How many active helicopter pilots do we have here?

[mrjdstewart]

just getting into it. i have spent about 20hrs on the sim so far and that really seems to be helping.

i received my first real capable 3D helo yesterday. i was also given another fixed pitch helo. neither are that fancy but hopefully will be enough to get me started.

the gift...

and the 3D...

biggest issue i am having so far is orientation of aileron control on the return. it has me baffled. i NEVER have issues with this on my planes, even my tiny 100mph plus. for some reason though, with the helo it is killing me. spent the last hour of sim time today just working on a face-forward hover to try and work it out of me. i'm getting better but as soon as things go, i'm still not reacting properly.

any tips?

thanks,

me

 

[PsyBorg]

Roll stick goes to the low side of disc when head to head. That or yaw stick to high side of disc to level and steer out of it.

 

[L Edge]

First of all, put the fixed pitch helo aside. That is good for someone that has alot of experience.

3 phases of flying are hovering, transitional and forward flight. Object is to stay in each until making the shift. The problem is with beginners, to much movement with the stick(in your case the aileron since you unsure) shifts you quickly to transitional ( good or bad where rolling over causes major problems(crash).

Main point to be made-- You need to learn how to give a small pulse to your controls(roll, pitch and yaw) to first see if it will resolve the proper direction and then again pulse your control to correct the error. That will solve your problem. How about inverted flight coming at you? You don't have time to think what direction I should do, you pulse it small and then go from there. It is not like flying a plane where you yank and bank.

points to remember.
1) Do not hover in the ground effects until you know how to handle it. Go up to about eye level and practice your hovers.
2) Did you notice left and right turns differ with the amount of controls.
3) When you know your losing it and out of control, punch the throttle open (never kill it) and perhaps you can save it from a crash. Only do this when you know it is safe and not headed towards a person to prevent injury.
4) The better you can hovering in any position, the less you will crash later on.

When my son and I learned, the Cricket had no gyro at all and fixed pitch. Yet, we got to loop it(the big E) and do a barrel roll.

 

[mrjdstewart]

thanks for the pointers.

had my first 2 real flights today where i actually left the area just in front of me, ie- more than just hovering. i have to say this little thing is stable as all can be. yes, you can still get in trouble but the 6 axis gyro does wonders.

my aileron control, if that is what it is called, is def getting better. i have spent another prob 10hrs on the sim and it is almost getting to be automatic. not perfect yet, but good enough that i feel i can fly with a good amount of confidence.

today i was able to do a couple rolls, and 2 flips. the flips were easy, the rolls took a little more effort to control after the roll. like you mentioned it's really easy to over-do the correction. the rest i felt really good about other than when i flew into the sun. duh....

taking it back out tomorrow and plan to do 4 flights. wish me luck.

laters,

me

 

[L Edge]

thanks for the pointers.

had my first 2 real flights today where i actually left the area just in front of me, ie- more than just hovering. i have to say this little thing is stable as all can be. yes, you can still get in trouble but the 6 axis gyro does wonders.

my aileron control, if that is what it is called, is def getting better. i have spent another prob 10hrs on the sim and it is almost getting to be automatic. not perfect yet, but good enough that i feel i can fly with a good amount of confidence.

today i was able to do a couple rolls, and 2 flips. the flips were easy, the rolls took a little more effort to control after the roll. like you mentioned it's really easy to over-do the correction. the rest i felt really good about other than when i flew into the sun. duh....

taking it back out tomorrow and plan to do 4 flights. wish me luck.

laters,

me

One way to stop motion of heli you don't like is to rotate the rudder either 90 or 180 degrees. For instance, you were going backwards and you couldn't stop. Rotate tail 180 quickly and now it is going forward and with added colective you should get control of it. Now you see you don't go into forward motion until you can hover . Less cash for less crashes.

 

[PsyBorg]

thanks for the pointers.

had my first 2 real flights today where i actually left the area just in front of me, ie- more than just hovering. i have to say this little thing is stable as all can be. yes, you can still get in trouble but the 6 axis gyro does wonders.

my aileron control, if that is what it is called, is def getting better. i have spent another prob 10hrs on the sim and it is almost getting to be automatic. not perfect yet, but good enough that i feel i can fly with a good amount of confidence.

today i was able to do a couple rolls, and 2 flips. the flips were easy, the rolls took a little more effort to control after the roll. like you mentioned it's really easy to over-do the correction. the rest i felt really good about other than when i flew into the sun. duh....

taking it back out tomorrow and plan to do 4 flights. wish me luck.

laters,

me

Maybe add some more expo to your aileron channel so you dont over correct as much? you still have full deflection and the same dps rotation but you will come back to level with a less sensitive stick at center slowing rotation down more smoothly

 

[L Edge]

Here is an exercise to deal with the transition area. Goal is to stop unwanted motion.

Take your heli and hover showing sideview. Now very slowly, rise the heli(very slowly) so it climbs at a 45degree from say 3 ft to 15 ft high and stop it. Rotate the heli 180 and now descend at a 45 degree back to 3 ft. I told you about "pulsing" the controls-

that is, you will lower(pulse) the collective, pulse the elevator forward to descend(or pulse backward if too fast) and come back down to 3ft at a 45 degree angle.

Too much expo and it doesn't work and you will not accomplish the goal. Excessive expo and later on rolls and other acrobatics will be too sloppy. it is not a yank and bank type of flying. That is why very few pilots flew choppers before all this gyro stuff. You only had 1 gyro and that was for the tail only.
I have flown a real heli and even there there is no great movement of the stick. In fact, your wrist is planted on your leg and your hand handles the roll and pitch movement. Again, pulsing is the way to go in hovering and transitional motion.

 

[mrjdstewart]

thanks again.

i was feeling pretty confident on sunday and should have know that was not a good thing.

everything was great. did some hovers, did a couple tail stall turns, all was good so started going out farther, just kinda experimenting...

ya, that was not a good idea. it started flying off, which i told it to do, but then when i spun it 180 w rudder and gave a little down elevator to bring it back, it just kept going backwards.

i was certain i was giving the proper inputs but obviously i was not. it starting getting so far i decided to just slowly reduce collective and bring it down. i got as low as i could see it, then flipped the hold switch.

i had a good line on where it went down but it still took about 20 mins to find it. usually planes crashes are never as far as you think. this one was way farther than i thought. too much more and it would have been in a cotton field and lost forever.

thankfully, it came down softly in a bush and had no damage. after that flight i decided it best to put it away and go fly some planes.

live and learn. back to the sim...

laters,

me

 

[L Edge]

Another big point to remember that will save you dollars.

In learning to deal with crashes and autos, you can save yourself a lot of money if you time it right.

When you hit the ground in a upright crash, push the collective forward and what happens is the main blades will not hit the boom. By timing it right you can save your boom, tail and main gear(stripping) and just enough push forward, maybe the main blades.
This approach can be used when you blown the kinetic energy of the auto and it drops to the ground or bounces.

 

[mastermalpass]

Dunno why I haven't thought to check in here to announce myself sooner. Though primarily on planes these days, Helicopters have always been in my fleet - in 2019 I bought my first 'propper' heli and last year I finally pent up the courage to have a go at flying it!

My first ever RC flights were on a Pico Z back in '07:

I had some bumpy experiences with other 2ch and 3ch helis until 2014 where I started getting WLToys flybarless CCPM and my rotor wings stayed at that small scale until I bough the Blade 500X (I bought a WLToys V950 afterwards, to practice on a medium sized heli first).

The problem I have with helicopters is the scratchbuilding side - there just doesn't seem to be the inexpensive simple models like what you get with planes. So I've yet to get into it. I've started considering how I can start building primitive gyro-less, specifically flight-controller-less helicopters in an inexpensive way to get that true feel of flight you can get from any plane. But that feels like it's going to be very far up the difficulty curve for helicopters.

 

[Glen F Mills]

How I'm feeling right now, I need some heli pilots!

ha ha ha ha funny videos with funny man

 

[L Edge]

Dunno why I haven't thought to check in here to announce myself sooner. Though primarily on planes these days, Helicopters have always been in my fleet - in 2019 I bought my first 'propper' heli and last year I finally pent up the courage to have a go at flying it!

My first ever RC flights were on a Pico Z back in '07:

View attachment 191212

I had some bumpy experiences with other 2ch and 3ch helis until 2014 where I started getting WLToys flybarless CCPM and my rotor wings stayed at that small scale until I bough the Blade 500X (I bought a WLToys V950 afterwards, to practice on a medium sized heli first).

The problem I have with helicopters is the scratchbuilding side - there just doesn't seem to be the inexpensive simple models like what you get with planes. So I've yet to get into it. I've started considering how I can start building primitive gyro-less, specifically flight-controller-less helicopters in an inexpensive way to get that true feel of flight you can get from any plane. But that feels like it's going to be very far up the difficulty curve for helicopters.

When you deal with heli's, there are no inexpensive models. To build primitive models that lack gyros and flight controls will even cost you more. Heli's are difficult. To hover, transition into and out of forward flight, where any movement of throttle displacement rotates the craft as well as changes height. Now add wind(gusty) and you see why fly-bar-less head holding gyros allowed the average flyer to try heli's and succeed. Still expensive sport. My son and I were raised on a Cricket.

 

[mastermalpass]

When you deal with heli's, there are no inexpensive models. To build primitive models that lack gyros and flight controls will even cost you more. Heli's are difficult. To hover, transition into and out of forward flight, where any movement of throttle displacement rotates the craft as well as changes height. Now add wind(gusty) and you see why fly-bar-less head holding gyros allowed the average flyer to try heli's and succeed. Still expensive sport. My son and I were raised on a Cricket.

That's the kind of real hands-on flight I would like to get into, though. I've tried to experience it by turning off the gyro on my Blade - but the tail rotor is very slow to respond when I do that and sometimes, for some reason, holding my heading eats up 80% of the tail servo's travel on that side. I get that torque-yaw is strong, but if the tail is nice and responsive with the gyro on, where does all that strength go when I switch it off? It's a mystery.

I guess when you say that going primitive will cost even more, you mean a lot of crashing awaits those who dare to take that route.

 

[L Edge]

That's the kind of real hands-on flight I would like to get into, though. I've tried to experience it by turning off the gyro on my Blade - but the tail rotor is very slow to respond when I do that and sometimes, for some reason, holding my heading eats up 80% of the tail servo's travel on that side. I get that torque-yaw is strong, but if the tail is nice and responsive with the gyro on, where does all that strength go when I switch it off? It's a mystery.

I guess when you say that going primitive will cost even more, you mean a lot of crashing awaits those who dare to take that route.

Can't answer the first question since I still fly with just tail gyro.
Actually, how much crashing you will do with "primitive" depends upon your skill and reaction time. One thought is to get time with the present setups so you are comfortable and can think ahead as you fly, then just get a setup using rudder.
An interesting sideline was after we adjusted to flying choppers many hours, we each had 30 min of flying a real heli(R-22) from trying a real hover to forward flight and the thrill where the pilot did a simulated auto.

 

[cmaero]

Well I'm late to the party. Browsing the forums tonight and came across the thread. My main focus in the hobby are helicopters. However, I bounce back and forth between airplanes and helicopters. Over the pandemic, I got into FPV with WPL trucks and drones. Anyway, here's a pic of the fleet. Ive added quite a few since I took this pic last year. And the Trex 700E is now installed in a Roban Bell 206 fuselage. I got the Sceadu flying again this past month after sitting for about 3 years. Fired right up! Fun to get an old nitro out and buzz around. My daily drivers lately have been an OMP M2 and my blade 450. I've purchased 2 of the RotorScales but been having issues with them. They are almost sorted out and can't wait till they are ready to go.