Circles and circle based maneuvers

[Kaolith]

I'm working on doing circles and tic tocs just for the fun of a challenge. I have upright hovering down and inverted is about 85% there. I can make banked turns smoothly, but im having difficulty making a complete circle. Despite following various guides, the heli starts fine, then for the last half or so, drops or gains altitude. Any advice from the heli guys who have mastered these? Also would help with funnels etc.

P.s I have tail down tic tocs okay, but I can't get aileron tic tocs going. Any help for those?

[Steve Graham]

I know this advice comes off as short but I've written extensively about circuits in the past and now shared those posts with links more than once. Search.

Honestly the quickest way to bring your circuits up to speed is to jump on the sim and join us online.

[Raptorapture]

If you've really got the banked turns down for at least half a circle I'd suggest you've an orientation challenge. Not so bad you can't keep it out of the dirt but enough that it is no longer intuitive to get the right mix of collective and cyclic to maintain the circle and height. I'd start your circles facing yourself and see how that goes.

[Kaolith]

Originally Posted by Steve Graham

I know this advice comes off as short but I've written extensively about circuits in the past and now shared those posts with links more than once. Search.

Honestly the quickest way to bring your circuits up to speed is to jump on the sim and join us online.

I use neXt sim, what do you use?

Tapatalk has a pretty much useless search feature so that doesn't help much...

[Kaolith]

I'll give starting them facing me a try.

[Steve Graham]

RF7.5.

Just purchased Heli X so will be getting that going in the next little bit.

I use HF from a laptop so I don't know what to tell you about tap a talk. There really is a lot of great info here for the mining.

[gstoneberg]

I hate tapatalk so much that I'm right now on my phone using chrome and the browser version of the forum. Everything is better using a browser.

[jarhart]

I can tell you how I learned circles.

I didn't start by trying to hold banked turns all the way around. I started by slowly hovering around in circles until I could do them smoothly. The more I practice this, the faster I'm able to go around while maintaining control.

I can now go fast enough in all directions and orientations to maintain about a 60 degree bank angle, but I still go back to slow and controlled circles to practice. Also, I now do this practice in the sim with a small, squirrelly model, which really forces me to pilot through the whole circle.

[Kaolith]

Aren't learning banked turns part of doing slow circles as well?

[Steve Graham]

They're closely related and as Jarhart said a lot of people have seen their slow piros turn into slow circuits. The challenge most people don't appreciate is the difficulty of perfectly coordinating all four stick axis together.

[jarhart]

Originally Posted by Kaolith

Aren't learning banked turns part of doing slow circles as well?

I'm literally talking about hovering around in a circle initially. As I became more comfortable with that, the circle smoothed out and sped up and the banking happened naturally.

[Raptorapture]

Flattening the circle is a very good idea.

If you're coming from planks, doing the banked turn translates fairly easily. However, to sustain a turn radius through 360 degrees while managing collective and going through the various orientations is comparatively quite a challenge.

There are two benefits to flattening the circle. Firstly, it allows the speed to be slowed down therefore giving you access ie more time to adjust more surface controls as you go and see the results. This is especially important as the orientation changes. Secondly, you are forced to fly more of the controls to keep things moving in the right direction forcing you to get a better feel of the contribution from each control.

[Wargamer]

Assuming you are getting through at least half a circle at a pretty constant altitude, you are probably safe just holding collective and isolating the two cyclic inputs. As has been mentioned, plank experience is helpful here...although not necessary. The idea is to maintain one cyclic input and adjust the other as needed to maintain altitude in the turn. I find it easiest to maintain bank angle, and I will watch the bank angle carefully and adjust as needed to keep it constant. At the same time you have to be aware of your altitude, and pull more or less elevator to avoid altitude changes. This means that, early on, you are not maintaining a constant radius circle. But once you get to where you can adjust the circle to suit your bank angle, you can then start to experiment with different bank angles and the combination of aileron and elevator. I'm sure there are other ways to do it; I just learned to do this with planks and stuck with it.

[Vertflyer]

Hope this isn't a stupid question, Phoenix sim user.

I have mastered hovering upright and inverted in all directions and while pirouetting, in the sim. My issue with circles is that I can't tell what is a circle or not in the sim. Is there a way to draw a circle into the ground in Phoenix? A top view split screen would help too. But in general, any tips on knowing if you are even close to a circle from viewing a flat PC screen on the sim?

[Steve Graham]

Even IRL it is very difficult to gauge the precision of figures drawn over the ground horizontally. Easier than on the sim but difficult nonetheless. You may be able to modify the room with a circular line or drop some objects like cones that will help.

You can infer a circle if your bank angle and speed remains constant. In no wind conditions. It becomes something of a matter of timing. If you break the circle down into quarters or eighths you can evaluate each section using timing.

[zzyzx_cm]

break it down into 3 or 4 turns and record a demo. you'll be able to see where you lose it more easily. practice that turn and you should be able to correct it. you will more than likely be making the same mistake every time. once you can do it in 3 turns it won't take long to get to a locked in circuit. worked for me

[Steve Graham]

I think that's good advice. This matches my experience that mistakes tend to come at the same place for a lot of moves. Being able to quickly isolate and resolve these issues is key to advancing as quickly as possible.

[Rotouser]

All of the above is great advice, especially the references to spending time on a sim. I would just mention that for me it came down to what those sticks were controlling. I was having major issues with control until I flew the xk k110, and all of a sudden I was doing not only circles but figure eights and just dancing around my smalllish backyard. The k110 made all the difference. It's amazing what can be accomplished if you have the right tool, and the k110 is definetly the right tool. Having flown many smaller helis let me just say that the k110 made an amazing difference.
Happy flying.