How to Hover the Falcon 3D

Introduction

Don’t let the heading fool you, this manual will make the difference between you successfully learning to hover your new helicopter and you spending a lot of time and money on it before learning to fly.

Please follow the steps in this manual, be patient and give yourself time to aquire one skill before moving on to the next.

Step 1: Preflight inspection and basic info.

Before each flight check your heli for any damage, loose screws and connecters and do not fly without fixing anything that is not perfect. A young man recently lost his eye and was almost killed due to a blade coming loose from a small electric helicopter. Safety first!

Training gear

Some electric heli’s come with a set of training gear. If your heli didn’t , make yourself some or get some from the Shop you bought your heli from. You should also give them a kick in the n%$# for not selling you training gear from the beginning. To make training gear you will need 4 ping-pong balls and around 1meter of 6mm beech dowel. Cut the dowel in half, make an x and glue together. Make holes in the ping pong balls, attach to the ends of your x, cable tie this contraption to the landing skids of your heli and you’ve made your heli into a trainer. The idea of the training gear is that it makes your heli less susceptible to capsizing.

The following should be your standard procedure for starting up an electric helicopter.

1. Charge your flight battery.
2. Install flight battery in the helicopter. Do NOT connect the battery wires to the heli!!
3. Straighten the Main blades to center them and to aid them in spinning up.
4. Turn on the Transmitter. Ensure the Transmitter is in normal mode.
5. Connect the battery wires to the heli .
6. Double check 3D switch on TX (Transmitter).
7. Wait for Gyro to initialize.
8. Rotate and test Cyclic controls.

Where to fly

In the long run it would be best if you joined your local RC Flying Club and Samaa (www.samaa.org.za ). Samaa is the South African Model Aircraft Association and there are huge benefits to belonging to this national organisation. At your local flying club you will find people with experience that should be able to give you lots of advice and help.

Many people find that a smooth surface of around 6x6 meters is perfect for the first steps in learning to hover. I did my first crawls and hops in a double garage.

Step 2

For this step we aren’t going to do much! We are going to use the power of this whole battery to get used to throttle control and the effect the throttle has on the tail of the heli. Go through the start up procedure for your heli, and check the following. Assuming that your transmitter is mode 2, check on the following:

The swashplate should move in the direction of the right stick when looking at the heli from the back. When you push the right stick to the right, the swashplate should tilt right and vice versa, when you push the right stick forward, the swashplate should tilt forward and vice versa. Also check that the swashplate is horisontal on all planes when the right stick is centered.

The tailblades should be vertical for the next test. Imagine that the bottom tailblade is the rudder of a boat. Now check that when you push the left stick on the TX left, the “rudder” would push the nose left and vice versa.

If all is well, we can do our first power up of the heli.

Step 3

Put the heli down in the center of your flying area and stand at least two meters behind it. The tail should be facing you. VERY slowly push the throttle stick forward to around ¼ throttle. Immediately close the throttle. You should never go beyond 1/3 throttle for this step. You should find that the tail of the heli swings noticably when the blades start turning. Do this at least ten times, always walking back to the heli after throttling down and putting the heli in it’s original position manually.

Step 4

Now that you know what the tail does when you throttle up, let’s start concentrating on the nose of the heli and do something about it. Most heli’s will swing their noses to the left when powering up. Power up again, but hold a bit of right rudder with the left stick this time. Continue doing this, trying to get to 1/3 throttle without the heli’s tail swinging more than 10 degrees. Be patient and keep doing this. Remember, the more time you spend on these skill, the better you will fly your heli later. If the tail moves more than 10 degrees, force yourself to walk to the heli and put it back into the starting position. Keep at this untill you’ve completely mastered it, increasing the throttle untill the heli begins to get light on the skids and wanting to move on it’s skids. Immediately power down if the heli wants to move sideways on it’s skids.

Step 5

We are going to learn to control sideways movement on the heli now. Remembering what you have learnt in the previous attempts, power up the heli and go to 1/3 throttle. Now slowly increase throttle till the heli begins to feel skiddy and make small side to side movements with the right stick. Move the heli around with the right stick, remembering that too much movement will make it fall over. Practice keeping the heli in one place (at least within a 500mm radius) and moving it left to a predetermined spot and back to the starting point and right to a predetermined spot and back etc.

Remember to coordiate tail control with aileron and throttle control. If the heli’s nose moves more than 10 degrees while you are moving sideways, force yourself to admit that it is out of control, power down, pick up the heli and put it back in the starting position.

Step 6

Once you have mastered sideways movement, start moving the heli forwards and backwards with the right stick. Be very careful not to capsize the heli when going forward and not to let the tailrotor hit the ground when moving backwards. A light touch is needed here. Again, make sure that you are in complete control of all axis of the heli and do not try to correct mistakes. Just put the heli back where you started and try again. It is imperative that you do not lift the heli off the ground before completely mastering all the skills you are practicing now.

Step 7

Using all the skills you have learnt, it is now time to give the heli it’s first taste of the air. First find a smooth open space of at least 20x20meters. Place the heli facing the wind (no more than 5km/h) Slowly increase the throttle to the point where it gets light on the skids, now smoothly but fairly quickly add throttle so that the heli take’s off. Keep controlling the tail, forwards and backwards movement and sideways movement. Immediately decrease throttle SLOWLY and gently land the helicopter. Do lots of these hops, slowly increasing the duration the heli stays in the air. Aim for a hovering height of around a meter at this stage.