Radio Controlled Helicopters For Beginners - Indoor RC Helicopter Hazards

Radio Controlled Helicopters For Beginners - Indoor RC Helicopter Hazards

When you start your beginner RC helicopter training, there are a number of things you need to keep in mind. Radio controlled helicopters for beginners are generally easier to master than the more advanced models, but quite a few things can go wrong when you do your first indoor training flights.

A mostly indoor RC helicopter such as the Nine Eagles Swordfish is a very stable coaxial machine, and a good introduction to the hobby, but you still need to look out for the following potential problems:

1. The Wall Effect

Indoor helicopter flying has its hazards, and one of the first you will experience in a confined space such as your living room is air turbulence. Even relatively small RC helicopters can create a lot of turbulence from the dual main rotors. Air is pushed down, and then out to the sides, and from there on towards the nearest wall or furniture, from where it will bounce back again in various directions.

If you take off cautiously into a low level tail-in hover, by the time you have just stabilized the aircraft and feeling good about your achievement, the first "side-wash" will probably hit the heli and try to force it to the side. The biggest effect will be felt in the tail which will start turning away from the air pressure, and if you don't correct it in time, you can easily become disorientated when you finally start reacting, as the heli could now be facing you from the side.

Luckily the excellent yaw (sideways movement) dampening gyros even in most radio controlled helicopters for beginners should counter and retard this rotation of the tail so that you will soon learn to correct it in time.

2. The Space Race

This problem may seem self-evident, but it is worth mentioning how it can affect your first indoor training sessions. The fact that I was learning within a very small family room to take off, hover and get comfortable with the cyclic controls for basic forwards, backwards and sideways movement, made me cautious right from the start, as I knew there was very "little room" for error!

It so happens that I had no real crashes during that time, just a few more or less uncontrolled landings, and the rotors brushed various pieces of furniture in the process, but always after I had already cut power.

Soon I was filling the whole cubic area of that room, refining my control of my Nine Eagles Swordfish, all the while careful and wary of sudden side, down or up-washes of turbulent air trying to destroy my safety record!

Then, very cautiously, I started practising side-on hovers. The confined space was now becoming even more of a challenge, as I soon found these hovers, and the disorientation one tries to overcome, were stacking the odds against me. However I pushed on and eventually got comfortable enough to very, very carefully try out some nose-in hovers (the controls by now the opposite from where I started, and often, dangerously, giving "pause to though").

After a few such hovers, just as I felt I was beginning to get instinctive control over the heli, I made one of those "little" over-corrections, now in a nose-in hover, and this time I wasn't so lucky. No major crash resulted, but the rotor clipped a chair on the far side of the room when I slipped the craft too far back, and I had to settle for my first repair (replacing the affected blade with the spare that came in the box).

At that point I decided to find a sports hall, or wait for calm days to continue practising - no more indoors at home for me. The bottom line: for simple basic training, where disorientation isn't yet such a big problem (tail-in maneuvers) a confined space is acceptable, but for further training it just isn't worth the risk.

3. Safe as Houses?

Lastly on a point of safety: If you do your basic training indoors at home, often with other family members or visitors nearby, keep in mind that these spinning rotors are actually quite dangerous. The blade tips move at great speeds, and at the same time you are still learning to control where that lethal blade goes! Little kids may get over-excited by your amazing flying feats and inadvertently run across the path of your indoor RC helicopter!

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