I bought an R/C Helicopter last week and expect it to arrive today. It may even be sitting on my door step as I type. I've spent the last week, since I ordered it, trying to get an idea of what I got myself into. I've found a lot of useful information, tips and suggestions but I haven't found any good documentation of what is involved in getting into this hobby from a newcomers perspective. So.... My plan is to document my little adventure for posterity.
My R/C experience so far involves a 1/10 scale nitro truck that I play with on occasion, an airplane I spent about 2 years building and 10 minutes crashing when I was 15 and being forced to "fly" a plane that a friend of mine was given. That lasted about30 seconds before it crashed. So I don't claim to be an expert or even knowledgeable on the subject. I will probably get technical details wrong. I do promise to do my best to get the facts right and offer a perspective that I hope will be helpful to others.
So let's get started. The heli I decided to start with after reading many reviews, forums and articles is a Blade CP+ from e-flite. From what I've been able to figure out the whole Blade CP line (CP, CP+, and CP Pro) are just different options on the same heli. The CP+ is a collective pitch, 5 channel, LiPo powered model. There are cheaper models out there and of course more expensive but this seemed like a good middle ground for me and I found one that claims to be lightly used on e-bay for a price that was in my very small budget .
All of the forums I've read warn extensively that this, or any of the collective pitch helicopters are not for beginners. So why did I pick this one? Well, there are basically four types of R/C helicopters out there:
1. The 2 channel micros - Air-Hogs, etc. Those things that you find in the mall kiosks or at Wal-Mart. They are really toys. Kids can fly them. Crash them, they don't break. But don't expect them to buzz around you house like you see on TV. These basically offer two controls, main rotor (elevator) and tail rotor(rudder). So you can make it go up and down and spin. There is no forward, backward or side ways control. It goes forward when you give it a little right rudder, assuming you have it balanced right. Basically what you do is fly it in a forward curve to the right then stop, turn back to the left and start another arc to the right. Picture a chain of m's. I have two of these and they are fun for a little while, and the dog loves them but there is really no challenge.
2. Coaxial helicopters - These have two main rotors that rotate in opposite directions to provide more stability. I've never tried these but they claim to be pretty easy to fly. From my reading a lot of people will recommend these as the first step to get into the hobby. They claim that you will learn the controls and perspective, i.e. flying the helicopter with the tail away from you (nose-in in heli speak) where the controls are "reversed". These seemed fairly expensive for just learning perspective so I, like many from what I can tell, decided to skip this step. We'll see how that works out.
3. Fixed Pitch helicopters - Basically the lift of the helicopter is controlled only by the speed of the main rotor. The pitch of the blades does not change or, as the name states, is fixed. I've seen some comments that these are slightly easier to fly than a collective pitch but again I'm not much for baby steps so I jumped over this one too.
4. Collective Pitch (CP) Helicopters - These are the real deal. Collective Pitch means that the pitch of the blades change to increase or decrease lift. These helicopters can fly loops, rolls and hover inverted. Now we're talking!!! These are also the hardest to fly, by all accounts, and the most expensive. So of course this is the way I chose to go for a first heli. As a sub-category of the collective pitch are various sizes and gas/nitro vs. electric.
Most claim that the larger CP helis are easier to learn on and more stable but price being a factor, it seems that a lot of people use the mini size, like the Blade, to learn. So going in I knew I wanted a CP, I had a limited budget and I fully expect to crash this thing, given my past flying experience, so parts need to be readily available. The Blade fit the bill. It's a 3D capable CP model. I got mine used for $100 on e-bay. The local hobby shop (LHS in heli speak) stocks parts, sells them and can repair or trim them after a crash.
My plan for learning to fly is to use the "RADD Method". I've seen multiple references to this method in forums and articles all over the web so it seems to be the way to go. Basically the RADD method involves going through 9 battery charges with the aircraft on the ground. You learn to control the throttle and tail over the first two batteries then add the elevator(forward/backward) and aileron(left/right) over the next several while increasing the speed of the main rotor until the heli is very near to lifting off. Finally, on battery 10 you hover. The general consensus seems to be that this is the best way to learn to hover with out crashing if you can resist the urge to try to take off through the 10 lessons. I also spent the last week watching you tube videos of people crashing their new helicopters to give me motivation in this area. If you're interested here's the link to the RADD method.
I would probably be remiss if I didn't mention that all of my research to date also recommends the use of a simulator. If you haven't seen these they are computer flight simulators with an R/C type, two joystick, controller. I expect that I'm not alone in not being very interested in this. I don't really want to play a video game, I want to fly a helicopter. So I'm skipping this recommendation as well.
So, in summary, I'm doing what I expect many people do when getting into this hobby. I skip all the sage advice of the experts and buy the most difficult type of helicopter to fly. I get a small heli because budget doesn't allow for anything more. I skip the simulator because it doesn't sound like fun. I'm going for it. Over the next few days you'll get to see how that works out and I'll share pics, video and any advice that might be useful. So stay tuned. I'm going to go home and see if my new toy is there!!!!
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