| My Time With RC Helis |
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Or... How I learned to fly :. Well after 25-30 years of being out of the hobby, except for a sailplane or two and a few cars, I recently got back into RC Helis. Things are much better now than they were back then, I remember many an hour spent on setup and tuning not knowing if I was doing things correctly or not because there was no one else within several hundred miles that was into helicopters. Some of my family members were involved in RC planes, but showed little interest in those funny looking RC things that didn't even have a respectable pair of wings. I quickly learned that I was on my own with this part of the Radio Control hobby.
The first Heli that I really had any success with, The Century Hawk Pro.
The radios then had no mixing capabilities, so there was a single servo per axis, and no gyros:.
at least not that I had ever read about or heard of, so it was all up to pilot skill, something I did not have, but was willing to try to obtain.
Here's a photo of the fixed pitch Revolution 30
After reassuring myself that all would be well, I throttled up and decided that 100 to 150 ft. was probably about right, easily out of ground effect, and at least 5 mistakes high. In no time at all, I realized that I really should have been further than 10 feet away from the heli before I got that much altitude, because now I was looking straight up at the underside of the model. Not a very good viewpoint to keep my orientation. {styleboxop width=350px,float=right,color=maroon,textcolor=white,echo=no}There was the helicopter at about 12 feet of altitude, probably around 75% throttle, INVERTED! {/styleboxop} As the tail was slowly spinning, (no gyros available yet remember). I glanced down to nudge the trim to correct the pirouette. It probably took ½ - ¾ of a second to bump the trim lever. When I looked back up, I saw something I could hardly believe! There was the helicopter at about 12 feet of altitude, probably around 75% throttle, INVERTED! I didn’t think it was possible to get a fixed pitch heli inverted, but apparently if you are sufficiently unskilled.... anything is possible. So... the heli hit the asphalt, burying the mainshaft into the carburetor opening, and destroying almost every aluminum piece on the model. I had learned two quick lessons that day, Number 1... if you are going to fly with any altitude at all, don't do it straight above your head. And Number 2... 150 feet of altitude is really only 1 mistake high, NOT 5. That crash ended my involvement in the RC Helicopter hobby for about 2 years. {mospagebreak_scroll title=Sometime later} Sometime later, I once again found myself enticed into building another heli:. It was a collective pitch Hirobo Falcon 505. It was much nicer, with a wire drive tail rotor, larger size and collective pitch. Surely it would be much easier to fly... but my experience with it was very much like the time I spent with the first model. Lots of time spent trying to see why it just didnt feel right. Skipping around on the ground or very near it, trying to keep the tail pointed the right direction with the wildly varying conditions as I wrestled to keep it under control. It still suffered from marginal FM radio with no mixing, and a major lack of pilot skill.
Here is the Falcon 505 A nice step up from the Revolution 30 · I never crashed it, but I also never did more that just try to hover it and keep it within a 15 foot circle. My frustration had grown larger than my desire to fly, so it eventually got stored away and forgotten about until my 3 year old son wanted to play with it. I don’t remember how it eventually died, but it never ran again. It went to an early grave with probably less that 10 hours of running time, and no actual flight time. {mospagebreak_scroll title=My Son Gets Interested} Early in 2005 Aeryk who was 12 at the time was showing some major interest in RC Anything:. and he really liked helicopters. We got him a Dragonfly for his 13th birthday and we spent the next several weeks listening to the whine of gears and blades in the family room. He had pretty good luck with it, but after flying it into the couch / floor / coffee table / ceiling and cat many many times, it eventually got to the point that no amount of hot glue or duct tape could get it airborne again. Over the next year he traded his way into a Raptor 30 and some basic electronics for it. My Brother donated a Futaba 7UHPs transmitter to the cause, and Aeryk had what he needed to get air born. After just a few weeks, he was able to get it flying and do some slow circuits and hovering. From that point on he was hooked, and flew every minute he could. Because of my past experiences I remained skeptical and was just ignoring what I knew would be a Aeryks very short lived love of RC helicopters. As time went on, I got more and more amazed that he was able to get it all working as well as he did. Over the next 2-3 months he progressed very quickly, before long he was flying easily and doing basic stunts like rolls and inverted flight. From that point on, it seemed like things just clicked, he was able to improve his skills with every flight. There were some crashes and many repairs, but really in hind-sight, there were very few problems considering the equipment and limited experience of the pilot. Aeryk quickly got interested in 3D flying (you've gotta love the internet for providing a way to get information and support from other pilots, something thats is definately better than it was way back when), and has never looked back. He has progressed so quickly and what looks like so effortlessly that it is hard to believe that his heli flying experience is only about 2 years total. Now with him making it look sooooo easy, and with my interest still intact, but set aside for all of those years, I decided that "If he can do it I can do it". The electronics, have improved so much that I thought I would be able to at least fly around the field, and have some fun with it. No visions of extreme 3D for me, just nice controlled flight. Something I was never able to do back in the earlier days. {mospagebreak_scroll title=Now Its Getting Serious} I had shown some interest in another helicopter:. and for my birthday in 2006 I had received a used Predator 90 airframe and OS-91 engine. and had spent the next few months getting flyable and setup. After a couple of months of Aeryk flying it I soon realized that it would not be a good trainer, because of the high parts cost and the fact that he wanted it to be tuned for as quick of response as it could be. Neither of which would go well with my 50 year old reflexes. So I decided to get a more appropriate heli to learn on. We bought a Century Hawk Pro on a special offer from Heli-World , It was a kit with engine, and a crash kit with spare blades, boom, mainshaft and flybar for only $255. This sounded like a very good place to start for me. Anytime the company automatically includes crash parts with the initial kit purchase, shows that they probably have a very good idea what the sport is really like! This was going to be used as a daily flyer / trainer because of the inexpensive parts cost, and the fuel economy of the OS-32. I also used it for the Hawk-Pro build/review section of this website. We got it setup, trimmed and running well (with Aeryk flying), but I never tried to fly it. I did practice on the simulator, but not as much as I would have liked. I could fly the SIM fairly well, but never felt confident that I could actually fly the real model. After 4-5 months of looking at the Hawk, and occasionally having Aeryk fly it to keep the cobwebs cleaned out. I decided it was time for me to fly or die. I told Aeryk that I felt I could do it, but that I thought the best way to get it done would be to head to the field early one morning, hook up the buddy-box, and just keep after it until I got past the nervousness and occasion loss of orientation. After putting it off for at least a month, Last Saturday I decided it was time. {mospagebreak_scroll title=Time to "Fly or Die"} We headed to the field with all the gear, and possibly a sacrificial heli:. with the attitude of "don’t come back until you can fly". After a short warm up flight Aeryk landed and we checked that the trims were in sync between the two transmitters. Aeryk cautiously pulled the trainer switch on the 9C and said "OK.... its yours." Oddly enough all of that SIM time seemed to evaporate away in that very first second, and I felt like I had never seen one of these things before. But I throttled up a bit, got it light on the skids, and then eased the stick up with enough authority to get the heli into the air without skidding sideways on the ground. I practiced hovering and was actually able to keep things contained within a fairly small area in front of us. After a few minutes of taking off, hovering, moving back and forth, and trying a little nose in (I guess the SIM did help after all), I told Aeryk that I wanted to fly, I could practice hovering "whenever", but that I wanted to try some forward flight, A skill that I had never acquired with any of my earlier models. He said "ok" but also made sure to mention that he didn’t think it was a very good idea to be flying around unless I could hover without any trouble. Not Me though, I wanted forward flight, and I knew that he could save me in a heartbeat as long as things were not too out of shape when he released the trainer switch. So, after a brief pause to gather my thoughts, I eased the throttle up and cyclic forward. The Little Hawk climbed up and out in a gentle curve to my left. I carefully guided the heli around the field in slow sweeping turns, trying to keep the tail where it belonged. I quickly learned that the tail has to be forced where you want it to be, unlike the sailplanes I had flown, the gyro will hold the tails orientation unless you tell it otherwise. {styleboxop width=300px,float=left,color=green,textcolor=white,echo=no}We headed to the field with all the gear, and possibly a sacrificial heli, with the attitude of "don’t come back until you can fly... "{/styleboxop} During this first REAL flight, I didn’t really have any troubles making it do more or less what I wanted it to do. There was only one "OK You take it!" or was It… ”I've got it, I've GOT IT!" moment where Aeryk had to save me. I got out of shape a bit coming out of a left-handed sweeper, and back into a nose in position, I got reversed for just a moment, but he was paying attention and quickly recovered. For most of the rest of that tank of fuel, I flew it around the area, not losing orientation, not flying away into the black hole zone where you no longer have radio response, and not sticking it into the dirt field like a lawn dart. When it came time to land I learned that I still needed to develop some of those skills. I was trying to approach from a 200-300 ft distance maybe 70 ft above the ground, and nose in. I was having a real hard time keeping it descending gradually. I was having to throttle way too far back, or so I thought AND also feed some down elevator (something that just feels wrong) just to get it to come down. I knew the little OS-32 didnt have much reserve if I started dropping too quickly so I was nervouse that I would get into a situation where it couldnt be saved regardless of the instructor's skillz. In the mean time as I was using 120% of my concentration to try to keep the descent about right, the tail straight and my wits still about me, the heli was wandering left or right and when I would correct that, I would lose my focus on the decent angle. Needless to say I had my hands full and probably would not have been able to get it back down in one piece. After two or three failed attempts I told Aeryk that he was going to have to do it, because I couldn't, at least not yet! Within 10 seconds the Hawk was sitting happily on the ground spooling down. The landing looked like it was part of a training video, smooth, straight, light as a feather. I sometimes wish Aeryk actually had to work at doing some of those things like the rest of us do.
{mospagebreak_scroll title=I Need to Breathe} After finally taking a breath and relaxing for 15 or 20 minutes:. to allow my thumbs to stop shaking, I told him it was time for flight number two. We re-fueled and double checked the buddy-box cable/connection and trims, started up the Hawk and headed to the runway. Aeryk spooled it up, hovered just a bit to make sure the trim was still good and then set it back down. He said "there you go" and held in the trainer switch. Once again I gradually throttled up, waiting until it was light on the skids, and then added just enough left stick to get airborn and avoid any skidding around. I hovered for a minute or so, tried my luck at a fairly quick piroette or two, just to see if I could do it. luckily it didnt drift very far during the piro because I was not correcting for anything, I was just quickly turning the tail and stopping it back in the tail in position. But it still was fun because it was actually me, and I was making it do what I wanted it to, rather than just trying to keep it from crashing. {styleboxop width=220px,float=right,color=green,textcolor=white,echo=no}After finally taking a breath and relaxing for 15 or 20 minutes to allow my thumbs to stop shaking, I told him it was time for flight two. {/styleboxop} Now it was time for something more serious. Once again I throttled up, and pointed the Hawk for the sky. I was soon flying slow and medium speed circuits, and sloppy figure eights. I was climbing, keeping the tail in a coordinated turn reasonably well and decending when I wanted . It wasnt pretty but it was much MUCH better than any other flying I had done with REAL helicopters or powered planes for that matter. I spent the next 8-10 minutes scooting around, the sky having a blast. I'm pretty sure that Aeryk's finger was tired of holding the trainer switch by the time the fuel was getting low. I knew that I would be out of sorts when it was landing time, so I tried another approach or two just to see how I felt. Strangely enough I can land in the simulator easily enough , even faily aggressively when I want to, but when it comes time for the real thing my mind seems to go into a 2 channel mode where I can only control 2 functions without sensory overload. After a couple of aborted attempts I told Aeryk he would have to do it again, and he said that he wanted to fly the rest of the tank out anyway. He said he had it once again, and I relaxed my death grip on the transmitter and finally took a deep breath. My Dad was at the field by this time and had seen the whole flight. He said afterward that he thought that Aeryk had done the takeoffs and hovering, and that he didnt know that I was flying "all that time". That was a nice bump to my ego. All in all I flew maybe 50% of the first tank and 75% of the second tank without a break, and without a crash. Aeryk had only had to save me a couple of times on the first flight and none on the second flight. That is ... If you don't count the instructor assisted approaches and landings. {mospagebreak_scroll title=Solo ?} I dont think I am ready to solo yet:. but if I can get the approach and landing thing figured out, I'll feel good about doing an entire flight on my own. I'm sure that I will crash it, and probably sooner rather than later. But I understand that is just a part of the hobby. At least I finally feel like I have something to show for all of those hours reading, building, repairing, and flying on the SIM. Maybe next weekend is the SOLO weekend... that is, weather permitting. I think its time to fire up the SIM and practice some landings...
{mospagebreak_scroll title=Gallery Pics}
Here are some pictures of my new Hawk Pro, It probably has about 1½ -2 gallons through it at this point. With only 2 tanks flown by me.
UPDATE * June 6th, 2008 WOO HOO I solo'd the Hawk today, I finally decided it was time, I could do it easily on the SIM, and Aeryk hadn't had to save me on the buddy-box for a few flights, so I decided to try and push myself over that hump. I got things ready to go nice and early so it would be cool, and calm, and headed to the local field. The field is an abandoned airport and the old runway is really rough. I fueled up the Hawk Pro double checked (no checked at least 50 times) all of the regular things like Model# on the TX, RX battery Voltage, fuel clamp etc.etc.etc. I decided I couldnt put it off any longer, and started it up.
I Carried the heli out to the center of the runway, making sure to walk
an extra long distance from the Van. Don't want to cause two problems
with one crash I decided it was time to try an approach and landing, so I eased the throttle/collective back and began the decent. I prefer to land nose in, for some reason that is just easier for me. So without too much difficulty, I got the hawk down to about a foot high, and with a small bounce, let it settle in. Once I had the first flight and landing behind me I knew that I could do it. From here on, I did the same routine, take off, fly slow easy circuits, and then land after 3-4 minutes. Each one became easier, and except for one time when the wind gusted up a but, I didnt have much trouble with any of it. I flew two full tanks, which amounted to 8 takeoffs and landings. No crashes !! the first flight was pretty sloppy, but the rest were reasonably smooth. Finally after 30 plus years of fiddling in this hobby I can honestly say that I CAN FLY rc Helicopters.
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and slowly spooled it up, keeping an eye out for any unusual behavior
like totally wacko strim settings. As I increased the throttle she
lifted up a couple of feet. The tail stayed put, and I was now airborn. It was then that I
realized, that I was now committed to the flight, and that I alone had to
make it work. Not only couldnt I tell my son/instructor to take it, I
couldnt even hand the transmitter to him if needed. The adrenalin began pumping with this realization, and within a few seconds my thums began to shake. I pointed the Hawk to the sky and slowy leveled out at about 80 ft, making a slow circuit. I practiced circuits in both directions, keeping the sun at my back and doing what I could to keep the heli straight and level. At one point I had to tell myself to settle down, I knew I could do this, but the extra pressure of doing it all by myself, and the extra adrenalin made that flight especially sloppy.
