Radio Control Helicopter

Anti-Crash Technology

2009-07-19T18:28:00.000-07:00

Two sensors on the fuselage, one on the top and one on the bottom, monitor the position of the plane in relation to the ground. When the plane is flying level, the top sensor sees the sky while the bottom sensor sees the ground, and they tell the onboard computer (receiver) that the plane is flying correctly. If the plane enters a severe dive, the sensors detect the change in orientation and react to the danger that the plane is then in. The software in the receiver will then temporarily cut the motor, and correct the severe angle and pitch of the plane. This causes the nose to come up and pulls the plane out of the dive to help prevent the plane from crashing. The pilot is then able to regain control. If pilots are flying correctly and do not put the plane into a severe dive situation while ACT is engaged, they will have complete control of the plane’s flight pattern. Once users gain experience flying, they can turn ACT off.

How to Hover A RC Helicopter

2009-04-03T05:53:00.000-07:00

The main goal of hovering an RC helicopter is to keep it in one spot with as little moving or drifting as possible. Ultimately, you’d like it to remain absolutely 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 people give up on the hobby because they can’t master hovering.
While it is possible and people 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 eventually run into a problem.
Being able to hover teaches control and fine motor skills that you’ll want to have to become a better overall pilot. Even top performers practice 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 complicated than learning basic, right side up hovering that we’ll discuss in this ‘how to’ article….

As you can see from the pictures above, 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.

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 $20 - $50 and if you’re just starting out will save you hundreds in crash damages. The training gear also makes a good visual 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 improve your skills.

Make sure your gyro is set to heading hold mode. While some people recommend flying with a gyro in rate mode because you’ll get a better feel for the helicopter, I don’t recommend it for the simple reason that unless you plan on building 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 around their centres, or decrease the endpoints to decrease the amount of cyclic pitch and responsiveness of the helicopter.

And finally, go through your pre-flight check.

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 quickly 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 practice area. You’re going to want the surface you’re practicing on to be as smooth as possible so you can slide around a bit. A gym floor, a large and smooth cement basement, a ice rink or a smooth asphalt make the best practice surfaces – the smoother the better.

If you’re trying to learn on a rough or uneven surface like grass or gravel, your RC helicopter can catch on it and tip over. The training gear will help you slide around 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 marker or masking tape to create 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 slowly – 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 chance 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 little 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 moving 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 necessary 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 multiple cyclic commands simultaneously as well as controlling the tail.

You’ll want to practice this until you can make very precise movements and are comfortable moving 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 smooth surface to something softer, preferable short grass. This will help to absorb any impact from hard landings and prevent damage. If you have a really small or mini RC helicopter, you can do this on the same hard surface 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 collective 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 gentle 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 become a masterful hoverer you need to be able to tell what’s going to happen in terms of movement and react to it in advance to prevent it from happening.

As you become more comfortable, start to bring it a little 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… everything 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 around 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 usually 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 making stable flight difficult. It’s a little 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 enough to avoid the ground effect and low enough 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 perceive depth and keep the helicopter in one place – there’s also no easily perceivable frame of reference against the sky as there is on the ground.

However, with that being said, if you’re just starting out you might want to hover a little higher in case you make a mistake so you have time to recover. Many people 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 easily hover your RC helicopter tail in, it’s time to start moving it around a little.

Repeat the same left/right forwards/backwards and diagonal movements that you did in the previous 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 moving on. Transitioning from flight to hovering will help to improve 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 article 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 another time.

Now go out there and enjoy your Remote Control Helicopter, by far the best remote control toy money can buy.

Before You Fly

2009-03-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

Before You Fly
1. Always check / tighten all important screws before you fly.
2. Make sure you have the correct flight mode selected before you fly. If you use a simulator or have different ‘birds’ this is especially important.
3. If your radio has lots of switches, set it so that when you start all your switches are pointing the same direction.
4. Check your radio’s range.
5. Make a checklist and stick to it.
6. Always ensure that your linkages are secure. Sometimes, when making adjustments, one end will unscrew more than the other and is just hanging on by a thread. If it slips off during flight, it could be a very expensive and dangerous lesson. Check them quickly before you spool up.
7. Make sure your receiver and transmitter batteries are fully charged. A dead battery can really wreck havoc in the air.
8. Whenever you start your helicopter, whether it’s a nitro, gasser or electric, always hold the blade grips tightly. If your throttles not all the way down, or there’s a glitch, your heli can spin out of control and cause serious damage.
Flying Tips
1. If something looks to be wrong with your heli, land right away to find out what it is. It’s not going to go away on its own.
2. Fly the nose, not the tail unless you want to become totally disoriented.
3. If your RC heli gets the shakes, land and check to see if your blades are balanced and track properly. Other causes can be blade pitch, weight imbalance, RPM and so on.
4. When flying non-electric RC helicopters, always make sure you can see smoke coming out of the heli. If there’s no smoke, it’s likely that you’re engine is running too lean. Too lean means too much heat which can destroy the engine.
5. Be sure that no loose wiring rubs against the frame. You can use a nylon braid to protect it.
6. Don’t let metal or carbon fiber parts rub against each other. It can cause RF interference which can lead to a crash.
7. Monitor your battery’s voltage with a battery monitor or by timing known flight times.
8. Experiment all you like - in a simulator where crashing doesn’t cost a significant amount of time ort money.
9. When you’re done flying your nitro or gasser for the day, tilt the heli backwards after flying to drain the sticky stuff out of the muffler. This will protect your car from nasty drips.

Venture 30 CP Combo RC Helicopter by JR

2009-03-02T08:46:00.000-08:00

It’s common knowledge that beginner Remote Control helicopters are supposed to be stripped down machines capable of nothing more than teaching you the basics and to be promptly discarded once you’ve mastered them. Well, the folks at JR obviously didn’t get that memo. The new, almost-ready-to-fly Venture CP RC Helicopter combines the power of CCPM flight control with a versatile design that can take a complete beginner from the basics, through intermediate flight, all the way to thrilling advanced aerobatics.

Get Off To a GREAT Start

As an entry-level RC Helicopter, the Venture CP is hard to beat. Its quick assembly time, ball bearing precision, and rock solid in-flight stability set the novice up for success right from the start. Since it’s almost-ready-to-fly, all the really complicated assembly, like the rotor head and main frame, is done for you. What little assembly is left can be finished in a single afternoon. Basically, this involves bolting on the tail assembly, installing the servos and electronics, and mounting the engine and muffler. A thorough step-by-step manual guides the beginner through it all. Radio programming, troubleshooting, and the basics of hovering are also covered in the manual.

When the time comes to take that first RC Helicopter flight, beginners will benefit from the smooth, precise flight control of CCPM-Collective Cyclic Pitch Mixing. With CCPM, the swash plate servos work together to control cyclic and collective functions instead of using a separate servo for each. Since the servos work together, you won’t have to use expensive digital or super servos. Standard sport servos, like JR’s S537s, will work just fine. Maintenance and repair is much easier too, because of the low number of parts necessary to make a CCPM system work.

Unlike many other RC Helicopters in its class that use bushings, the Venture CP Remote Control Helicopter sports ball bearings throughout the rotor head. Not only does this make control inputs silky smooth, but it saves the trouble of having to upgrade later on.

Mild to Wild: The Power of the Paddles

One of the design goals JR had for the Venture CP RC Helicopter was to give it extra capabilities a beginner could "unlock" after learning the fundamentals. They did this by providing an extra set of fly bars and paddles. The paddles that come installed on the Venture are heavier and thicker than those used for more advanced maneuvers and soften the sensitivity of the controls nicely. This makes learning fundamental maneuvers, such as hovering, takeoff, and landing much easier.

Once they’ve mastered the basics, Venture owners can install the lighter, thinner paddles that are included for aerobatic maneuvers. This conversion takes as little as 30 minutes and involves nothing more than installing the new parts and tweaking the radio’s CCPM mixing. The Venture’s expertly written manual takes you step-by-step through the whole conversion process. After installing the high-performance paddles, Venture CP Remote Control Helicopter owners will be able to fully appreciate the crisp responsiveness that only JR’s CCPM can provide. Inverted hovers, tail slides, rolls, and loops can all be performed with more precision than a conventional RC Helicopter because fewer mixing parts means less slop in the control system.

Whether you’re a novice or an accomplished RC Helicopter pilot on a budget, JR’s new Venture CP has the design features you need. From the rock-solid responsiveness of CCPM to the smooth operation of ball bearing supported controls, the Venture CP is anything but a stripped down Remote Control Helicopter . You’ll also enjoy the support of a nationwide network of retail hobby shops that offer parts and service for all JR products.

Venture 30 CP Combo RC Helicopter Features

JR 6102 6-Channel Radio System Included
JR G500T Tail Lock Gyro Included
Webra Speed 35 Helicopter Engine Included
Accurate, Simple and Powerful CCPM Mixing
Two-Piece Box Frame System
One-Way Hex Start Shaft System
Wide Spread Tail Output Shaft Bearings
Belt-Driven Tail Rotor Design
Precision Ball Bearings at all Critical Locations
Ultra-Low Parts Count
Self-Aligning One-Piece Steel Clutch System
Straight Blade Axle Rotor Head Design
Prefinished Main Rotor Blades
Superior Parts Fit and Finish
Optional 3D Control System Setup Included

Venture 30 CP Combo RC Helicopter Specifications

Main Rotor Diameter: 49.50 in
Tail Rotor Diameter: 9.30 in
Gross Weight: 7.00-7.50 lbs
Length: 44.60 in
Main Gear Ratio: 9.78: 1 : 5.18

Control System: CCPM

Electric RC Helicopters Vs Gas RC Helicopters

2009-02-28T17:53:00.000-08:00

Electric rc helicopters are very maneuverable, you can hover with them, move them left, right, up and down with a lot of control. This makes them good for anyone that is thinking of progressing with the hobby of rc helicopters. The Electric RC helicopters are almost silent and there is minimal maintenance needed with the robust helicopter, but it does include some excellent features such as an adjustable gyro.
Gas RC Helicopters & Nitro RC Helicopters.
The big boys of the RC helicopter market are for the serious or advanced hobbyist, they are most defiantly not a toy or for those just starting out. So sit back, relax, and let this website be your guide to choosing, building, and flying Radio Control Helicopters. The hobby of rc helicopters provides an avenue to relieve stress, relax, and simply have fun. Now that rc helicopters are battery operated, the hobby is now easier to get started. Gas powered rc helicopters are as close to real helicopters as you can get.