My turns/circles suck. what am I going wrong?

[banditpowdercoat]

I'm trying to get nice smooth turns, I can get 120* or so but then either the heli starts 'sliding' sideways or ballons up and I loose my turn/circle. I can tail in fine, and nose, side side not to bad but not excellent.

Any pointers fro smooth circles? I'd like to learn to atleast do a forward facing normal "hurricane" style circles. Not these roller coaster rides I do now.

[Rªzª]

make sure to power through the entire turn. its easy to inadvertently slow the heli down when it gets to uncomfortable orientations. you have to fight through that and trust you can pull off the entire turn. if you can do 90 degrees of a circle you can do a full 360 nothing is different other than your perception of the heli so just concentrate on doing entire circuit with very little changes in your inputs regardless of where it is. keep the throttle up and pull through the turns at a constant amount. use very small amounts of rudder corrections to keep the nose in line with your turn.

[rojack]

From your description, I think I was doing the same thing until I remembered how I turn in a plane. For example for left turn, going forward, bank the heli left and pull back on the elevator. Follow with the rudder to keep the tail behind. You should carve a nice turn.

[andypants]

I have seemingly endless problems with this as well. I just can't get it nice and flat. I always balloon during the transition or slide toward the ground as the heli passes through side-in to nose-in. And I've practised, and practised, and practised. Obviously I'm practising wrong. Maybe I should take RaZa'a advice as I seem to be constantly inputting aileron - I'm definitely NOT using tiny corrections so this is the problem, I guess. I hate it as I can't do nice funnels either and that's one of the tricks that got me into the hobby. I can do them equally poorly in every orientation, inverted and upright, tail up or tail down. You'd think being able to do tail-down inverted at all would mean nose-in upright would be easy. Nope.

[ziper_it]

+1 to Raza's suggestion on giving some tmore hrottle.

Another option is to give small aileron inputs both side, in order to acquire better control and avoid too much aileron. Doing it slowly also helps a lot as you have more time to understand the asset and the correction needed.

[Beebad]

I can do them equally poorly in every orientation - By Andypants

I love this quote! I wish I could do them poorly,some day I guess.

[BLW_ELE]

I help the new guys at my field all the time, this is a normal wall to break through. There are a few different approaches I have found that seem to help. But first if your problem is ballooning as u put it the problem is TOO MUCH LIFT. When u bank your Ali create more lift on the right side (if your turning left tail in) so that in addition to ur collective (which is keeping u level) causes u to balloon up. I instruct the guys that are making the turns but just ballooning to take away a small amount of collective! This will also keep your speed down as you leave the turn which is another problem.

I like to keep the nose in a slightly down attitude. This helps as u transition out of the turn and if your coming from a airplane background the tendency to pull up elevator actually helps in the turn. This will also set you up to move into funnels. Making the turn where the nose points only in the forward direction is probably the hardest turn to make (huriane) with out alot of speed. Another pointer is the slower you want your turn to be the flatter it will need to be and the rudder will do more of the work. As you speed it up u will use more Ali and ele to bank and pull through the turn.

Hope this helps a bit

[Dr. M]

+1 on the reply by BLW_ELE

If I may add my own humble opinion, I find that I pay attention to the following symtpoms when I do circles and correct accordingly:

Sliding down into the turn towards the center = too little rudder input, too little forward speed and/or too much bank angle
Sliding out of the turn away from the center = too much rudder input, to much forward speed and/or too little bank angle
Balooning = too much collective and/or too much back elevator

[freewheel510]

It would be great if the sim developers would include a data logging feature. Then you could analyze what you did, and see, for example, the airspeed falling, or adding more elevator around the backside of the turn. Whatever it is that messes you up, you'd be able to see it.

When I do good turns, I find myself making tiny corrections all the way around, but the key thing, I think, is to add a bit of collective at the beginning of the turn.

[sps3172]

....which happens to be another activity that relies on muscle memory...

When it comes to learning to play a particular lick...riff...song...etc. there's a popular theory that says...."If you can't at least play it slowly, you sure as hell won't be able to play it quickly."

In that vein, have you considered slowing down the sim speed to analyze where things are going wrong? Once you feel that you can fly through it at super slow speed, advance the speed subtly...in small steps. Before you realize it, you'll be flying the same maneuvers at full speed.

[oy2503]

Freewheel, I believe the simulators can record your flight.

You can then play it back and see the errors.

Cheers
Erik

[3DnOC]

+1 on slowing down the Sim.
Try 50% at first.

On ballooning: notice your nose down attitude entering the turn. You want to keep that all the way through.
Start the turn using the rudder! That is a big difference from fixed-wing.
Now feed enough aileron in to get the bank angle you want and back to neutral. This will be very little if any because of the nose down + rudder. Depends on the speed and radius of turn.
Now you need to balance the back elevator pressure to maintain elevation, just like fixed-wing. And as you finish the turn you need to start pushing forward on elevator to keep the same nose down attitude you had entering the turn.

Hope this helps

[blackmagic08]

Thank you for this thread, this is my issue as well. I will try leading with rudder rather than bank, as keeping the tail behind the nose is my challenge. These HH gyros sure are a blessing and a curse. I have flown full size helis and you don't need the pedals at all in a normal turn, just cyclic. I would imagine that in rate mode it would be similar but not totally practical for RC heli flying these days.

[banditpowdercoat]

Ya, I'm still not gettin it. I either turn too much, not enough, Balloon or slide into the ground. Grrr. Tried changing physics but it just screwed my custom profile for the Protos al to he!!!. Not impressed there

[Dr. M]

Try adding some expo to the rudder. It did wonders for my turns. I started adding 10% at a time and finally settled on 50% as a sweet spot for me. You might like more or less, but it's worth a try.

[banditpowdercoat]

I tried 10%, I'll try more on the Sim tonight

[3DnOC]

It is a balancing act just like riding a bike. it takes time to get the muscle memory down.
But once you do you'll always have it. Make smaller stick movements you are probably over controlling like we all do at first.

Curious how did you screw up the physics?
You can save it to heli-2, 3, 4 etc. so you don't over write a good setup.

I like to reduce the frontal drag to just 1.0, seems to be more realistic flying.

[banditpowdercoat]

Originally Posted by 3DnOC

It is a balancing act just like riding a bike. it takes time to get the muscle memory down.
But once you do you'll always have it. Make smaller stick movements you are probably over controlling like we all do at first.

Curious how did you screw up the physics?
You can save it to heli-2, 3, 4 etc. so you don't over write a good setup.

I like to reduce the frontal drag to just 1.0, seems to be more realistic flying.

I had 1 profile saved as my heli. I had a bunch of things changed from stock. But when I changed physics to 50%, it changed motor HP, Cyclic responce and other things. it all of a sudden had only .22HP (for a 500??) and was super slow. Putting the physics back to 100 did not change the settings back to how I had them. It works on a stock profile. But if you do it on a modified profile, it messes with everything and doesnt return it. So, once you move the Physics slider, all your settings are messed and won't come back. they are saved instantly it seems

[banditpowdercoat]

crap. I just cant get it. Either I loose speed, nose up and loose all fwd speed, or I slide sideways into the dirt. I can slow turn, more like a stall turn but not a FFF banked turn. Getting frustrating. Can inverted hover soso, normal hover is fine. Flips rolls even feeble tic tocs LOL. But a simple banked FFF turn...

[Robertmendon]

iv been haveing this issue also..

hopefully after reading this i will be able to go home and do a little better with the mcpx