I'm practicing thinking in "helicopter"

 

New helicopter.

Different controls.

 

These controls are different from the smaller helicopter I’ve been flying.  Can’t afford to just take off and figure them out in flight.  Don’t want to wreck this thing the first time I get it in the air, so I’ve been doing something I’ll call “floor flying”; practicing the controls without actually getting the helicopter off the ground.

 

I position it in the middle of the kitchen floor.  If I move furniture around, I can get about a 6 foot circle of clear space.  I apply enough throttle to minimize the drag of the skids on the ground, and practice (almost) hovering in place.  I fly it forward and back, side to side.  Not an easy task.  There is a logic problem conspiring against this practice method.  Given the clockwise movement of the main rotor, and the effect of the tail rotor counteracting that force, the helicopter in the air will actually be tilted about 2 degrees to the right to hold a steady hover.  Flying in contact with the floor doesn’t allow that tilt, so the more lift I apply, without actually leaving the hard surface, the more the little beast wants to just slide left across the floor.  I have to steer it severely to the right to hold it in place.  At that trim though, it will zoom off to the right at the first hint of liftoff, requiring a simultaneous control offset to the left.  No time to think, it has to just happen.

 

No matter.  The whole point of floor flying is to achieve a natural reaction with the controls.  If I observe an unwanted action and have to think about which lever to move and which way to move it, I’ve already lost control.  When I can think “in helicopter”, and my thumbs just react on the controls to what I see, that’s when I’ll be ready to actually put this thing in the air.