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Best RC Helicopter To Learn On

I know we already talked about this the best RC helicopter section, but in case you didn’t read that part yet I will quickly restate how important the proper helicopter is to RC helicopter training.

I have only taught people how to fly RC helicopters on quality hobby grade regular to large size helicopters, and it does make learning much easier as explained in the best helicopter size section. Most have learned on 30 size or larger Nitro RC helicopters , but now that larger electric RC helicopters are also available, they will work just as well.

General size rule here is to stick with a heli with a rotor diameter of no less than 600mm - anything smaller than that is very difficult to control and next to impossible to learn on. Don’t try to learn on a hobby grade micro electric – they are just too sensitive and fragile; especially ones with electric tail rotor motors (as you know by know, I despise electric tail rotors on hobby grade machines). A 400 size electric is pretty much the smallest you want to go with.

Other than size, your helicopter should have collective pitch and not be fixed pitch. The reasons for this are discussed in the pitch section – a collective pitch helicopter is much easier to learn on.

Setting Up Your Helicopter To Learn On

As you know by now, I believe strongly if you get into hobby grade RC helicopters, you should start out with a larger good quality kit that has collective pitch. After all, this hobby is expensive enough, and you don’t want to have to go out and purchase a new helicopter in a few weeks or spend a few hundred dollars on upgrades after you learn how to hover.

Spending a little more money now, will save you lots of money in the long run – purchase a RC heli that you can grow with. This means your helicopter will have the potential to perform light to aggressive aerobatics when set up to do so. When you are learning to fly RC helicopters however, you want to set your heli up as a RC helicopter trainer.

This is accomplished by reducing the collective, throttle range, and cyclic pitch settings so the helicopter is less sensitive and doesn’t have the large control range that could get you into trouble very quickly.

You will have to use your pitch gauge to make sure your rotor blade pitch angles are good for learning to fly a RC helicopter on. Every helicopter is different, if your kit comes with specific learning set up pitch angles – use their recommendations.

To turn your higher performance RC heli into a RC helicopter trainer here are some general guidelines that I like to use:

Collective:

Set your low stick collective pitch in the 1 to 0 degree range - this will give softer landings, and minimize the chance of augering your RC heli into the ground.

Set half stick collective pitch to around + 4.5 to +5 degrees – a nice mid range pitch to hover at for most RC helicopters.

Set your high collective pitch to about +6 to +7 degrees - this will ensure you can’t accidentally rocket 30 feet into the air in the blink of an eye.

Cyclic:

There are no pitch angles for this because the pitch angles keep changing depending on your collective angle. The easiest way is to set your cyclic commands to about half of their full movement range. Look at the swash plate when it is set at the normal range of movement. Set this movement to about half or 50% of normal travel.

Most people will use the dual rate function on their radio for this. You might find you even want to decrease the movement even more – up to 75% less cyclic movement depending on your specific helicopter. Start out with half and on day 3 or 4 of your lessons, you might want to reduce cyclic travel even more if you find your bird too sensitive.

You should also have your flybar weights set quite far out on your fly bars to help make the cyclic control a little less responsive. Weights further out on the flybars will also help reduce the effects of wind gusts on your RC chopper.

Tail Rotor

This is very dependent on the helicopter kit and the gyro used. Set tail rotor movement range as per the manufactures instructions. Your gyro gain setting will dictate how sensitive your tail rotor control is. More on this in the gyro setup below. If your radio has a dual rate switch for the tail rotor - a 50% setting is usually a good starting point for most setups.

Engine

Your RC helicopter instructions should give you the basic throttle set up for your engine. One important tip with nitro engines and even more so with gas engines is to have the throttle open up to at least 30-40% before the collective pitch increases too much. This will insure the engine doesn’t get bogged down and over heat by induced drag from the rotors. You will also want the throttle to be at about 60%-70% open by the time you are at half throttle – even more for a gas powered helicopter .

Before programmable radios, we had to do this with tricky servo and throttle arm geometry angles to produce a large amount of throttle movement in the first half of stick movement and a fairly small amount of throttle movement during the upper half of stick movement. Today things are much easier with programmable throttle/pitch curves.

This holds true for electric RC helicopters as well, as you will have to program the pitch curve and throttle curve to give the correct amount of power during half stick hover. This is explained during day 2 dynamic engine adjustments. Electric RC helicopter throttle curves tend to be pretty linear because electric motors have very consistent torque and they are not affected by bogging down like a nitro, gas, or single stage turbine engine .

No matter what power option you use, make sure you set it up so you can turn the engine/motor completely off with your throttle trim in the low position. Most electric speed controllers simply won't arm (power up) if the throttle trim is not set low enough when first turned on.

Understanding Your Radio

If you are not 100% familiar with your RC radio , now is the time to re-read the instructions that came with it. Computerized radios are somewhat complicated and it can take some time to get everything programmed and sorted out correctly. This holds especially true for setting up your CCPM mixing functions and throttle and pitch curves.

Ensure all servos are moving in the correct direction and correct if necessary with your servo reversing switches or programming. For example, if you give a forward cyclic command; make sure your swash plate tilts forward and not backwards or side ways. Likewise for left and right cyclic when viewing the swash plate from behind the helicopter – left stick movement makes the swash plate tilt left and a right command tilts it to the right.

An increase in your throttle stick should show an increase in both your collective pitch and in your engine/motor speed.

Confirming the tail rotor servo is moving in the correct direction is a little harder to understand at first. You must understand how the torque affects your RC heli to be able to figure out what direction the servo moves to change the tail rotor pitch. The instructions that come with the heli kit should indicate what direction your servo arm moves when given a left or right command. Seeing that tail rotor servo placement, main rotor and tail rotor rotational direction, and if the tail rotor is on the left or right side of the tail boom all play a roll in determining direction, there are many different set up possibilities.

The easiest way to confirm if you have things set up correctly is to make sure if you give a right tail rotor command, you see the pitch of the tail rotor change so it blows or thrusts the tail boom to the left (nose of the helicopter turns right) and vice-versa for a left command.

Ensure Your Gyro Is Set Up Correctly

There are two things you want to confirm with your gyro set up. First off, is it correcting the tail rotor in proper direction? If you hold your helicopter by the rotor head and swing the nose to the right (rotating your helicopter clockwise), you should see the tail rotor servo move to give a left tail rotor command just as if you were giving a left stick command; vice versa for a sudden left (counter clockwise) helicopter yaw movement. If the movements are opposite of what they should be, simply use the gyro reverse switch to change the direction of correction and re-test.

The next gyro function you want to set is the amount of “Gain” or how sensitive the gyro is. Most RC helicopter kits and gyro instructions will have starting point recommendations and you should follow those. My experience has been to set the gain to about 50% as a good starting point. If you have a remote gain feature with your gyro (the ability to change the sensitivity of the gyro from your radio) it should also be set at the same setting (apx 50%) when you are learning.

Checking Center Of Gravity (CG)

You most likely have already done this if you followed your helicopter building instructions, but now is a good time to recheck the center of gravity or “CG” for short. The CG is simply the balance point of the helicopter. You will always want your CG at or a little forward of the main rotor mast.

How do you check it? Simply hold your helicopter by the flybar so the helicopter can pivot forward and backwards. If your helicopter is level or tilts a bit forward that is perfect. If it tilts backwards, that is the last thing you want when learning. Move your receiver battery pack a bit closer to the nose of the helicopter and recheck.

If you have an electric RC heli, you can move your main battery pack a little more forward or backward to get the CG in the sweet spot. I should mention if you have a nitro or gas RC heli, the CG will change a bit as the fuel level changes – this is discussed in nitro fuel tank section. It is generally common practice to check your CG if you have a fuel powered model with the fuel tank half full and adjust with the receiver battery pack as required.

Blade Grip Tightness

All RC helicopter rotor blades (main and tail) are held onto the blade grips with a single bolt and lock nut. The tightness of this bolt and nut are very important and I have seen many people (newbies and seasoned fliers alike) over tighten them - I was guilty of this for years myself.

There are several methods to check if you have your rotor blades tightened the correct amount - this is the method I like the best.

For your main rotor blades, simply hold your helicopter sideways to the ground with the main rotor blades horizontal to the ground. The bolts should be tight enough so the blades don't pivot in the blade holders downwards by the force of gravity. If they do, the bolt and nut have to be tightened a bit.

However most are overtightened and the way to check that is while holding the helicopter sideways to the ground, give it a slight jerking up/down movement. If the bolts are correctly adjusted, the rotor blades will now pivot downwards with this sudden jerking movement. If not - loosen the blade holder nut and bolt a bit on each blade so they move as described.

Tail rotor blade holder bolt adjustment is very much the same. They should be tightened just enough to prevent the tail rotor blades from pivoting down in the blade holder due to the pull of gravity on them.

This is a very easy and accurate method of checking and adjusting both main and tail rotor grip tightness.

RC Helicopter Training Gear

I will just touch on this now; a more in depth discussion is given during the how to fly RC helicopter Day 3 lesson. You will need to purchase or build a set of training gear for your helicopter. Training gear will save your RC heli from tipping over when you are first learning to hover. Check out day 3 for more information.

Basic Safety

As I have indicated several times in this web site, RC helicopters are potentially the most dangerous of all RC vehicles. When you are first learning how to fly RC helicopters, specifically learning how to hover, the danger is not as great as it is be when you are starting to fly around. After all, the heli will (hopefully) be staying in one fixed location close to the ground more or less.

The reason you want to think a bit about safety right now on day 1 is to determine where you will be going for your first hover attempts during days 3 and 4. The last thing you want is a location with many people around. This is not only dangerous for them, but very distracting for you. You should go out alone or with one person maximum to assist you. If you learn at a RC helicopter club, they should have a practice area away from the main flight line. You will need maximum concentration – distractions are the worst!

This is not the time to have all your buds come out and watch your first baby steps. Also leave Fido at home – man have I heard some pretty messy horror stories about dogs going after RC helicopters. Almost happened to me once with an off leash dog, but that is another story.

You will need a nice large open area free of any obstacles. Clean dust free pavement or packed snow/ice are the best choices (more on this during Day 3). When learning to hover, you won’t need as much room as when you start flying circuits, but you should have an area of at least 20m by 20m (60 feet by 60 feet) the bigger the better. Once you start flying circuits you will need much more room.

All Set For Day Two

Well, time to wrap up day 1 pre flight learning how to fly RC helicopters. Make sure your radio and receiver batteries are fully charged for tomorrow. Get your field box ready and have your power panel, glow plug driver, or starter batteries all charged up. Depending on whether your helicopter is electric or nitro, have your fuel or charged battery packs all ready to go. Check the weather report – nothing worse than being all geared up to go and wake up to gale force winds or downpours.

Onto Day 2 – Dynamic Adjustments .