Help with funnel

[dcaccount]

Hello,

I have been trying to dial in funnels but I can not find the proper way. Can you please watch my video and advise what I am doing wrong?

Thank you so much, daniele

[gstoneberg]

I'm looking forward to what Steve Graham has to say. He has a lot more experience helping people than I do.

Having said that, I would suggest starting with less bank angle. Funnels are just circuits flown with the tail slewed 90 degrees. An easy way to start a nose down funnel is to do a circuit with the bank angle matching what you want in the funnel. Then add additional rudder to bring the tail out perpendicular to the flight path. Now your aileron needs to do what the elevator was and vice versa. Collective should remain similar to it was in the circuit. Once lazy funnels are nailed, start increasing the bank angle and adding collective.

It sounds easy but I really struggled at first. The simulator was the answer for me. Saves a lot on repair costs.

Good luck!

[PilotPin]

Im no expert on funnels . Keep the nose point at the center of the circle and make the circle bigger in diameter will probably help .

[fastflyer20]

Your doing very well, keep at it.

I finally figured out funnels a few year ago. I call it the "hook" or position of the sticks that creates the type of funnel your trying to fly. This is the home position and small adjustments are made from there. As you progress, getting quickly to the hook position becomes much easier. This thinking reinforces small changes, where many pilots fail by making large corrections. From this position you can play with slight cyclic changes to change the type of funnel such as flatter, faster, bigger diameter, etc. At the start let the tail lag just a bit, it helps the heli from falling out of the funnel. As you progress, bring the tail up to 90 degrees. Funnels are one maneuver where IRL seems easier than the sim.

[canbarelyhover]

my funnels and hurricanes got way cleaner once I started focusing more using the rudder & collective to fly the circle. I try to minimize the cyclic inputs. Anyway, this seems to work for me. YMMV.

Windy days are another thing altogether.

[blade450]

First things first, you're flying it way too fast.
Try making it slower.
This will:
- Make the banking needed a lot less
- Make the collective input a lot less
- Teach you to fly the move, instead of holding a stick position.

Now start from flying sideways, gently tilt the helicopter forward, and start making that circle. Be sure to always point the rudder to the inside of the circle. You can easily practice this at a 45 degrees angle. To learn the fine control even less could be better.

You'll notice as you practice that adding collective is generally not a good idea since it will make the helicopter speed up. Instead, use aileron to control the size of the circle. If the circle becomes to big, add a little more aileron and rudder and reduce pitch a little to make the circle smaller again.

[dcaccount]

Thanks everybody for helping, daniele

[jhamel]

Originally Posted by blade450

First things first, you're flying it way too fast.
Try making it slower.

Definitely too fast for someone learning. Consider the instructions in this thread.

[Steve Graham]

Hi Daniele,

Some good advice already. Slowing down is helpful as it gives your brain time to process the inputs necessary to keep the circuit symmetrical at a constant radius, altitude and speed.

A couple comments about the importance of rudder. In most of your funnel work that you showed us you fail to get the nose all the way into the center. The amount of rudder you're holding to set the rate of the turn is pretty good you're just not getting the nose far enough into the center. When this happens and you try and use aileron for the "back pressure" needed to generate the turn and elevator for "bank" control you have problems. The aileron that you are holding to pull the heli through is generating not just back pressure but also a bit of an overbanking tendency. If you slow the youtube video down with the controls this is easier to see. At about 18 seconds in the video you finally get the nose pointed directly at the center and the heli momentarily at least begins to hold altitude. Almost as quickly though you release the rudder a bit and the nose once again slips from where you want it, the bank angle increases and the heli quickly loses altitude.

This is analogous to the death slide so many of us experienced when first doing FFF circuits. Not enough rudder causes the nose to lag the turn. In proper terms this is called a slip. When this happens back pressure held at exactly the 3 O'clock point on the gimbal mixes in with the bank control function and generates an ever increasing bank angle which once past about 75 to 80 degrees no amount of power will correct. The heli is gonna sink. The increased power many use in this scenario just leads to things happening quicker but you're still headed for the ground. Many people are very confused by this as the heli slowly actually becomes inverted and that's usually the end of the flight.

A related condition, using too much rudder and driving the aircraft into a skid now creates the situation where the back pressure control actually reduces the effective bank angle opening up the radius of the circuit and usually causing the heli to climb. For this reason one of the things I tell people is when in doubt and especially if the heli is beginning to sink in ANY circuit lay into the rudder, it is the far safer of the two ills of either being in a slip or a skid.

You can look for my other comments on this by searching my name. I've written extensively in the past but feel like at some point I should have collected my stuff into a blog or something that would be easier to find

PS. I'm considering terminology in my explanations. Turns are a form of accelerated flight. Any time the flight path is anything other than straight such as a pull up from level flight or a turn we are in accelerated flight. IOW's the aircraft feels either more or less than 1 positive G.

An airplane or a heli in FFF prescribe precise turns using aileron to set bank angle and elevator back pressure to "pull" the aircraft through the turn. Bank and airspeed dictate the radius of the turn for level flight.
The elevator is used to generate the acceleration (G loading) necessary for the turn. Bank alone without it will simply result in the aircraft sliding sideways and downwards. Rudder alone will rotate the heli on it's vertical axis but still not generate a curving path. In a physics sense elevator is what generates the curved flight path. So the function we're talking about is really an acceleration control.

This nomenclature, "pull" and "back pressure", works well for planes that only travel forward along the longitudinal axis but helis are not so restricted. What to call this "back pressure" when the function it provides could be any position around the circumference of the gimbal? I'm curious if there are any thoughts about what we should call this function other than "acceleration control" so everyone will know what we are talking about when discussing accelerated flight?

Sorry for the stream of consciousness.

[HeliLust]

Very good info there. Not so sure what you would call the "acceleration" or "back pressure", but I think of it in terms of radius control. It took me a long time to understand the mechanics of the funnel and hrricaine maneuvers and even longer to get to where I can do them consistantly. Doing them over and over along with starting out shallow has helped the most. Also figuring out collective makes things worse when you are behind in the maneuver.

Thankfully they are much easier for me IRL than in the sim. Once you start getting them locked in it get easier though.

[HeliLust]

Another quick thought I had on the subject is just how much there is to learn with funnels and hurricanes. I consider 16 major orientations to be there and you can quickly see 16 more in between and you could break it down even further if you went real crazy with it.

Then there's the transitions in and out of the various orientations. Last time trying to work it out I came up with more than 200 and my head started hurting. Subsequently after doing the math most of my Sim time is dedicated to funnels and hurricanes and all the crazy transitions. I'm still just getting into the tip of the iceberg and the wonders it has done for my flying is beyond any of the other stepping stones to date and has been the most difficult.

[Indokast]

Pretty good so far!

I notice the tail is lagging behind a lot so follow with a little more rudder.

Bank angle needs to come down on average as that will slow your momentum a lot and you will drop altitude.

Other than that it's just balancing that aileron and collective to keep the balance going.

I'm not the best at them either. Practice makes perfect! Keep it up!

[JANtoolMAN]

I find that tail down funnels are easier than nose down. I think its because the sticks are crossed up. They seem like a maneuver that gets locked in and held in the same position

[Kap'n Krunch]

cant go wrong starting flat and flying a Heading Hold circle nose in tail in or what ever orientation funnel you may want to work up to

[Kap'n Krunch]

Originally Posted by JBHAWAII

I find that tail down funnels are easier than nose down. I think its because the sticks are crossed up. They seem like a maneuver that gets locked in and held in the same position

there's no easier or harder just what someone is more comfortable flying or what they have practiced

I fly inverted nose first clock wise circle or counter clock wise but for some reason it feels more natural to fly it CW

I've noticed most people fly it CCW

[Thoemse]

I am quite the beginner pilot myself still but funnels kinda came naturally without wanting to do one. I basically flew circuits and at one point simply left the stick up if that makes any sense to you.

What I can see on the video is constant stick inputs. When I am doing funnels I hold the stick at a bank angle. With the right pitch the heli basically funnels until the lipo runs out of juice without much need of cyclic input.