Learning to fly a Helicopter

“Hovering - Advanced”

All flights begin and end in a hover –

This article presumes that you have your helicopter trimmed and checked out and that you have performed enough tail in hovers to become proficient at lifting off into ground effect (2 – 4 feet high) and you feel that you have coordinated control.

 Have you had time to spend on a flight simulator and try anything other than tail in hovers? 

 The next step towards mastering the skills required to safely and enjoyably fly your helicopter will require seeing the aircraft in unusual attitudes, left, right, higher, farther away and yes, nose-in.

 You may have taken your training gear off by this time, to enjoy the freedom and feel the power to weight ratio of the helicopter as it hovers and will feel as you progress.  Don’t feel bad about putting them back on as you learn these next maneuvers if you need them.

 Left and Right side-on hovers

• Pick up into a comfortable hover and then turn the nose left so that the aircraft is nose left.  If it helps, you can turn yourself to the left as you watch the helicopter turning your head to the right to help learn this new attitude.  Move the helicopter back and forth from left side-on to tail in.  Use the same technique in moving it left.  When you feel comfortable moving left and right and center we can move to nose-in.

 Nose in hover

• I would definitely suggest that you use the training gear while learning to nose in hover, unless you feel comfortable enough to gain some altitude and practice a bail out plan.  The helicopter controls will now be reversed and this will be confusing after all the effort that went into learning the attitudes so far and unless you program yourself to do two important things, you will most likely when becoming disoriented, crash. 
  • Item one: always try and make small changes when flight attitude corrections are made.  This will help you not only learn the reverse controlling; it will also give you more time to correct a mistake.  Let’s say instead of lifting off with the nose facing you, the helicopter is rotated left until it faces you.  The aircraft starts coming towards you and you instinctively push cyclic forward a little to correct.  This will make it come towards you faster as it’s now reversed in the elevator, therefore; if the correction was indeed small, you will see it and correct quickly, by pulling back and yes it’s a bit unnerving the first few times.
  • Item two: before trying nose in, create and mentally visualize a back out plan if things go wrong.  Since you are not doing any forward flight yet and altitude may frighten you even more, this kind of limits you to holding the altitude and then spinning the tail back around to a normal tail in or side position until you recover your orientation.

Take your time and learn to nose in hover as well as the other attitudes at ground level as well as placing the model higher and higher.  A good grasp of these skills will allow you to save your helicopter when you start 3D and get into some strange orientations.

 Be patient – have fun – ask for help :-)

 Next article will talk about preparing for forward flight.

 Ron Keith