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RC Helicopter flight Training
Learning
to fly an RC helicopter can be a frustrating task if you have no one
locally who is experianced to teach you. Luckily in these days of the
internet, there are countless resources online to instruct you.
Not always are these resources geared to you personally. There
are many factors that go into flight training and no ONE method is
perfect for all fliers. If you have the time, you will want to
research different methods or guides and develop your own plan. Yes,
you should follow or develop a plan for how you will learn.
Learning to fly RC helicopters is all about progression. (if you so desire to constantly improve your skills).
How far you wish to go depends on many factors and can be limited
by your financial commitment, hand/eye coordination, eyesite ,
resources and available time. You can't just jump up and take off and go. You need to
learn to fly in steps. After 18 years of on and off flying, I am
still learning new things and still finding that to get to my end goal
of how good of a pilot I want to be, I have intermediate steps that
must be mastered before moving on. Learning to a helicopter at
the beginning includes steps that are hard to skip.
Any
sucessfull flight training should involve both a real live helicopter
as well as simulator time. Simulator time should be spent as
close to the same as the training you are doing on the real helicopter.
Often a pilot will find the simulator is less stressfull and take
more risks thus improving faster as there is no risk of crash damage.
Once comfortable on the simulator, you can then try it out on the
helicopter. But there are always differences between the simulator and
real life. Such factors as the helicopter setup, stability, size,
ability to see the helicopter, environment (sunlight & wind) all
play factors in the difference between the simulator and the real
thing. You will often find an adjustment period going from the Simulator to the real Helicopter. This is normal.
RC Simulator resources
Don't forget to use Training GEAR!
Set up a modest pitch curve. one that does not have too much punch to it.
I recommend a pitch curve of -1,-1,0,4,8 to start out with
Set
your throttle curve so that you are at your target RPM at 0 pitch, 4
and 8 and about 75% of target RPM at point 2 (of 5). These pitch
values are degrees of pitch for the mainblades so measure them and
adjust the trandmitter curve values to match them at EACH blade.
THE PLAN
When
working on training, you want to follow a plan. Something someone
else made up, or a hybrid of several plans. One of the popular
basic (get things started) plans is Radd's School of Rotary Flight.
This is a foundation for basic getting off the ground sucesssfully.
Even if you spent hours on the simulator and can hover around,
spending time following this method can be beneficial even if you do
not spend the entire recommended time on each skill as outlined in the
method (1 task per battery pack).
The following are videos showing progressive steps in helicopter training starting with the method outlined in Radds.
Video - Radd's method Part 1 : Packs 1-6
Video - Radd's method Part 2 : Packs 7-10
The following are videos showing progressif steps in helicopter hover training beyond the Radd's method.
Video - Hover training Part 1 : Tail in Training
Video - Hover training Part 2 : Nose in Training
Before
progressing to the next steps, you should be feeling comfortable at
hovering the helicopter in the previous manuevers without touching the
ground or being disoriented
Video - Hover training Part 3 : Removal of training gear
Video - Hover training Part 4 : Intro to forward flight
What
ever method you decide to use to train, it is always good for follow a
plan. Follow a plan that someone has outlined for you or make one up.
Xheli's EXI 450 SE Carbon edition was used in the videos
Here are som other resources:
RCHelicopterFUN.com
Electric-RC-Helicopter.com
RC heli WIKI