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

link resource

This page gives useful links for your interest, check them.
If you want your link here email us at tonjarose[at]gmail[.]com

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.