Flying model helicopters is exciting and fun and looks very easy, that is, until you try it. Unlike model airplanes, helicopters lack stability and must constantly be controlled in all the flight axis. The pilot must develop the reflexes to control it, and this takes practice and commitment. By following these 10 steps, you will be up in the air in no time.

Although computer radios make adjusting the helicopter very easy, I prefer to make mechanical adjustments first to get everything as close as possible to the settings I want, and then I use the radio’s features for fine-tuning. As an example, let’s consider the type of flying you would like to do. If you are ready [...]

The safest way of entering your first inverted flight is by trying to stop your heli while it’s inverted at the top of a loop. Enter the loop at a nice comfortable height, and when the heli reaches the inverted stage, release the elevator back to neutral and increase negative pitch to hold it inverted. [...]

Flying inverted is a lot of fun, and it’s a basic requirement if you want to execute some of the more difficult 3D maneuvers. Learning to fly inverted will take you back to those days when you learned to hover with your training gear attached! As you might expect, it’s a bit tricky at first [...]

Veteran heli pilot Curtis Youngblood is always happy to share his pointers with other fliers. Here’s his secret to improving his reaction time. “Try to fly the helicopter relative to itself. For example, back cyclic stick movement always makes the canopy move toward the blades (not really, but this is how I think of it). [...]

To control the direction of a heli during a pirouette, pick an imaginary rference line passing through its center. Every time the helicopter’s nose come around and crosses that line, give a control input in the direction you want it to go. For example, if you’ve done a pirouette in a hover in front of [...]