to keep them on for your orientation. Also we will still use the training gear for your last lesson of keeping nose in the hover.

You must be having flying figure of 8 at your pulse now so, start your rc helicopter and start flying the skinny figure of eight around 5-6 feet hovering and in front of your standing position. You will start making the figure larger and larger with increase in speed forwardly and not forgetting to increase the altitude. It will be better if you increase the half loop of figure of eight at the intersection section of the figure so will just be rounding the eight more and more with larger circles. Here we are playing the large and fast figure of eight in front of us. You just need to be very comfortable with the orientation and which you must have intact by now by seeing your rc helicopter fly big figure of eight and taking these large turns.
Keep this thing always in mind that as soon as you feel a little shaky and feel a little out of focus, just slow down your rc helicopter or even land to regain your focus and confidence to try again. Rushing into things will only get your rc helicopter into a crash which you never want. It is always better to go slowly with things rather than crashing and lowering your moral. I really flew my rc heli for good twenty days in practicing while I started flying these large figure of eight because I switched to next step only when I felt confident and comfortable. If you are in possession of a rc helicopter simulator, nothing better than that, it will take you half the time to gain the things than practicing in the air physically. Its just that some learn it fast than others but there is nothing to be embarrassed about in taking time to learn it the proper way because fast learners may not be better in flying rc helicopter at advanced levels.

Okay after regaining your confidence get back to your rc helicopter flying training lesson of large and fast figure of eight. You will be increasing the size, altitude and speed of flight while doing the figure of eight but you will have to keep the effects of transitional lift in mind all the time specially while turning up and down the wind. You may want to bank your turns when the speed of your rc helicopter is high enough with good altitude. You must be having so much fun doing it that you will lose track of time.
Although it will be a little tricky to always having your rc helicopter turn away from you for the sake of keeping orientation, but try to do that for this point of time, you can turn the nose towards you by doing the reverse figure of eight once you are done with the last rc helicopter flying lesson of nose in the hover training lesson. While on the right side of the figure of 8, bank or turn left and when on the left side of the figure of eight turn right this will keep you from disorientation.

The rule which applied to the small loop of eight applies to this large one as well – Don't try to turn the rc heli towards you instead away from you. You will have to practice to bank right when turning left and when turning right bank left. This will keep you from disorientation. After learning hovering nose during last exercise, you can then do even reversing the figure loop of 8 or fly ovals with the nose of the RC helicopter even turning towards you.

There are some people who always turn away from their position and never try to learn rc helicopter nose in the hover. That is all good till the time they are enjoying it and their rc helicopter fly smoothly.

A Little RC Helicopter Aerobatic for the Joy of your senses:
I thought why not teach you a little aerobatic maneuver only if you are totally comfortable with today’s rc helicopter flying training lesson. How about a 540 stall turn instead of banking on each turn of figure of eight why not this stall turn.
You must increase the cyclic pitch dual rate to around 75% or least to 70%. Rather how about turning cyclic dual rates off and seeing the response of your rc helicopter. Your rc heli will become more responsive if you are with good reflexes and you have done your tie on large figure of eight forward flight rc helicopter training lesson. You will be just good with quick controls adjustment.

This aerobatic maneuver will make you an addictive so be cautious of the results. Yes you will get the full high of the rc helicopter hobby while doing this move. Okay, it is not that difficult here it is.

While flying your rc helicopter in figure of eight loops, to take turns you were accustomed to bank it. Now instead of banking to take turn, strat bringing the rc helicopter nose up by pulling back on the cyclic. When the rc helicopter starts to slow down, turn it 180 degrees to point it in the opposite direction of your turn. The main aspect to understand is to pull back on cyclic so your rc helicopter goes almost straight up. As the momentum of going straight up slows the rc heli, give tail rotor a 180 degrees turn and bring the nose towards the ground. Now rc helicopter will start to come to the ground and gain speed, pull it out of the dive as it gains speed, of course it touches the ground.

You may want to do a little mild stall and give your rc heli a 45 degree instead of bringing it straight up and then add the tail rotor when it slows down while going up. You may not achieve a 90 degree stall but more practice will make you achieve closer to that.
That’s all for today, practice and more practice will make you have full control on your rc helicopter hobby and I believe you must be having great time learning these rc helicopter

flying lessons.

See you soon with last lesson of rc helicopter flying.

Tonja

RC Helicopter Flying Training Lesson

How to fly RC helicopter? was the question when you started to dream about flying RC Helicopter but not anymore because with all the previous flying lessons and today's comprehensive training lesson you will feel more addicted to this hobby.
Here is the next RC Helicopter flying training lesson to give you the real taste of flying RC Helicopter in this hobby. Today we will learn to hover RC helicopter at much higher altitude and will fly RC helicopter at a much faster speed. This one is an advanced lesson of your RC helicopter flying lessons. We will learn about transitional lift and will see its application in the forward flight. We will have large flying circuits around our fixed position, which is similar to the earlier lesson but the difference is of the flying speed and the altitude. Will be starting slowly with a smaller circuit and slower speed and will gradually increase the circuit diameter and the speed too. So, practically we will flying a 100 to 150 feet in diameter circuits with the speed fast enough which will demand you for bank it a little to counter the centrifugal force which tries to pull it outwards. To be able to fly RC helicopter at that much of a speed, you will have to keep the altitude high enough too anywhere 15 to 35 feet. You are thinking right that today’s mistake is going to cost you dollars.

Preparing your RC helicopter for the flying training lesson:
You will have to increase the collective pitch range which must have been at the beginner’s learning setting by the RC helicopter manufacturer for most general flying. Most of the RC helicopters come with the setting of minus -3 degrees negative pitch, at low stick and plus + 10 degrees positive pitch at high stick, not more than that. You will have to increase the dual rate through on your right and left roll rate cyclic too in order to get the roll cyclic controls more responsive. You can leave the pitch cyclic dual rate as it is but if you want to have more pitch control you are allowed to do that.

What is transitional lift?
When you start to hover RC helicopter and then get it moving, you might have experienced transitional lift during your earlier RC Helicopter flying lessons. The transitional lift is the extra lift produced when wind or moving air collides with moving rotor blades. Actually the speed the wind is passing through the moving rotor produces equivalent lift to the RC helicopter as if it was moving with the speed equivalent to the wind speed. The rotor system becomes a bit more efficient when wind pass through it hence produces more lift. This effect is called ‘effective transitional lift’ in the real world of helicopters or simply ETL. The increased efficiency is directly proportional to the velocity of the air passing through the RC Helicopter blades. Effective transitional lift is added with the speed your RC helicopter is moving since ETL depends on the air speed not the ground speed. You may understand with this small example: if you are hovering your RC helicopter facing the wind and the wind is blowing at 30 km/h, the ETL produced will be equivalent to the lift created by RC helicopter moving at the speed of 30 km/h provided there is no wind.

Transitional lift is produced even when you fly rc heli backwards or sideways or when you see tailwind or cress wind. The amount of air passing the rotor blades will produce either by RC helicopter movement or wind will create Effective transitional lift. We only used forward movement of your helicopter in the above example because that is what we are going to practice today.



Having collective pitch RC helicopters is what is needed to control ETL, that is why we the real RC helicopter Hobby people stay away from fixed pitch RC helicopters. I asked you to start your rc helicopter flying lessons in a calm day when there is no or very little wind because of ETL. If you were to start flying your RC helicopter in gusting wind and while hovering it you will experience sudden bounce in the hovering height of the RC helicopter. As a beginner of RC helicopter flying you might not be able to react fast enough to control this constant shift in lift and might have come across a crash, which would have caused your motivation to break and a hole in your pocket.

One very practical example I want to give to make you understand the practicality of effective transitional lift effect. What do you think will happen when you are flying a large circuit at 30 km/h and the wind is gusty at 30KM/h? As soon as you will point nose into the wind the ETL will double the lift and it will be 60 km/h. Well now that you complete half the circuit and wind is gusting from your tail end…. Yes the ETL will be zero and your RC helicopter will face a sudden decrease in lift and drop. To counter this you will have to increase the throttle or collective. You need to remember this while doing fast circuits in high velocity winds, you will have to increase throttle when turning opposite of wind direction to save your RC helicopter from sudden drop and an ultimate crash. This is specially required when you are flying large RC helicopters and at lower heights. Do this or learn the lesson the hard way…

The point of explaining transitional lift in detail was to make you understand the how your RC helicopter is going to behave in your forward flight RC Helicopter training lesson and how to control the sudden change in lift when your move in or out of the transitional lift effect.

RC helicopter Flying training Lesson:
You will be required to practice going into and coming out of transitional lift before getting into fast circuit circle. You will also be comfortable at RC helicopter flying left and right of your side which means at right angle to you; earlier lessons have already prepared you for this. Your pre flight checks should be automatic by now… hope you have done them.
You will start by hovering 5 to 6 feet above the ground and then turning it either left or right of your side, whichever is comfortable to you. Now start giving a little forward cyclic to get it moving forward at around 6 to 8 km/h only fast walking pace. When it gets 25 to 30 feet away from you stop it at a hover. What do you experience? You must have seen that RC helicopter have gained the altitude without your increasing the throttle/ collective. You just experienced transit experienced transitional lift.



To counter transitional lift effect, you will have to increase throttle/ collective when you come out of the forward flying back into the hover and will have to decrease the throttle/ collective when coming into forward flying into the wind to maintain the altitude. This will take your practice and focus to have good hands on it. The more you will practice it the more it will become your sense, and sooner you will be applying counter collective/ throttle for transitional lift without even knowing you are doing it.

Let’s do the RC Helicopter fast forward circuit flying lesson:
The only difference in last RC helicopter flying lesson and today’s one is that in the previous one you kept the circuit small and the velocity of your RC helicopter was not that fast. Today you will be flying fast larger circuits with more altitude.

Start with the speed of last RC helicopter flying lesson slow and with small circuit, you may want to fly it counter clock wise or the clockwise whichever suits you( you must have found your rotation type during the last exercise). Now start increasing the speed of your rc helicopter and start increasing the circle with gradual increase in the altitude. You may not want to fly too fast or it will create dizziness. You may start with a circle of 50 to 60 feet in diameter with an altitude of 10 to 12 feet in the air with a speed of 15 to 20 km/h. After completing few circuits start decreasing the rc helicopter and bring the diameter of the circle smaller to the size of last RC helicopter flying training lesson. Safely lad you rc helicopter and take a little rest.

Analyze your performance with the larger and fast circuits, if you feel nervous, you might want to spend more time practicing the last rc helicopter exercise and make yourself comfortable. When you feel comfortable, start the same large circuit with same speed and altitude but in opposite direction which will most possibly be in the clockwise direction.
This RC helicopter training should make you confident and comfortable with flying rc helicopter in 60 feet circle both clockwise and counter clockwise directions. Now it’s time to make the circles larger and faster with higher altitude. Do 80 feet diameter circle this time and go to 120 feet with more speed and with altitude of 30 to 35 feet. The larger the circle with more speed you can fly without getting the dizziness from it. You must maintain the higher altitude in order to give yourself chance of making up with your mistake with quickly reaching the ground.

Once you get comfortable with flying faster in both directions, you must start banking the rc heli. It will be felt very natural to you when flying clockwise give right cyclic and give left when flying counter clockwise. You will have to pull back on the cyclic slightly to help the heli on the banking turning edge. RC helicopters much behave like RC airplanes when flying fast and this effect may have been experienced by you if you are an RC airplane or RC Jets flyer.

While slowing down your RC helicopter in smaller circuit, don’t forget to increase throttle/ collective to make up for the reduced amount of transitional lift. I believe by the time you reach this stage you will be doing all this automatically without even realizing.

Hurray!! You have just completed a very important RC helicopter training flying lesson which must have shown you the actual potential of your RC helicopter and have made you a little more addicted to RC helicopter hobby. You can actually record your length of RC flying lesson on video and see the fly RC helicopter DVD video after you have completed the lesson to see what was going on. By seeing your own fly RC helicopter video you will learn a lot and improve faster.

The next flying lesson will be more thrilling…. Even I can’t wait to write about it. Till then..

Happy flying!

Tonja

RC Helicopter Flying Training

Hope that you have been doing great with your RC helicopter flying course. Today we will fly our RC helicopter controlled slow circuit around a fixed position. Today’s exercise is for getting you more comfortable with tail rotor controls and getting you accustomed to handling your RC helicopter from left and right.

Remote control training gear is essential even today and same pre flight checks are required to be done which were conducted in earlier exercises. Platform should be grass and calm day is still a preference for today’s flight.

Place you RC heli into the wind, start it and place your position 12-15 feet away from it. Bring the RC helicopter at a hover of 4 feet from ground and turn its nose to the right slowly and start flying it in a clockwise direction around your position, while maintaining the distance of 12-15 feet between your heli and you. For the ease of handling you should keep facing the helicopter, turning with it as you would do while flying a line control plane. Keep flying your RC helicopter slowly as it should take 25-30 seconds in completing one circle around your position. Keeping it slow is also required to keep you from dizziness because of turning in circles.

If you feel that turning with RC helicopter is getting you disoriented, you can come sideways to the remote control heli and turn your face left so as to keep the RC helicopter within your eyesight. This way you will be able to regain your confidence and feel like almost flying the heli from behind. Fly your RC helicopter this way in clockwise direction and then give yourself and your RC helicopter a break.

Okay, enough break; do the same exercise in the counter clock direction, circuiting it to the left around you. You will have to hold in left tail rotor control to keep RC helicopter nose always pointing in the direction of flight i.e. circle. Doing the circuit to your right may feel more difficult to you as compared to left because doing it to the right requires more tail rotor to the right as compared to left circuit which requires very little left tail rotor for keeping the RC helicopter nose pointing into the direction of circular flight.

This phenomenon is experienced because the main rotor of the RC helicopter is most usually rotate in clockwise direction. This is why the torque generated from main rotor blades force the helicopter body to turn to left all the time and if the tail rotor is there to counter that torque. If you have counter clock main rotor, you would want to start this exercise from right hand side otherwise from the left hand side.

Now, you should keep practicing the clockwise and counter clockwise circuits around your fixed position. You will soon find that one of the directions becomes easier, only then you would want to switch to the other direction to practice it more. This the way you will make yourself more into the habit of getting over the fear of not trying the harder things in RC helicopter flying.

It is not experienced with all the people learning to fly RC helicopter that one circuit seems harder than the other one but if it happens to you like it with me, try to get the harder part done more so it doesn’t become your habit, like it is with me. For me rights are more comfortable than lefts and this habit of mine has grown firm so much with time that I am unable to get over it.

It will be a good idea if you practice your earlier circuit of RC Helicopter Training Figure of Eight Circuit exercise after getting enough of this one. But get cent percent comfortable before calling it a day for this one. These exercises are very important because the next lesson we are going to practice will be fast flights and large circuits and this will be the part where adrenaline will start to surge, which will in turn increases the risk of making some big damage to your RC Helicopter if you skip on necessary steps to take and make a mistake. This is why you must take as long as you want to get comfortable with earlier two lessons.

Happy Flying!

Tonja

Large RC Helicopter Flying Training

In the last lesson we discussed and learned how to hover and fly in a figure of eight 8 with nose always pointing in the direction of wind. The idea was to not to keep you flying like that till this point for the ease of flight but this was to keep you oriented from the view point of rc helicopter body. When you are able to keep yourself oriented, you don’t crash but the changing view of the rc helicopter body is what makes the flyer disoriented and crash. This disorientation is not only the problem with beginners in the radio controlled / remote control or rc helicopter hobby, it happens with the pros too they get disoriented and crash and it requires just a miss from their usual comprehension since flying rc helis of single blade rotor are large rc helicopters and flying them specially during training is like balancing on the ball, you put attention away for a second and game goes away from your hand.

Flying a Circuit Figure of Eight:
Now coming back to today’s lesson; when we flew rc helicopter always pointed into the wind, it was like flying the machine while sitting in it. When you want it move left you just had to move the cyclic to the left, when you wanted to move it forward cyclic moved forward. In this scenario it was very easy to keep your orientation and fly the bird with focus on one thing at a time while the view of the rc helicopter remains the same for you. But if you were to fly in this way it will look very odd and silly that your rc heli remains in the direction of the wind which cannot put its face in the direction it was moving and it also affects the speed this way of flying has decreased speed.

We will now change that and start flying (putting our nose) into the direction of our flight path. This is going to be a bit difficult because you are up till now are in the habit of seeing your rc helicopter form one orientation, now you will see it from many and for doing that you need to keep your focus onto what we are going to learn today.

You must know that this the point when few of you will be crashing your rc helis and I believe you do not want yourself to be one of those. They crash not because they didn’t practice the earlier lesson of nose pointed into the direction of the wind but it is because they get puzzled when they see a changed image of their rc helicopter flying in front of them and give a wrong input and make it crash. To avoid that you just need to go slow today and keep your head cleared from other thoughts while flying and do not get distracted. This way you will not have any problem making it a great flight lesson day without a mishap.
Flying checks are a normal practice so you must perform that before taking your hands on flying your rc helicopter. Choice for the ground type is still soft grassy ground and do not forget to put your training gear on, it’s a must.

Now start your rc helicopter on the reference point and you should be standing 10-12 feet away at the back of your rc helicopter, the nose is pointing in the direction of the wind. Increase your throttle or collective slowly and bring the rc heli at a 3-4 feet height, hover and hold it right there at the reference point for few seconds to get yourself comfortable. Now start moving it to the left of the reference point for 10-15 feet and then bring it back to the reference point not stopping there but continuing towards the right side of the reference point. Perform this for few times to get yourself comfortable in seeing your rc helicopter in the way you are used to i.e. nose pointing towards the wind. Keep it slow and in control before you make the next move. Now while you make the rc heli move left from the reference point and make it come back towards right, give a little right tail rotor while it passes over the reference point in front of you. This will make the rc helicopter move into the flight direction of right and if you get disoriented because of the changing view of the rc heli body you can just get behind the moving tail and keep the view as same as was before. Once you get 15-20 feet away from the reference nose pointing into the direction of the flight, get it hover back into the direction of the wind and bring it towards the ref. point. While passing by you and going right to the ref point give a little right tail to move the nose in the right direction of the flight. Repeat it few times and you will feel yourself getting comfortable with the exercise. When you feel confident with this, start turning the nose into the direction of the flight as soon you move back your rc heli towards the reference point.



A heading hold gyro feature in your rc helicopter will make life easier for you while pointing into the direction of flight. If you have heading hold gyro, you can just put the yaw rate feature on and your rc helicopter will not require that much of tail commands. The weathervane effect which comes out of yaw rate gyro; makes the nose pointing into the direction of flight with tail following when control is given to move rc heli in any direction.
When flying in the direction of flight movement, it is noted that one tends to fly rc helikopter with more and more speed, I know this is tempting. You need to limit yourself from this temptation of flying fast till the time you clean your hands completely through practicing these exercises. You need to keep it going nice and easy on your nerves and just keep flying back and forth keeping the remote control helicopter not more than 3 feet off the ground. You will be certainly start making turns at every reach without stopping when you will get comfortable with turning it at the end of every reach through enough practice. And soon you will start flying figure of 8 in long loops with nose always pointing into the direction of flight. This is called flying a circuit- bravo you deserve this thrilling moment.

One important tip for you before I leave you to practice in the field, keep a rule in mind for initial training of turning radio controlled helicopters into the flight direction. That is when turning right take a right and when left take a left. This seems very logical and obvious, but with rc heli machine you can easily forget the basic rule when in the thrill and can take a left 180 degree turn to reach a right even when the right was 180 degrees on the right side. This may also be remembered by always turning your rc helicopter away from you not towards you as turning towards may make you disoriented easily in the beginning. This was a large rc helicopter flying training not the toy one, so you need a big pat on your back for making it a success and flying it back safely in one piece.

Happy flying

Tonja

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Beginner RC Helicopter Training

Here is your next lesson to RC helicopter flying. In this post we will learn how to do a figure of 8 fly. In the last post we learnt how to hover your rc helicopter from the ground using cyclic. You definitely have to do a lot of practice doing hovering before you come to fly few feet above the ground. If you have gained the control over your hands and have synchronized your eyes with hands movements, it’s time we can move onto this next lesson of beginner RC helicopter training in which we will fly a figure 8.

You need to do your flight checks before getting into the business:

- Check all mechanics of you rc helicopter are in working condition. Moving parts are smooth but not loose.

- Training gear is one important thing during this training session, make sure it is properly secure on the skids.

- Range check is to be done and see if all the transmitter switches are on the correct positions.

- Calm or no wind is a requirement; gusting wind is a big NO.

- Choose an open area preferably a ground with no obstructions preferably no people. Being on a field with soft grass is a very good support for sense of safety for your RC helicopter.


Since we have done the skidding on the ground and for that we needed a hard surface. From now on your heli will remain in the air while practicing the coming lessons, you require a little soft and grassy surface to protect your rc heli from a sudden land or if it drops because of engine failure. The training gear on the skids also protects a lot in incidents like these and even if you are doing a very good hovering, training gears help in tipping over in case of emergency landings. Training gear also helps as a visual aid which helps in seeing rolling and pitching better than you can detect from rc heli body movements. But it need emphasis that you keep your focus on the nose section of the rc helicopter, the suggested bright color of the training gear tips will be totally noticeable in the background of it.

You will require a reference point to reach to if there is none; bring something to make a reference for your flight.

Put the helicopter into the wind and stand 8- 10 feet at the rear side of the rc heli. Start your helicopter and start hovering above the ground slowly. Do the cyclic controls by practicing day one maneuvers of left right, backward forward, up down, and diagonal crosses. This will be a warm up for the figure of 8 maneuvers today.



RC Helicopter Training:
It’s a thrill to feel your rc helicopter flying. Now for making a figure 8, see the illustration above, it is as simple as it looks in the picture above. If I were to put the sequence into words; put the rc heli into the wind direction on the reference point. Start hovering 3-4 feet above the reference point and slowly start moving at the forward right or starboard bow diagonal. When it has covered 8 feet of distance from the reference, make it move onto the starboard (right) only. 8 feet more and move your rc heli starboard aft or backwards left, 8 more feet and move it only aft or backwards for 8 more feet. Now move it port aft or backwards left diagonal for 8 feet, then port or left, then port bow or forward left diagonal, forward and then land back onto the reference point. This may seem a little complicated but keeping the figure above in front it will be easy to understand that I am only talking about completing a circle on right hand side of your reference point. The circle flying will be more like an octagon due to edges on the turns but will become a circle as you gain more control on the maneuvers of your rc helicopter with practice. You can well imagine a circle of around 16 feet in diameter completed fly by your rc heli mark it if you want and go for the circle on the left or port side of the reference point. Take your time in completing one circle and then land to fly another. You will practice more and more and will start making perfect circles. Make smaller and larger circles than the one we have discussed by changing the distance. As you get comfortable in completing one circle, don’t land; keep flying for the complete figure of eight.

You need to be in complete control of the rc helicopter all the time. Gaining control over commands is the main aim of this lesson. You need to stay in control and increase your flying time. Although in this lesson we kept the rc helicopter in the direction of wind but still you have seen your heli to come near you and move away, this feel will give you an orientation of your rc heli and prepare you to fly the rc helicopter nose pointing into the direction of the flight instead of wind. This lesson of beginner RC helicopter training in which we did a figure of eight rc helicopter flying is very important to give you a confidence of moving onto the next step of better flying.
Happy flying!
Tonja

RC Helicopter Cyclic Controls:

As I had discussed in my last post that we will get to learning rc helicopter flying step by step from next post onwards, so here it is. In today’s post we will get to the first lesson of flying your new radio controlled rc helicopter and that is Learning cyclic control. Let’s begin:
There are few checks which you need to make before get your hands on flying this machine. If you have an instructor with you, he is going to help a lot and check things for you, he will even save you from doing a disaster, if not; you are required to be very careful in following the steps in learning the cyclic control. You need to check if your rc heli is setup the way it was defined in the instructions manual came along with your rc chopper.



Although rc helicopter or regular helicopters can be moved/ tilit through tilting the propeller or rotor but in cyclic controls our rc helicopter controls do not tilt the rotor to achieve the moves but they do something advanced and that is called “Cyclic Control Pitch”. It is done by changing the angle of pitch of the rotor blade on every revolution it makes depending on where you want your rc helicopter to tilt. This is why it is called cyclic pitch control. Elevator (pitch) and aileron (roll) is controlled through cyclic pitch control.



For instance if we want to move our rc helicopter forward, we will have to lift our rotor on the rear half than the front half. So what we do, we give more pitch on the rear half of the rotor disc or in other words the blades will get more pitch when they get to the rear half of the rc helicopter. In fact due to the gyroscopic precession principle, the change starts happening on the blade 90 degrees before it reaches the rear end to cater for the gyroscopic precession. This whole cyclic change in pitch of rotor blades is called cyclic control of rc helicopter.
All these changes in pitch of rotor blades are possible because of swash plate and the rotor head. The swash plate is a mechanical linking to the non rotating parts of the controls and rotating parts. Hence forward cyclic will tilt the rc helicopter forward, rear will move it backwards, right will move it right and left will left. I hope you have got the idea how cyclic controls work, now let’s fly it step by step:

1. Making sure that all the gears are connected and intact is a must.

2. You need to spool up your rc heli and check the controls in spooled up condition. If instructor is with you, let him test fly the rc helicopter so he can make sure that all is well and running good.

3. You can well understand from your training manual that your rc heli can be slowly landed while it has the sideways or back/ forward thrust. You can ask your instructor to demonstrate you what is a sliding heli. It will definitely increase your confidence that slowly decreasing the collective if you lose control. Controlling pitch will require bit of a practice in the beginning, an instructor can guide you in that too.

4. You need to rehearse in your mind what you will be doing practically. It’s always recommended that you put your rc helicopter into the wind. Position yourself at a little distance from your heli to the right or left.

5. Lift your radio controlled heli to a safe height of just 0.1 or 0.2 meters. Yes that is a very little height where your landing gear might touch the ground because of the vibration of your hand when it tries to get familiar with feel of the control. This is all good; when you are able to stable your rc heli at this safe height, lift it to 1m.

6. When you have stabilized the hovering at 1m, give very small inputs and practice sideways only to a distance of 1meter, stop for a hover and then come to your center position. Practice the same for the opposite direction and come back again. This will give your hands a proper feel of the controls.

7. Do the same exercise for forward and backward moves.
Congratulations, you have learned the cyclic controls of an rc helicopter. One thing before ending this post; you should stand at the left of your rc helicopter if you are using right control and vise e versa.

Till next post for the next learning lesson,

Happy flying

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RC Helicopter Flying

I have been thinking for many days to update this blog and do a new post I have been planning to about learning to fly rc helicopter. Now is the time I think that I have actually started writing. In this post I will cover the strategy for a newbie to adopt and do better with their rc helicopter flying. Let’s start:

For a beginner in rc helicopter hobby it is always advisable to go for a small rc helicopter like Rotofly EX fixed pitch, single rotor and Axe EZ dual rotor with no tail rotor. Both are very affordable and have been designed to take care for a beginner, rather dual rotor also called the coaxial rotor or contra rotating helicopters, are the most easy to fly radio controlled helicopters. You need to go for a small radio controlled heli because teaching yourself makes you susceptible to crash it and then losing your heart in the hobby. These radio controlled helicopters come with instructional DVDs and are very user friendly and fun to fly.

If you want a big leap in the hobby, you can have some experienced radio controlled helicopter pilot help you with this. The instructor will help you setting up your heli correctly because if not set properly radio controlled helicopters go unpredictable. An instructor will guide you in teaching you tips and tricks of the hobby, the mistakes you make as a beginner. Your learning time will reduce this way and you will soon be flying like a pro. With an instructor you can start with a medium size radio controlled helicopter. I will recommend going for a simulator like RealFlight G4.5, this will cost a little more but is worth the investment and will help you learn faster.

You need to set targets for yourself in order to learn the right way like in any other skill. The more the practical goal will be the more focus you will have on the radio controlled helicopter hobby. Practical achievable targets will help you get motivation and confidence to fly rc heli. Practical goal setting is to take small steps at a time, this way you will not crash your rc helicopter and crash your heart with it. Losing your heli is like losing heart, money, motivation and confidence. Top of all without some practice with your basic rc heli flying can be very dangerous for your and for others too. Step by step learning in all directions will make your basics strong and learn faster so you will be flying instead of crashing.

In the next post I will be listing the guiding steps in learning the rc helicopter flying. There can be many different ways to approach it but these are the steps which I believe are proven to be better in a systematic flying process. this is the way I learnt the hobby so I suggest you give it a try too. Rc helicopter learning steps are formed such that the you will always learn the steps required for the advanced one, and such that you recover from a mishap which is likely in the new maneuvers.



You want to put some thought at the new step or maneuver so you can think of an escape when the maneuver start turning to a disaster, even a small problem can become a disaster if not dealt properly. Be sure that you have tested and tried your escape strategy so that you can actually use that when something actually goes wrong.

You can go for a simulator if you really don’t want to have it learned the beginner’s way. You would want to go for an rc heli simulator which comes with a transmitter control. You can crash as many times you want to and get the skill learned on tips of your fingers. This hobby is really learned on the tips as its all about your reflexes which count for a better flyer. Although the fact of the matter is that you can never have the taste of flying a real heli remotely controlled till the time you fly one, no matter how many times you fly one on the simulator the real stress comes when you fly a real one as crashing an actual rc heli will be heavy on your pockets and this is you do not want to do.

There are many simulators available in the market like I said earlier Realflight is one good out there but in my personal opinion it is not that realistic as the Reflex. Reflex is one which has both the look of it and the realism involved. CSM is one good but that has no better looks that the Reflex.

In the coming posts I will be describing all the learning steps one by one not forgetting the get away with the disaster strategies. You will love them all I hope and learn the rc helicopter flying in a way it is supposed to be.

Electric RC Helicopter or Gas RC Helicopter

Types of RC helicopters:

The question comes in novice pilots either to go for Electric RC Helicopter or Gas RC helicopter. Now that you are here reading this blog about RC helicopters, you must be an enthusiast looking for information about the hobby of rc helicopters, either a seasoned pilot or a novice looking for more and more information for the fun and exciting hobby; you have reached just the right place for your quest. RC helicopters with all the popularity surrounding them combine your imagination and skills and provide a fun time for people of all ages.

Since the topic of this post is types of rc helicopters, lets come to it and see what types of rc helicopters are there to explore in the market.

RC helicopters can be divided into two main categories which are electric powered rc helicopter and gas powered rc helicopter. First we will look at the electric powered rc helicopter and its sub categories and then we will move to the gas powered rc helicopter.


Electric RC Helicopter:

The advisable model for all novice rc enthusiasts is the electric rc helicopter. Why? The reason lays in its simplicity of working, usage and handling. The electric rc helicopters are far easier to work with than its counter part the gas rc helicopter. You are not required to deal with ever consuming gas and the engine which you will definitely tend to break especially during the initial period of your flying this machine. You are not required to have a know how of the mechanics of the engine involved in order to fix it when you break it as electric motor are more robust and perform well even after many drops of your rc helicopter from several feet on the ground. Electric rc helicopters come in (RTF) ready to fly models, you are not required to spend a life time in reading the manuals just to understand how it works. Just plug and play. You may have a mid set that electric rc helicopters do not fly for long as it’s the case in electric driven cars but you must change your perspective because modern electric rc helicopters come with lithium batteries which have the charge capacity well above the average fuel tank capacity of gas rc helicopters. Combined with brushless motors, now electric rc helicopters have very minimal current losses thus enabling electric rc helicopters fly longer than you think. One more advantage which electric rc helicopters have over the gas rc helicopters is the low noise level, electric rc helicopters have low db level of noise which makes them a no disturber of your neighbors compared to the gas rc helicopter which will make your neighbors call you to tell you for switching this terrible noise maker off.

Now take a look at the sub categories of electric rc helicopters. Those are:

Mini electric rc helicopter- This one is all the same in features of an average size electric rc helicopter except the size. As evident from the name that this electric rc helicopter is smaller in size hence called mini. The way to distinguish a mini electric rc helicopter from an average size is simple, the one which you can fly in your bed room or living room can be categorized as a mini electric rc helicopter. Mini electric rc helicopter are a real fun to fly, get the hang of it at first and you are good to go for all maneuvers this little wonder has to offer. The plus point of mini electric rc helicopter is that they are very affordable so you can start off with the flying machine without being too heavy on your pocket.

To your surprise, there is yet another kind which is smaller than the mini electric rc helicopter we have discussed above and that is ……… you are right, the micro electric rc helicopter. Why wonder? Haven’t you seen micro rc boat, micro rc car and micro rc airplane so why not micro electric rc helicopter. Though very little in size, only 8 inches max but micro electric rc helicopter has all the features of a standard electric rc helicopter. Made out of carbon and titanium, micro electric rc helicopter is tough so do not just look at its tiny size, this one is not at all delicate.

Moving on to..

Gas RC Helicopter:

You have read all the benefits of flying an electrical rc helicopter over gas powered rc helicopter and you must be wondering if the electrical rc helicopter has so many of advantages over the gas rc helicopter than why the heck gas rc helicopter is there in the market and who are the people who buy gas rc helicopter in the first place? Hang on, there are reasons why people buy gas rc helicopters and here are those: You are in the hobby of flying rc helicopters because you like flying real helicopters, right! And since that opportunity is not available to you so you are in the hobby of rc helicopter flying to get the feel of the real helicopter as much as you can. Gas rc helicopter takes you even closer to your dream of flying a real helicopter. Yes that’s right because gas rc helicopter has a mini size of gas engine what real helicopter has. It makes some what close to real sound of a helicopter, which makes gas rc helicopter more exciting to fly. Gas rc helicopters are more complicated which keep an enthusiast hobbyist addicted to it, the pilot not only flies the gas rc helicopter but remain involved with all the mechanics of the gas rc helicopter and this is what makes more seasoned rc helicopter flyers go for gas rc helicopters. Gas rc helicopters do not come cheap and only advanced flyers can handle them, that is why after having your hands cleaned on an electric rc helicopter who wouldn’t want to go for the advanced level of the flying despite it being costly but having all the return of money involved in it.

This makes me conclude this post for you as it is getting longer, so remember electric rc helicopter first and after having a taste of rc helicopter flying switch to gas rc helicopter.

Cheers

Tonja