Day 2 - So much for RADD and a little hover video

Well, I tried to do RADD and I see where he's coming from but now that I've had the heli in the air a little I'm not sure I totally agree with the method. I made it through the first 2 or 3 batteries without taking off and more or less following the RADD method, if not to the letter at least the intent. I spun up and held the tail and actually got pretty comfortable with controlling the rudder. It became more or less instinctive as opposed to the initial attempt where the control seemed backwards (see yesterdays post).

I played with moving the swash as he recommends. This was completely intuitive to me. Move the stick to the right the heli goes right, left - left, etc. So I quickly got bored with this and basically moved onto the last couple batteries of the RADD method where he tells you to just scoot it around the floor. I completely ignored the 1 ft box through the whole thing and instead used about a 5 ft square. When I started getting it close to a wall either in the kitchen or the garage I would go pick it up and put it back in the middle and play around again. Then I hovered. But before I get to that here's what I discovered about the RADD method.

RADD is really good at telling you what to do and making the instructions entertaining. What he's not good at is telling you why you are doing it. Basically he is slowly getting you used to the controls and how the heli will react. It's much better to be familiar with the controls before you are flying. It's also easier to hover if you start off with the model relatively stationary. If it's scooting across the ground at lift off you will have to correct for any movement before you can concentrate on a stationary hover and stopping movement is much harder than keeping it from moving to start with. So he's teaching you to hold it still through spin up with the one foot box.

The problem I have with his method is this... A helicopter has 6 degrees of freedom of motion as shown in the picture to the left. Basically it can move in two ways on each of 3 axis. It can move along the axis or it can rotate around the axis. For example it can move forward and backwards along the X-Axis and it can tilt to the left or right or rotate around the X-Axis. By keeping the helicopter on the floor you remove three of the degrees of freedom. While on the floor it can not rotate around the X or Z axis and, as long as you don't give it too much throttle it can't move laterally through the Y axis. So all you are left with is lateral movement on the X and Z axis and rotation on the Y. This is OK for getting the general feel of the controls but doesn't really go very far towards getting you in control of the heli.

I quickly realized all this when I decided to skip ahead and hover. No I didn't crash but pretty close. I ran the throttle up, came off the ground and immediately heli shot off in I don't even remember which direction. That's when I realized that countering motion in one direction had another effect. It caused the aircraft to roll in the other direction and start moving that way.

While trying to lift off my model has a tendency to go left and forward. In countering that tendency during spin up I add right aileron and up elevator. Once it came off the ground it almost immediately tried to go right and back. Fortunately I had the training gear on and all it really did was hit the right rear ping pong ball.

This is when I modified the RADD method to my liking. Instead of scooting around on the ground I would give it just enough power to come an inch or so off the ground. This way I have all 6 degrees of freedom but the training gear keeps the heli from going too far in any one direction. The only ways that you are not limited are up and rotation of the tail. I put a self imposed limit on lateral movement that if I got within 2 feet of a wall I would spin down and manually move it back to the center of my flying area.

Using this method I got a feel for the impacts of the rotational movement without risk of damage to my new toy. I went through a couple batteries like this and as my confidence built and my control got better I started increasing the altitude a little bit at a time.

So here's what you've been waiting for, some video of a total novice trying to fly an RC Heli!!! This is after two days, about 6 batteries and probably 2 to 3 hours worth of practice. As you can see I don't even bother to change clothes after work before starting to play. I'm certainly not proficient but I'm getting better every time. I've flown a couple more batteries since this video and can now probably maintain a 20+ second hover. The next thing I need to learn is how to correct for lateral movement without over correcting. I'll be working on that tonight. Enjoy the video and no comments on my messy garage!!!