Orientation - 'Relative-Control' technique
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Orientation - 'Relative-Control' technique |
Picture 1 Picture 2  Picture 3 Picture 4 Picture 5 |
The pictures on the left show
the technique I use to keep my control directions correct
during any orientation. When you begin flying you think
in terms of moving the stick right makes the helicopter
go to [your] right and left stick goes to [your] left.
This helps to ease the thought process when you first
start out as you have many new things to concentrate on.
However you eventually need to stop thinking in terms of
[you] and start making all control commands relative to
the helicopter. What I do to help is think of the image
of my helicopter at the base of the cyclic (aileron/elevator)
stick as shown in the photo at the top. Notice the nose
of the helicopter is at the top, the tail is at the
bottom, the muffler side is on the left, and the side you
adjust the main needle is on the right. Now lets go
through an example of the thought process. Lets say you
are inverted nose pointed toward you. The helicopter is
coming toward you so what do you need to do? Do not think
of which way you need to move the stick yet. Think of
what you want the helicopter to do. In this case the nose
needs to angle up toward the sky to stop the helicopter
from moving forward. Now for the direction of the stick...
you want the blades to go toward the nose. So look at the
image of the helicopter at the base of the stick in the
top photo. Pushing the stick forward will move the
helicopter toward the nose. Another example is in an
inverted hover and the helicopter is going sideways in
the direction of the muffler side. So if you want to stop
it just remember the steps above. You need to angle the
helicopter so the muffler side goes toward the sky. Look
at the top image and you will see you have to move the
stick to the left to go toward the muffler side. This
type thought process works for every orientation.
Upright, inverted, and even with the helicopter on the
side as in a knifeedge maneuver or falling in a tail
slide. I have given two examples of inverted but to be
fair here is an example of upright nose-in. The
helicopter is headed toward you and you want it to stop.
So first think of what you need the helicopter to do. The
blades need to go toward the tailboom. So again refer to
the image of the helicopter at the base of the cyclic
stick. To pull the blades toward the tailboom you have to
pull back on the stick. Remember the image of the
helicopter in the radio never changes position. The nose
is always at the top (forward), the tail is always at the
bottom (back), the muffler side is always on the left,
and the side you adjust the main needle is always on the
right. This never changes no matter what attitude the
helicopter is in because the servos never change
positions :) hahaha The above talks all about the right stick but this same technique works for the left stick too. Look at Picture 3 and you will see that if you imagine the image of the helicopter positioned so the nose is on the rudder stick. Think about the direction in terms of moving the nose toward the muffler side or moving the nose toward the side you adjust the main needle. An example would be upright nose-in hover. The helicopter is rotating and you are now seeing more of the muffler side of the helicopter. You want to get the nose point back toward you so to do that you have to move the nose toward the muffler. So look at the imaginary image of the helicopter in picture 3. To move the helicopter toward the muffler you need to move the stick to the left. For the collective think in terms of blades towards the skids or blades away from the skids. As you can see in Picture 4 moving the stick up always moves the helicopter in the direction of the blades going away from the skids. This is for any attitude. It is a constant. Just as moving the stick down will always more the blades towards the skids. |
