Getting started in helicopters

Model Airplane News, Nov 1998 by Marshall, Larry

BROKEN BLADES, boom strikes, bent tail rotors and lots of frustration are what a lot of people think of when the topic of learning to fly helicopters comes up. And why? For me, it is because I watched several of my buddies do it, and those were the parts of their "fun" that caught my eye. So I've never tried helicopters before now. But the truth is, it doesn't have to be that way, and that revelation (for me) is why I'm writing.

You see, I found the secret to learning to fly helicopters without breaking a bunch of stuff and spending a lot of money. I have a Bell! That's right, a Bell. Rick Bell is his full name, and he's very knowledgeable about helicopters and has patiently acted as my instructor. I'm far from accomplished, but in a very short time, I've become good enough to remove my training gear and am confident doing basic hovering maneuvers. I\lore important, I've done this without spending a lot of time and money fixing my helicopter. In fact, it was Rick's suggestion that I could learn to fly a helicopter without breaking things that goaded me into trying it in the first place. I'm glad I took the plunge, as helicopter flying is fun and challenging, and it is making me a better pilot, regardless of the type of aircraft I'm flying. It's also neat to be able to fly in the local schoolyard, and helicopters fit small fields very well.

As I've said, I want to share with you the process I went through. I can't say enough to emphasize that this process depends on your having a good instructor. While helicopter; guys have been saying that for years, it must be understood that with helicopters, a good instructor is not simply a flight instructor. A helicopter instructor is most important to help you get your machine set up properly and to teach you how to

ARE THEY HARDER TO FLY THAN AIRPLANES?

I suppose this question gets asked more often than any other. Depending on who you ask, you generally get the answer "Yes," or "Heck, yes," but this answer doesn't really tell you what you need to know, in my opinion. So, as an experienced airplane pilot and neophyte helicopter pilot, let me elaborate a bit on flying helicopters.

Flying helicopters requires precision flying skills. If you watch Dave Patrick, Chip Hyde, or any of the top pattern flyers, you'll see precision flying skills; these are not unique to flying helicopters. With helicopters you have to fly four functions-all the time. Relating this to airplane flying, constant throttle control to maintain speed regardless of aircraft attitude, coordinating rudder and aileron during turns and maintaining altitude with elevator while making turns is all part of this. This sort of coordination is required to fly some types of aircraft and to do precision aerobatics, but again, most people jam the throttle forward on their airplanes and never touch the left stick until they're ready to reconnect with terra firma.

The visuals of helicopters are very difterent from airplanes in that they change with only minor changes in orientation. For instance, if you hover 3 feet above the ground, you have the ground to orient to, and you're largely looking down on the rotor disk. Identifying "level" in that context is pretty easy. But move the hell up to 8 feet, and you lose the ground reference, and now you're looking up at the disk. Trying to decide "level" at this new altitude is a new experience, whereas a similar height increase with an airplane doesn't produce nearly as pronounced an effect on orientation. I've found similar differences when hovering while looking at the right and left of the helicopter.

Helicopters hover; airplanes do not (torque rolls don't count). Hovering is somewhat like balancing a ball on the end of a stick, so the skills I've noted above all come to bear when trying to hover. Hovering also underscores the fact that with helicopters, you're controlling lift in a more direct way than with airplanes, and responses to this control are more immediate. Hovering is also where you must start learning to fly a helicopter, and it is done closer to the ground than when learning to fly an airplane. This makes helicopters seem more difficult to learn, as mother earth is not very forgiving of accidents. I guess that's why heli guys invented training gear.

So, are helicopters harder to fly?perhaps too hard? Flying helicopters is harder than throwing your average sport plane around the patch and letting it determine a good portion of its trajectory. No, it's not harder than flying precise aerobatics with an airplane. If you have experience coordinating rudder, throttle, elevator and ailerons, you'll find that it's just a different way of coordinating them, and you'll progress quickly. But helicopters are not "too hard" to fly. I believe anybody can do it if he wants to. Further, I'll go on record as saying that helicopters are a lot of fun, and the challenges of doing even basic hovering competition sequences can provide a lot of enjoyment in a small space.

START WITH GOOD EQUIPMENT