Rolling moves

[Bee_random]

In an attempt to focus on orientation control and making those additional in-move corrections necessary to hold station, I've been working on rolling (and flipping).

At first a half roll and stabilise position, changing orientation through 360*. Requiring collective control to maintain sideways position during the move.

Now stationary continuous rolls in the different orientations (demonstrating I'm weak at orientations between 7-11 o'clock, looking down). Requiring elevator momentary inputs to manage the back/forward position during the move.

Starting now on rolling around the clock (continuing the stationary roll while changing orientation).

My question is; now that I am starting to think about what corrections are required to perform a rolling circuit, what do you guys do?

I'm thinking small rudder inputs at the right moments is the way to go, but seek advise from those who understand this move better than me.

Cheers, B

PS. For those those coming out of the nose-in to funnel 8's training, IMHO stationary flips and stationary rolls are a great training moves to start to learn to make those in-move transient corrections.

[Russell Harding]

The rolling circuit it TOUGH! You can either use rudder OR elevator. Ideally, you'll use both.

However, Elevator is a bit more important to the maneuver overall (in my opinion) for a rolling circuit. Elevator is the actual control that progresses the maneuver through the circuit, so you MUST use elevator. You can do a pretty good job with minimal rudder, but it will be smoother with rudder and if you're adept at both controls, you'll be able to more quickly adjust to needed corrections.

[Bee_random]

Cool, thank you.

Still working on the stationary stuff and you're right it seems to be a bit of everything, although mostly rudder when turning on the spot. It IS hard! I've a long way to go.. I'm travelling in the hope that this will help many other aspects of my flying and orientation management.

[blade450]

I am practicing these at the moment. I can fly them IRL, just not very clean.

Most important thing is the elevator correction. If you fly them at higher speed you need to pull the helicopter into the corner with elevator, rudder input is simply not enough.

Once you can do it with elevator alone, start adding small rudder inputs.

The reason why I say first elevator only, is that it won't allow you to mask weak spots in elevator control with your rudder. If you practice them both at the same time this can happen.

And yes, they are hard. I'm only practicing one direction right now, when I can do that one as good as I want it I'll start trying others.

Good luck!

[alexd1]

ok this is something I have also really been practicing for months on the sim and feel ive made no progress. I can roll consistently at 1 point in a circle but when I start adding more points I can't seem to make it. My forward progress usually ends up stopping.

It's interesting you say that rudder is not necessary in this maneuver. Do you just roll and pull the elevator or push in a way that it's early or late and pulls the tail around? It's not something I've tried but I'll give it a go today.

can someone put a video of that together without using rudder?

[myxiplx]

It's very tricky to learn, I can just about get around a circle now but it isn't tidy. You need to have good timing on rudder and elevator to turn the helicopter around the circle, but also need to use those to keep it angled slightly forwards so it flies through the circle.

In a normal circle you use rudder to turn, aileron to control your bank angle, and elevator to control speed. You still need to manage all three of those elements, but across constantly changing controls.

If you're doing continuous stationary rolls, can you control the attitude of the helicopter to make it drift forwards or backwards at will?

[blade450]

I've made a short video in Heli X to demonstrate the idea of a rolling circle with no rudder. Essentially, you turn the helicopter with elevator at the moments the helicopter is vertical.

I've attached a zip archive. Just change the file extension to .zip and you should be able to see it if you have Heli X. Of course, unpack first and put it in the flight folder of Heli X.

If somebody could put it up on youtube that would be even better, even though I don't fly them as clean as I'd like, it still demonstrates the concept.

[gstoneberg]

Here you go.

Rolling Circles HeliX (1 min 3 sec)

[blade450]

Thanks!

[aterren]

One suggestion - roll out of the circle rather than into the circle as shown in the video (e.g. clockwise turn roll left). If your your collective timing is off (late is far most common) you will climb rather than dive.

I can do them in real life and it is quite hard to get them tight and clean.