lolachampcar
Pre-takeoff checklist
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2013
- Messages
- 106
- Display Name
- lolachampcar
The helicopter CFIs on my field make life easy for me. They are constantly letting me cut in and land along with generally just being on the ball and having a good handle on what is going on around the airport. I try to return the favor by offering a ride in my front seat anytime they have a hankering for flying up side down. Several have taken me up on the offer over the years.
One returned the favor by putting me in a Switzer for a half hour joy ride. Much to my surprise, we fired up, warmed up and, when we were ready to go, she refused to touch the controls. She said she had seen me flying my little RC heli and had no issues with me taking the controls from the get go. I thought she was mighty brave (I've a total of a 1/2 hour intro ride in a Robi eight years ago) but she turned out to be right. It took a couple of minutes to wrap my head around the idea that the focus point was stationary and my butt was moving but otherwise all went well.
The moral of the story for me was heli students can save themselves a BUCKETLOAD of cash by simply going down to the local RC store and buying a small electric heli with some spare batteries. Put the "training wheels" on it and go sit in a garage somewhere until you can hover within a one foot radius.
Your best bet is the really cheap fixed collector birds with no tail gyro although the gyro is almost always built into the speed controller so you may have to settle for the ability to turn it off. The fixed collector forces you to respond to power changes with tail corrections. It also forces you to anticipate as it takes a moment for the motor to push energy into the rotor head.
Anyway, if you can hover a small electric (the big ones are much more stable), you can hover any real one. You will save yourself hours and hours of flight time in the real thing.
Good luck.
Bill
One returned the favor by putting me in a Switzer for a half hour joy ride. Much to my surprise, we fired up, warmed up and, when we were ready to go, she refused to touch the controls. She said she had seen me flying my little RC heli and had no issues with me taking the controls from the get go. I thought she was mighty brave (I've a total of a 1/2 hour intro ride in a Robi eight years ago) but she turned out to be right. It took a couple of minutes to wrap my head around the idea that the focus point was stationary and my butt was moving but otherwise all went well.
The moral of the story for me was heli students can save themselves a BUCKETLOAD of cash by simply going down to the local RC store and buying a small electric heli with some spare batteries. Put the "training wheels" on it and go sit in a garage somewhere until you can hover within a one foot radius.
Your best bet is the really cheap fixed collector birds with no tail gyro although the gyro is almost always built into the speed controller so you may have to settle for the ability to turn it off. The fixed collector forces you to respond to power changes with tail corrections. It also forces you to anticipate as it takes a moment for the motor to push energy into the rotor head.
Anyway, if you can hover a small electric (the big ones are much more stable), you can hover any real one. You will save yourself hours and hours of flight time in the real thing.
Good luck.
Bill
