RC Helicopter - Understanding Transmitter Flight Controls

Radio-control helicopters are no longer complicated, costly devices used only by skilled pilots. With a reasonably priced, ready-to-fly model and a little practice, anyone can now begin flying RC helis and become an expert pilot. You can become a pro pilot more quickly if you are familiar with the vocabulary and flight controls of helicopters before you begin flying. So let's get going.

It's not a helicopter, you know! Before switching to helicopters, it's helpful to comprehend the functions of the control surfaces on an RC plane because they utilize the same terminology as airplanes. To read the entire article

RC Transmitter Flight Controls

Three axes will be used to control the location of the aircraft or helicopter as you fly it:

YAW: Imagine a skewer passing through the aircraft from bottom to top as it rotates on the vertical axis.

ROLL: the longitudinal axis of rotation. Consider the model's nose to tail as the skewer passes through it.

PITCH: the transverse axis of rotation. Imagine a skewer passing through the model's left and right sides.

Each axis is linked to a direction on the left or right stick, as this video illustrates.

  • When moved forward and backward, the LEFT stick controls the THROTTLE or COLLECTIVE PITCH.
  • When moved LEFT and RIGHT, the LEFT stick controls the RUDDER.
  • The elevator is operated by the RIGHT stick when it is moved both forward and backward.
  • Left and right movements of the RIGHT stick control the AILERONS.

RC helicopters and RC planes have different physical control surfaces, although they use the same flight-control nomenclature. To manage roll, pitch, and yaw, a helicopter modifies the speed or pitch of its tail rotor and the pitch of its rotor blades. Let's examine their operation in more detail.

The angle (pitch) of the heli's rotor blades varies to adjust each blade's thrust and regulate the heli's flight attitude and direction. The swashplate accomplishes this by modifying each blade's pitch based on its location within the rotating rotor blade disc (which we'll refer to as the rotor disc) when the rotor head swings the blades through a 360-degree rotation.

Suppose we have our helicopter hovering. No matter where they are on the rotor disc, both rotor blades have the same pitch, which results in equal thrust and level flight for the model. The swash plate will tilt downward toward the helicopter's nose, though, if we raise the right stick to cause the aircraft to pitch down. Now, each blade's pitch will drop as it swings across the rotor disc's front, producing less thrust. On the other hand, the blade's pitch will rise as it swings past the rotor disc's back, increasing thrust—the heli pitches forward as a result. The same idea applies to having the heli roll left and right: when you move the stick left and right, the swashplate tilts, changing the pitch of the rotor blades and producing a difference in thrust that causes the heli to roll.

A helicopter's tail rotor controls yaw. The force exerted by the motor attempts to rotate the helicopter's body counter-clockwise as the rotor blades rotate clockwise. The tail rotor's push stops this undesired spinning. The heli body will not yaw if the thrust and torque effects are equivalent. The heli will yaw clockwise if the thrust from the tail rotor is greater than the torque effect. Additionally, the heli will yaw counter-clockwise if the thrust is less than the spinning force.

The controls are in operation here. The surfaces move in proportion to how much you move the control sticks since the controls are proportional. Therefore, the control surface will move farther the more you push the stick.

Helicopters that use rotor speed to control thrust usually do the same thing as airplanes, which use the vertical motion of the right stick to adjust the throttle. Some helicopters, on the other hand, use this control for collective pitch, which modifies the pitch of both blades at the same time to regulate the thrust produced by the rotor disc. It can be compared to hell's up-down control, where a higher collective pitch causes the helicopter to rise, and a lower collective pitch causes it to descend.

Because the helicopter rolls to the right when the stick is moved to the right and to the left when the stick is moved to the left, the aileron controls are simple to operate. However, because the elevator (nose up/nose down) controls are set up so that drawing the stick back causes the nose to go up and pushing it forward causes it to point down, some novice pilots find these difficult to get used to. It may feel "backward" if you're used to pushing a control stick up to make characters gaze up or move up in video games, but this is how full-sized planes are set up.

Keep Practicing and Have Fun!

Here are the fundamental control surfaces for your helicopter. Before every flight, always check that the rudder, elevator, and aileron controls are operating correctly and in the right directions, particularly if you have disconnected any of the receiver channels for maintenance. It takes practice to manage all the controls precisely at once for confident, smooth flights, but you'll quickly get the hang of it. Similar to how you don't have to focus on the handlebars of a bicycle every second while riding, you won't have to consider what the sticks do while you fly your helicopter in the near future.