Learning to fly helicopters - quick tips!

by James | July 5, 2012 | (9) Posted in Reviews

Learning to fly RC helicopters is a steep learning curve. It takes time and money but once you get the grip of flying it's extremely awarding!

I've made many mistakes when learning to fly and I feel that these quick tips might help to prevent those mistakes, so here it is:


1.
 This has to be one of the most common mistakes; NEVER let your friends fly your Helicopter, it will end in disaster! If you find it hard to say no to friends, just remind them and yourself that your helicopter isn't a toy and requires months of training to fly.

2. Don't give in to peer pressure, lots of crashes occur because the pilot has given in to his/her friends requests and attempted something either down right stupid or beyond their current skill level.

3. Attach your training gear, if you don't you should go ahead and order some spare blades.

4. When you get into trouble don't cut your throttle, doing so will cause you to hit the ground hard. Always leave enough room between you and the ground for error correction. Flying higher is safer then flying low.

5. Always fly in a obstruction free field! Power lines, trees, fences and people act as magnets, they will draw your helicopter right to them.

6. For your first few battery charges it's best to leave the helicopter on the ground and get used to its controls. You can do this by slowly bringing the throttle up until the helicopter is light on its skids, from here you can scoot around quite safely in all directions.

7. Remember when the nose of the helicopter is pointed towards you all of your controls become reversed, this is due to your perspective. Be very wary of this and only fly nose out for your first few hovers.

8. Never fly over anything you are afraid to land on. A good example of this is, don't fly over water if you don't have floats.

9. Take things slow. There is no point trying to do maneuvers that are above your skill level - walk before you can run. You can try new things on the simulator where you can afford to crash often.

10. You will crash! Crashes are part of the hobby. It's important you don't let a damaged helicopter get you down, repairs are easy and cheap spares are readily available online at stores such as Hobbyking.

That's about it for these quick tips. I hope this will help you learn and happy flying!


COMMENTS

wongthomas on July 6, 2012
Nice writeup, but regards to point 4.
4. When you get into trouble don't cut your throttle.
not sure what your are saying here, if you talk about pull the throttle stick way, you just need to setup your transmitter, so there is very little neg pitch.
if you talking about don't use throttle hold (kill the motor), i disagree, that it the best way if you loss control, might hit the ground hard, if it hits the ground with the motor running, a lot more of stuff are going to break.
And also if you loss control, throttle hold make sure that it does not fly away and hit somebody
Log In to reply
James on July 6, 2012
No, I didn't mean throttle hold. Many new flyers don't give themselves altitude to recover from situation. Instead they try to force it to the ground if they loose orientation or control. Doing so will cause them to not only hit the ground hard but also hit the ground at a angle that will probably cause a blade strike.

Instead it's better to gain altitude by powering out of it and then give yourself room to recover so you can make a safe and controlled landing.
Log In to reply
colorex on July 5, 2012
Nice writeup! I don't fly helis, but some of these rules apply to multirotors and planes too!
Log In to reply
flitetest_argentina on July 5, 2012
great article. I like it and most of the things are true. Just if I cut the throttle if Im in trouble, it could have consequences. Regards from FliteTest Argentina
Log In to reply

You need to log-in to comment on articles.


Learning to fly helicopters - quick tips!