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