Heli-RND

Safety

Have your eyes checked. If you're having trouble seeing the aircraft through manoeuvres to just flying around, you may just need some specks. If you wear glasses, wear them

Flying no closer than 15 feet from yourself and perform no tricks closer than 30 feet

Never come screaming in at yourself and pulling up (or down), anything can happen and has. It is known to have happened that someone suffered serious facial injury by the rotor disk when their helicopter backed into them

Several people have been injured from flying debris due to mechanical failure and parts flying off on impact. You cannot be too safe!

What do you want out of flying???

Be disciplined in your flight and practice. Maintain firm control of the helicopter, use small inputs

If you’re happy with your flying great, change nothing; fly as much as you wish….

Heli set up recommended by the Professionals

Make sure your idle up (3D mode) has an increase in RPM, that way there will be no mistaking you're in the 3D mode. Normal 1450, 3D 1850 head speed

Set your Gyro gain at your flying style. You don’t need a twitchy high gain setting unless you’re losing the tail in backwards flight. Plus this will wear out your tail servo

Vibration will also wear out your servo and cause premature failure of other mechanical parts

Holding the radio: Fingers or just thumbs whatever you are comfortable with as long as you don’t inadvertently input rudder while moving the collective and vice versa...

3D!!!

Always add collective (Pitch) first! (Period). Collective, positive or negative, should be added before cyclic to prevent the helicopter from stopping / stalling / hovering in the middle of a manoeuvre

Manage your power. If you add 10 degrees of collective and push in 5.5 degrees of cyclic you will bog down even a YS91 with 15.5 of overall pitch. In the hands of a pilot that uses power management and collective first the helicopter looks over powered; however, this very same helicopter in the hands of a stick banger appears under powered with slow response due to poor management of power and inputs. One chief complaints pilots have is “my helicopter needs more power”, so they buy a big block YS80 or OS 90 and still have the problem. It’s not the power plant it's the flying style

Your 3D or cool moves will be limited by your foundational experience. You can’t expect to fly around upside down if you can’t hover inverted, right….. You must have total control of your helo at any attitude, altitude, or angle before attempting moves like the pirouetting flip

Jason said it took him ONE and a HALF YEARS to perfect the Pirouetting flip and the rest of his flying suffered in the mean time, Yeah sure…Suffering for him is like Tiger Woods getting 16 under par vs. 18 under par

Say you want to do a pirouetting circles; break the manoeuvre down into basic manoeuvres.. You must be able to input and make corrections nose in, port in, starboard in, tail in etc… before putting it all together

Practice an out….An emergency recovery. Say you’re working on nose in, and you’re up high, if you get spooked add collective and pull out…Practice both ways

Always easier to pirouette to the left, unloads the toque. This was not so before HH Gyros

Steer the furthers part of the heli, i.e. “nose in” fly the tail, “tail in” fly the nose... While up right; however, when inverted fly the closest part of the aircraft…

Use your peripheral vision. Don’t be afraid of smacking into the ground. Judge where your aircraft is in relationship to where you are, the ground, and surrounding landmarks etc..

Practice (work) up high, give yourself time and room to make corrections. Don’t just “Go for it”

When practicing autos bump up the throttle in “Hold” at first and remove it as you become more comfortable. Dip the rotor disk so that air passes through the disk at a 45 horizontally and vertically....

Equipment