How to Hover a Helicopter
To Co-ordinate Cyclic, Collective and Pedals the Pilot must Relax
Helicopter students find hovering extremely difficult. An experienced instructor explains how to make it a little easier.
Hovering a helicopter is tremendous fun. But it is extraordinarily difficult, at least in the beginning. It takes time to learn, and at the start can seem absolutely impossible.
Three Very Different Helicopter Controls
The helicopter has three highly sensitive controls, all of which operate differently, and which all affect each other. To further complicate matters, there is a lag between operating each control and the helicopter responding.
The Collective and the Yaw Pedals
For example, the collective controls the helicopter’s height, by altering the pitch of the main rotor blades, while the yaw pedals control the pitch of the tail rotor blades. If the pilot raises the collective, the helicopter will climb, but it will also yaw to the right. So the pilot needs to apply left pedal to keep the aircraft straight.
So if one is hovering and feels the helicopter sinking, the thing to do is raise the collective and apply left pedal. However, there’s a large amount of lag in the collective. So a new student may raise it, but feel as though he isn’t climbing. So he will tend to raise the collective more. Suddenly the helicopter will positively shoot into the air. In mild panic the student will lower the collective…but nothing seems to happen, so he lowers it still further. All of a sudden he is heading full speed for the ground, and yawing violently left.
The Cyclic
Meanwhile the student is also trying to handle the cyclic. This controls the helicopter’s movement forward, backwards, and sideways, and is the most sensitive of the three controls, and the hardest to master. So while the student is sorting out the collective and pedals, the helicopter is probably moving rapidly…in some direction or another, depending on the position of the cyclic. In reality, the machine will now be oscillating wildly and be completely out of control – until the instructor takes over.
All helicopter pilots will recognise the above scenario. In practice, the new student learns one control at a time, becoming proficient at this before moving on to two controls together, then all three. For many people hovering can be an incredibly frustrating experience. The student really, really wants to master it. He tries hard, gritting teeth in determination.
But this method simply doesn’t work, since it means that the student becomes tense on the controls, when a relaxed approach is absolutely necessary to be able to feel what it happening to the aircraft. So the instructor tells the student to relax. The would-be helicopter pilot attempts to do so, but the harder he tries the more tense he becomes. It is a vicious circle, and is one reason why hovering is usually taught in 5 or 10 minute sessions rather than longer periods.
How To Master Hovering: Relax
So how can one learn to hover more easily? What can be done to make it a less painful process? Ultimately, nothing! It all comes down to practice. Hovering is a bit like learning to ride a bike; it seems impossible until one can do it, and then one wonders what on earth was so difficult. Hovering just takes time; it is a new skill, and learning it is really no different from learning to drive a car, or ride a horse, or play football, or learn a martial art. An instructor cannot really teach anyone to hover; he or she can merely prevent the student from killing himself while he learns.
The most important thing is to relax. It is true that this is very hard to do, but it works, and its importance cannot be overemphasised. Grim determination most definitely gets in the way of this type of learning. Those who just enjoy the crazy oscillations of early hovering practice, and accept that the process takes time, often pick up hovering most quickly.
Most people feel as though they need an area about the size of a football field when they first start learning to hover. Then, gradually, it gets easier. Then will come that magic moment when…he’s got it. He can hover! It’s a wonderful feeling.
But then something happens – the wind picks up, or the weather changes, and the student feels like he’s back to square one. Because as with many skills, when it comes to hovering one can always learn more…
Sources
Learning to 'Fly Helicopters, R. Randall Padfield
The Art and Science of Flying Helicopters, Shawn Coyle.
