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