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The directory for our advice
pages for those with questions on how to get involved in the
great sport of RC Helis!
Here's Something Different... The magazines love to say that they
can't make specific recommendations, and that you simply must
find the "local experts" and then buy/fly exactly whatever
they do. That's worse than useless advice! It's possible the
local experts AREN'T avaialable, or aren't experts. They may
be flying the worst engines with the most limited - even illegal
- radios using dangerous servos all packed into a heli that is
not what YOU want, and using a schoolyard as a flying site by
theirselves, thus risking innocent kids. (All of the above are
real stories, by the way...) We'll tell you what WE think
is the best way to go. With options and choices. And to start,
here are some of the BEST VALUES
ever offered for complete starter packages.
Check out our new
listing of Flight Support Packages!
- Should
I start with an RC Airplane first?
- Absolutely not. You'd have
to spend many years with the fixed wing aircraft to get any useful
level of piloting skills to transfer to helis. Most RC airplane
pilots have never developed any "touch" with their
left hand (rudder and throttle). They only use rudder for ground
steering and seldom adjust power in flight until time to land,
when they chop the throttle to idle The really GOOD airplane
pilots DO develop touch with the left hand, but they are a decided
minority.
With Helis, the left stick controls are EVERY BIT as important
as the right stick! There are no "primary/secondary"
controls when hovering your heli. From the very first attempt
at hovering, you must constantly make many small corrections
with all 4 controls. In fact, that's 99% of the reason that helis
are somewhat harder to learn to fly - you're learning to use
more controls all at once.
Now, don't get me wrong - the airplane pilots DO have some valuable
experience to bring along, in that they will already have a good
understanding of 2-stroke engines and usually some knowledge
of programming a radio, and what the radio does. But you can
certainly learn those with a heli as your first model too.
If you want to fly helis, buy a heli. If you want to fly planes,
buy a plane. If you want to fly both, make sure you buy a HELI
radio - they can fly planes too.
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- Best Helis
to start with?
- The most popular trainer is the Ace Raptor
30v2. They fly fine and are straightforward to build.
The pre-builts in particular are a huge value, (LEAST EXPENSIVE
ENTRY LEVEL HELI setup) including the workable TT39 Pro engine
already installed WITH a muffler. It's not a "deluxe"
heli and the muffler is laughable - but the price is the lowest.
The BETTER package is our combo with the OS engine, bearing upgrade
and upgrade muffler. (Kit form). The V2 series are VERY good
helis with broad performance range and low maintenace. Also,
the parts availability and pricing (especially with our Mavrikk
brand!) is extremely good.
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- The Raptor 50 is another popular
choice. Parts and upgrades are 99% the same as the 30 , but of
course the engine (OS .50 is by FAR the best choice) costs more
and the kit is higher priced - MOSTLY because it includes carbon
blades, metal swash, full 49 bearings and carbon lower frame
brace, along with a constant drive tail. The Performance is VERY
hot - if you want it to be.
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- The newest low priced trainer
is the JR Venture CP. This
30 sized trainer/sport/3D heli comes almost completely assembled
for not much more than the Raptor kit and looks to be a higher
quality product. It flies nice and includes two flybar arrangements.
See our review! It is also available as a 50, with improved mount
and rotor head.
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- The BEST new 30 heli is the
Kyosho Caliber 30. Again,
see our full review. VERY nice helis with reasonable parts pricing.
-
- Other 30 trainers we like
are the Shuttle Challenge and Sceadu.
After training you'd want to get the auto-clutch for the
Challenge tho. And the soft head/mixer setup on the Challenge
is not going to make you happy when you move into more aggressive
aerobatics. (The Sceadu is brand new and is ready for whatever
flying you want, plus is easily upgraded to a 50 engine for very
high performance)
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- You certainly CAN start with
a 60 machine. The best would be the
RAPTOR 60. (It builds easy, is big and easy to see, and
parts are affordable). Overall it's slightly easier to see -
and thus fly - the 60's, but even the simple/low cost 60s will
cost a LOT more to equip and maintain than the 30 sized machines.
The new Hirobo Freya 60 would also be worth looking into for
a first-time 60 heli at reasonable cost.
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- With the exception of the
slightly heavy Venture 30CP, ALL of the above helis can be used
as great basic trainers, then very easily adapted (change setup/paddles/mixers)
to be great hot-dog aerobatic machines.
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Above, from left: -
our own Raptor, Kalt Baron 30, and JR Ergo 60. All excellent
helis!
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- What else
do I need to get started?
- Here's a general list to guide you. We have
a package for about $300 that includes all the field equipment
and basic tools you need to get flying. We don't sell junk so
our package may be a couple bucks more than packages from the
folks who do sell junk.
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- Radios
- How much to spend?
- As much as
you can afford! Well, not really that much - but it's VERY easy
to outgrow the abilities of most of the current 6-channel radios.
Given any decent care your radio system will last a long time.
So it makes sense to buy one that will do what you need NOW and
also in the FUTURE. For most people the "mid-range"
makes the most sense, and that means a JR9303 or the Futaba 9CH.
An Exception would be if you are primarily interested in
scale flying (not aerobatics) - then any modern 6-7 channel will
be sufficient. We stock all three major brands, (Airtronics,
Futaba and JR) in both FM and PCM versions.
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- Getting
the most radio features for the least money would lead you to the Futaba 7CHP
series or the JR6102. Both include (4) digital sport servos and
are available for well under $300 with PCM receivers. (the 5th
servo will need to be bought separately and spec'd to match your
choice of gyro). They include 5-point curves for pitch and throttle,
and have full function idle-up capabilities.
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- What about
Simulators?
- Absolutely
a good investment! And not just for raw beginners either. The
good modern simulators have more then enough realism to be a
significant aid in learning ANY new maneuver with your heli -
whether that means hovering, nose-in or rolling circles. It's
almost impossible to have a "perfect" match with your
real-world heli, but you can easily get close enough to do the
job. We strongly recommend a simulator to anyone flying or considering
R/C helis. Virtually everyone who uses one will tell you that
the simulator pays for itself MANY TIMES OVER in crash parts
that aren't needed due to the virtual training.
- RC Helis are
particularly well suited to simulator usage. The style of flying
helis - relatively slow speed and close to the pilot - is a perfect
match between sims and real life. The hardest part of flying
helis is developing the conditioned response that allows you
to make the required control inputs quickly, without having to
spend valuable time "thinking it over" while your heli
heads for trouble. This training/learning is just as important
for learning your first hover as learning the latest 3-D pirouetting
flippy-flopping inverted tail first autos.
- Our favorite
simulator happens to be the Real Flight simulator. The Real Flight has several
helis as well as fixed wing models, and you can modify them as
you wish.
- I don't know
what the lower limits are for good performance, but you can find
guidelines on Great Planes web site. In general terms, you need
about 50 megs of Hard Drive, a good 3D graphics accelerator,
plenty of RAM (32 megs probably minimum) and a fast processor.
-
- Personally
I like to just use the "dummy" radio box that is available
with the simulator. I already know how to program my radio, I
don't need a sim to learn where switches are and I do NOT want
to risk accidentally screwing up my REAL settings to play on
the simulator! I know, some of you prefer to use your own radio
as the controller and that's also possible with the optional
interface sets.
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- Gyros -
Mechanical, Piezo or Heading Hold?
- In general
you will want to use a piezo (non mechanical) gyro AND also a
heading hold style gyro, unless you absolutely must minimize
the cost. But the majority of heading hold gyros are now at or
near the $100 range and you will give uo a TON of usability if
you don't get heading hold (Futaba calls it AVCS, JR likes the
term "Tail Lock")
-
- Heading hold
gyros operate somewhat differently than the standard gyros. Briefly,
the "standard" gyros damp ALL tail movement, whether
caused by torque changes, wind, or YOU moving the sticks. They
simply fight against tail movement. Most piezos that have rate
adjustments allow you to use an available mixer to mix out the
gyro gain as you apply tail rotor commands, so you can still
have full rate yaw available if you use such a mix. As with mechanical
gyros, the non HH piezos need a tail rotor mix to be set up.
Heading Hold gyros work differently. They are rate demand systems.
If you move the stick, it yaws the heli. Move it a lot, it yaws
it a lot. It NEVER fights stick inputs. What it does fight -
and much more successfully in most cases - is ANY attempt at
the tail to move without your telling it to. Not only do you
not need a tail rotor mix with Heading Hold gyros, you CAN'T
use one - because it responds to such TR trim commands as a commmand
to yaw the heli.
Setting up the heading hold gyros is a bit different than non-HH
gyros, especially if you use both HH and non-HH modes (which
most HH gyros offer). In flight, the big differences are a much
firmer grip on the yaw, and the fact that the heli will NOT "weathervane"
when you make a turn in forward flight. This means that - as
in hover and very slow forward flight - you need to use BOTH
cyclic AND TR sticks to turn the heli.
You should also be aware that the heading hold gyros DEMAND that
you use good servos. The better the TR servo, the better the
gyro works. With very cheap servos the gyro will work poorly
and will eat the servos on a regular basis. Use a very high speed
(.11 or better) and accurate servo if you use a HH gyro!
Our favorite non-HH piezo gyros are the Futaba GY401 or the JR500T
- They both offer remote gain and mode (heading hold or normal)
adjustments. The 401 with a high speed servos sells (summer 2004)
for well under $200.
- Futaba's 611
(with its matching 9256 servo) is the king of the hill. At a
$350ish price point it costs the most and holds the best.
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