How
to hold the radio
last
updated 2-20-2006
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How
to hold the radio |
 There are two
main ways, the pinch method and the thumb method. When
you start out in the hobby it seems more natural to place
your thumbs on the top of the sticks to control the heli.
Luckily when I got started I had some experienced heli
pilots to make me use the pinch method. I have a picture
of the pinch method on the right. You can click on it to
see a larger image. Notice that the thumbs are on the
back/top corners of the sticks and the forefinger is on
the front/top side. Also take note of the finger
positions around the switches. This pinch method offers
more control precision then the other way. Often times
those that use the thumb method have to use expo to both
decrease the sensitivity around center and to help
decrease interactions between controls (again due to the
less precision that the thumb method gives). The only
thing that I had a problem with initially was that I didn't
have enough range with my fingers to push the sticks all
the way toward the center. I then figured out I had to
hold the radio a little differently. Instead of gripping
the radio so the sides were in the palm of my hand, I had
to hold the sides with the bottom edge of my hands. I do
use a neck strap to hold the radio, I wouldn't want it to
slip out of my hands while flying. That would not be good,
hahaha. For the flight mode switch and throttle hold I
use my 4th finger to pull it up toward me and the 3rd
finger to go back to normal.If for whatever reason you use the thumb method then you may want to experiment with the expo function. 10% to 30% seems to benefit most that use their thumbs. *** RADIO STICK HEIGHT - When using the pinch method you may want to adjust the height of the sticks. Shorter is better. To do this turn the top of the stick counter-clockwise to loosen it. Then turn the bottom part of the stick clockwise to lower it. When you get it where you want then turn the top part clockwise until it is tight. |
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