Flight School Part 3 - Circuits & Figure 8's

Figure 3.1 - The Classic Figure 8

Welcome to Part 3 of Helidaniel.com's 100% free on-line 3D RC helicopter Flight School - where we help fellow heli pilots crash less and fly more!

Prerequisites
For this lesson, you should be extremely comfortable with nose in, nose out, nose right and nose left hovering. Parts 1 and 2 helps you get there.

Flying circuits and figure 8's look deceptively simple! You might think that once you got your hover nailed, flying around is easy.... Well, it does make it much easier, but don't get ahead of yourself just yet! Better safe than sorry!

Hovering and Flight Are Different
As explained in Part 1, the heli's main rotor starts acting like an airplane's wing once you build up some speed. That simply means you have to learn another whole way of controlling your heli! Failure to understand this and tackle it with patience is the reason why a good number of budding heli pilots crash their heli as soon as they start flying around.

Sim-ply Better
Rather than giving a long and boring treatise on how to control the heli when flying around, I recommend that u simply conduct your own experiments with your simulator! Try tilting your heli forward and build up some good speed, then start messing with your elevator, alieron and collective taking note of what happens each time. You'll notice that it flies like a plane most of the time, but the nose doesn't point in the direction of your flight, and you can dramatically alter your lift with your collective!

Yup, you guessed it! Now you have to learn to point your heli into your chosen direction of flight and manage the collective so that you don't climb to high or smash your heli into the ground at high speed! (It happens)

Learning The Brakes
Another thing you'll notice banging your heli around like this in the sim is that it's kinda hard to slow down after you have gathered some speed! Before you start flying your heli around at the field, you would want to make sure you can slow your heli down!

Activating the brakes on the heli is relatively simple - tilt your main rotor away from your direction to travel and simultaneously manage your collective so that you don't climb or lose altitude. Ok, it's not so simple, but you'll get it soon enough!

Slow is gold! You know you got your forward flight nailed when you are able to control your speed well. That normally means you are able to fly at a consistent slow speed. That's right, it's harder to fly slow than fast!

The Drill
Wow! We are way into this lesson and I haven't even got into circuits and figure 8's yet! I tend to believe in the superior intelligence of all who read this and give mainly tips and hints. In other words - go figure! (Hey! A pun!)

Fly a counter-clockwise (CCW) circuit and fly a clockwise (CW) circuit. Once you've done that well, fly a 3/4 CCW circuit on your left and a 3/4 CW circuit on your right joining them together with straight lines in the middle. Viola! A figure 8! (See Figure 3.1) Don't forget to do it with a CW circuit on your left and CCW circuit on your right too!

A Little Easier
If flying complete circuits is a little above your head, try 1/4 circuits first, then 1/2 circuits. Take it a little step at a time and you'll find the learning more progressive and manageable.

Being A Great Pilot
Fly it all with constant speed and altitude. Keep your flying centered in front of you too! That usually makes the difference between a good pilot and a great pilot!

Getting Better
I have assumed you have been flying with your nose pointed into your direction of flight, for the adventurous, you'll have to try the same drill with your nose pointed backwards then the same sideways! Note that mastering that will take time! There are no shortcuts (at least safe ones). Keep on flying and trying!

Next!
Once you have mastered this lesson, you should be able to do upright heli flying pretty well, fears of crashing you heli will be all but vanished (ok, maybe not totally...) but you should be enjoying your flights more and more! Then I'll recommend a little aerobatics! Namely - Part 4 - Backward Circuits!

Thanks for reading and keep it flying!

Flight School Part 2 - Sideways/Forward/Backward Flight

Figure 2.1 - Moving around 6 different spots to practice your hover

Hover Positions
This lesson be done together with Part 1. As you get good at your hover right in front of you, you may slowly move your heli sideways and get it to the other 5 practice hover positions. Take about 3 to 5 seconds to move it from one position to another and pause at each position for 3 to 5 seconds. Isn't it exciting? Your heli's actually getting to places now! Ok... it's not much, but it's a start!

Figure 2.1 shows a anti-clockwise progression, but if you prefer you may start clockwise first. Don't forget to practice both anti-clockwise and clockwise progressions though!

It's All About Perspective
You'll notice as you move your heli towards your sides and keep the nose pointing at the same direction, your perspective of the heli will change, you'll start seeing the sides of your heli more. You might even say that a nose out hover gets closer to the look of a a nose right hover as you move your heli towards your left side. Take a look at Figure 2.1 again, notice you'll start to see more of your heli sides at the left and right-most positions?

The Tail Rotor Thrust Issue
You'll find that your heli feels different when going anti-clockwise and clockwise. That's because your tail rotor is fighting torque in one direction - the Thrust the tail rotor makes pushes your heli towards it's left side at all times, you'll have to bank more in order to get the same movement towards it's right side.

The Drill
Once you get through the progressions good, you should try it with the nose out, nose left and nose right! Take your time and get comfortable with each orientation. Remember, the less your rush through here, the faster your learning curve will be when we get to more advanced 3D flying later!

What You Get
Congrats once you have gotten this lesson nailed. You would have done a little sideways flight (when the nose is facing in or out), and even some forward and backwards flight! (When the nose is facing right or left) You may even have gotten creative (and some extra fun!) and change nose orientations as you go through the positions. Remember to have fun and take a break once it gets less fun and move towards frustration.

What's Next
I'm tempted to get started on flips and inverted hovers right away, but I believe the next best step should be some circuits around the field! Now it's really getting nice! The next lesson will make your heli fly around like a real heli! Come back soon for Part 3 - Flying Circuits!

Flight School Part 1 - The Hover

Welcome to Flight School! This is the 1st part in a series of tips to help beginning heli pilots to:

1. Learn 3D RC Helicopter Flying with minimum mistakes
   
2. Minimum mistakes = save big bucks + more time to fly (no need to repair heli, less trips to the hobby shop!)

The Hover Foundation
The hover is the foundation of heli flying. I have heard people say that if you can hover your heli in any orientation - learning new maneuvers will be much easier and crashes will be much less often. I believe that, because I have about 400 heli flights so far and have crashed less then a dozen times and more than half of those crashes where due to mechanical faults.

When most people say they know how to hover, they usually mean they know 1/8 of a hover. Hovering is different when the nose points 1) out, 2) in, 3) left and 4) right. That's 4/8, the other 4 parts of the hover is when your heli is inverted. 5) Inverted nose in 6) inverted nose out 7) inverted nose left and 8) inverted nose right.

That quite a lot of hovering huh? Don't bother about the inverted hovering just yet, we'll get to it later, for now let's just master 4/8 of the hover first.

The Simulator is Your Wallet's Friend!
I have a rule for myself, that's I'll never fly a maneuver unless I can do it in the simulator without thinking. If you are thinking how to move your sticks while hovering - you are not ready to try it out there on the flying field yet!

So take it one step at a time, the less your rush at this stage, the quicker you'll learn later!

The Drill
Start the heli nose-out directly in-front of you (preferably at least 4 to 5 meters away from you) climb and get into a hover nose out. Keep practicing that till you can keep your heli at the same altitude (landing gear at eye-level) and at the same spot in front of you comfortably for extended periods of time.

Once you got nose-out in your bag, apply left or right rudder to get the nose to point either left or right and get it to hover at the same spot and altitude again. Every time you have mastered the nose pointing in a direction, right a new direction till you get all 4 nose orientations for upright hovering.

Fighting Temptation
Boring huh? Try to resist the temptation to fly around, because if you haven't mastered these 4 hovering orientations, there's a high chance a crash will occur if anything goes wrong. Why? If you haven't learnt to keep your heli in a place in all 4 orientations that means you do not have the skills to put the heli exactly where you want it to be, that means if you start flying around, your heli might just fly too far away, you can't see it, crash.

A Whole Different Ball Game
You'll also notice that a heli flying around behaves differently from a heli sitting in a hover, that's because when you have some airspeed, the rotor disc acts like a big circular wing! That means that it behaves more like a fixed-wing airplane and a whole different set of dynamics and skills needed to control the heli come in. It's complicated enough to learn how to hover, why complicate things more?

Hope this helps! Stay tuned for the Part 2 - Sideways/Forward/Backward Flight. Meanwhile keep it fun and keep it hovering!

Ground School - Flybarless - Good for Beginners, Not So Good For Advanced Flyers

I'm not saying flybarless isn't the future - I believe it is. However, from my experience and observation of other competition pilots, the following are my conclusions for now:

Good for Beginners and Sport Flyers because:

1. Less parts to replace during maintenance/repairs - save time and $$$
   
2. Heli is more stable in wind, inverted flight and generally more stable just flying around!
   
3. More recent flybarless systems are much easier to setup
4. Though not recommended and within certain limits - mechanical setup and CG are less critical cause the electronic stabilization straightens the flying out.
5. Tunable! Change the agility of your heli from docile to crazy just by changing a few settings. (Within the physical limits of your heli of course!)

Not So Good for Advanced/Competition Flyers because:

1. Properly tuned flybar system feels more connected and reacts ever so slightly faster.
2. Servo stress and load are much more - a 90-size heli would kill the servos much faster.
3. Flybar acts as an airbrake so some 3D maneuvers can be done tighter and more aggressively.
4. Piros feel more natural and carries momentum that presents some 3D maneuvers better.
5. So far both the simulators I use (Reflex and G4.5) do not simulate the feel of a flybarless heli accurately during piros and aggressive flight (i.e. flying hard and fast)

I hope this post can help all those out there wondering what flybarless can offer to have a few more things to help their decision making/curiosity. I do feel, however, in a few years time, maybe the technology will mature and better servos and simulators will make flybarless systems universally better for all, but until then, I love the feel of my flybar heli better than the flybarless

What Does The Results Of 3D Masters 2009 Say About Flybarless?
At the Experts level at this year's 3D Masters, the 2nd, 3rd  places when to the Mikado vbar helis.(1st and 4th went to 90-sized nitro helis - The Raptor 90 and Synergy N9 respectively) That could mean that the technology is catching up and is beginning to be competitive... however at the Masters level, the top 4 spots where 90 sized nitro helis with flybars... The Hirobo Turbulence followed by 3 Trex 700s.

Maybe all the Masters pilots are seasoned veterans that "grew up" on flybars - they just could not get used to flybarless. On the other hand, the Experts pilots are newer, therefore they have adapted, early-on to flybarless and thus are more competitive with it... but only time and more results will tell definitively...

The Beginning of HeliDaniel

The HeliDaniel.com fleet at the Singapore National Aeromodelling Competition 2009

Purely out of sudden inspiration that casts away my sloth HeliDaniel.com has been born. May this birth be nurtured well and benefit many!

I figure we need a mission statement, so here it is:

To help 3D RC helicopter pilots, fly more, learn flying faster, crash less, save money.

That's a big statement to live up to, but it's better than nothing! Cheers!