The main goal of hovering an Rc helicopter is to keep it in one spot with as limited spellbinding or drifting as possible. Ultimately, you'd like it to remain truly motionless, but in a non perfect world, that's nearly impossible as there are too many factors that will cause drift or motion. For the beginner pilot hovering an Rc helicopter can prove to be excessively difficult and many population give up on the hobby because they can't scholar hovering. While it is possible and population do fly Rc helicopters without being able to hover properly, it's not recommended. It's like learning to run before you can walk and you'll finally run into a problem. Being able to hover teaches control and fine motor skills that you'll want to have to come to be a best total pilot. Even top performers custom hovering to hone their skills. There are 4 main hovering positions, or 8 if you count inverted hovering, but I'm not going to get into that as it's a lot more complex than learning basic, right side up hovering that we'll discuss in this 'how to' article....
Tail in hovering is where the tail is pointing towards you and the nose of your helicopter is away from you. Nose in is the opposite - where the nose of your helicopter is pointing towards you and the tail is pointing away from you. Right side in is where the nose is pointing to the right, the tail is pointing to the left and you're facing the right side of the helicopter. Left side is the opposite, where the nose is pointing to the left, the tail to the right and you're facing the left side of the helicopter.
RC Helicopter
Pre-flight Setup & Checklist
Before you can learn to hover your Rc helicopter, you need to make sure your helicopter and radio is properly setup. If unsure, consult an experienced pilot or your local hobby store. Put your training gear on. If you don't have some, buy it. It costs - and if you're just beginning out will save you hundreds in crash damages. The training gear also makes a good optical aid that help you see the pitching and rolling of your Rc helicopter before you notice them in your helicopter. If you're flying a nitro helicopter, have lots of fuel available. If you're going electric, make sure your batteries are charged and have more than one available if possible. The more you can fly continually, the faster you'll heighten your skills.
Make sure your gyro is set to heading hold mode. While some population propose flying with a gyro in rate mode because you'll get a best feel for the helicopter, I don't propose it for the uncomplicated suspect that unless you plan on construction scale ships, you'll probably never use rate mode, so there's no sense learning to fly with it. Also, make sure your radio and helicopter is set up for hovering and that it's not too sensitive. If it's too sensitive or quick to respond, you can try adding some expo to the cyclic to soften the sticks colse to their centres, or decrease the endpoints to decrease the amount of cyclic pitch and responsiveness of the helicopter. And finally, go through your preflght checks.
Getting a Feel for Your Helicopter
Before you learn to hover, you need to understand how your Rc helicopter works. When you move the sticks, how does your helicopter react? If you input right cyclic, how swiftly does your helicopter react? The goal is to learn how your helicopter moves and corresponds with the inputs you give. Once your Rc helicopter and radio are setup, you'll need a custom area. You're going to want the outside you're practicing on to be as level as possible so you can slide colse to a bit. A gym floor, a large and level cement basement, a ice rink or a level asphalt make the best custom surfaces - the smoother the better. If you're trying to learn on a rough or uneven outside like grass or gravel, your Rc helicopter can catch on it and tip over. The training gear will help you slide colse to without fear or tippage. Make sure you have at least a 10ft x 10ft (20ft x 20ft or larger recommended) area that is clear of any and all obstructions. The larger your helicopter is, the more space you'll need. If there's no marking to use as a reference point, use a label or masking tape to originate one. Put your helicopter into the middle of the space pointing into the wind (if outdoors) and stand 10 - 15ft behind it. Start to throttle up very gently - you don't want it to lift off the ground, just get it light on the training gear so you can slide it around. If your main blades rotate clockwise and your helicopter has been built properly, there's a good opportunity that it will want to drift slightly to the left to counteract the tail rotor thrust pushing to the right. If your rotors spin counter clockwise, your helicopter should drift slightly to the right. Use the trims to compensate for the drifting until your Rc helicopter stays fairly stationery. Once you've got the trims set, give a limited right cyclic input and watch as the helicopter moves to the right. Then give left cyclic input to move it back to the reference point. Then do the same thing spellbinding your helicopter forwards and backwards. The main goal here is to get a feel for how the helicopter responds to your stick inputs and how much input is principal to get it to move. You'll find small stick inputs are all that is necessary. Once you're comfortable with side to side and forwards / backwards movement, bring the helicopter back to your reference point and move it diagonally in all 4 directions. This will be a lot harder then left/right forwards/backwards movement because you'll be inputting many cyclic commands simultaneously as well as controlling the tail. You'll want to custom this until you can make very literal, movements and are comfortable spellbinding your helicopter around. Remember to always fly your helicopter by watching its nose, never by looking at the tail boom.
Learning To Hover All right...on to the good stuff.
Once you've got a feel for how your helicopter moves and how to control it using your radio, it's time to get it off the ground. For this, you'll want to move from your level outside to something softer, preferable short grass. This will help to suck in any impact from hard landings and prevent damage. If you have a truly small or micro Rc helicopter, you can do this on the same hard outside you used earlier as there's not much weight to cause damage. Pick or mark a reference spot and place your helicopter there going through all the pre-flight checks mentioned earlier. Input social until your helicopter is just a few inches off the ground and try to hold it there. Remember that very small inputs make a big difference, so be polite on the controls. Pay attention to your helicopter and the balls on the training gear and try to anticipate any movement and try to compensate for it in advance. To come to be a masterful hoverer you need to be able to tell what's going to happen in terms of movement and react to it in expand to prevent it from happening. As you come to be more comfortable, start to bring it a limited higher and higher until you get it up to 2 - 3ft and can hold it in one spot.
Congratulations!!!
You can now hover an Rc helicopter... all else is downhill from here. Though you'll probably want to go through at least 3 - 5 batteries or tanks of fuel practicing stationary hovering before you start to move your helicopter colse to to make sure you'll be able to react in time in case of a mishap. As s side note, when practicing hovering, you'll ordinarily want to hover above 2 - 3ft to avoid ground effect. Ground effect is when your Rc helicopter is hovered close to the ground (under one rotor diameter) and the downwash of the rotor blades creates a high pressure bubble of air. This bubble of air applies an uneven upwards force which causes the helicopter to wobble or move sideways development stable flight difficult. It's a limited like balancing a basketball on your finger (when it's not spinning). For those reasons, when practicing hovering, I prefer to hover at about 3 - 5ft. It's high sufficient to avoid the ground effect and low sufficient that I'm looking slightly down at the helicopter and can use the ground as a reference. The higher you get, the harder it is to comprehend depth and keep the helicopter in one place - there's also no truly perceivable frame of reference against the sky as there is on the ground. However, with that being said, if you're just beginning out you might want to hover a limited higher in case you make a mistake so you have time to recover. Many population use the saying "practice 2 mistakes high" meaning that you have time to recover from at least two mistakes before your helicopter becomes acquainted with the ground, the hard way. Tip: Use a simulator for practicing and once you're comfortable on your computer try it on your Rc helicopter. Once you're able to truly hover your Rc helicopter tail in, it's time to start spellbinding it colse to a little. Repeat the same left/right forwards/backwards and diagonal movements that you did in the old section, but this time your helicopter will be 2-3ft in the air and when you get to your new position, hold it there for 15-20 seconds before spellbinding on. Transitioning from flight to hovering will help to heighten your skills and take you to the next step. Stationary side in and nose in hovering is significantly more difficult than the tail in hovering exercises mentioned in this record because cyclic commands are 90 or 180 degrees off depending on the position. For example, when nose in hovering, if you input a right cyclic command, your helicopter will move to the left and vice versa, so I'll save them for other time.
Now go out there and enjoy your Remote control Helicopter, by far the best remote control toy money can buy.
How to Hover a Remote operate Helicopter
