Like many people this year, I was fascinated by all of the new micro battery-powered RC helicopters showing up for christmas. The videos would show them performing precise acrobatic maneuvers, picking up little items, play-fighting in the air and just being a blast in general to fly. They looked easy to operate, quick to learn and they were relatively cheap. I've always been interested in RC Planes and Helicopters but it wasn't until recently that they've become affordable enough for the average person to buy.

So what's changed in recent years? Well, several things, but the biggest thing I've seen is battery technology. Lithium Polymer (also known as LiPo) batteries are extremely light-weight and powerful. They're so far the best suited battery solution for RC Helis and the reason all these micros are on the market. This technology is great and all, but these things are still damned hard to fly. Here's how I figured it out:

A bad purchase

The first helicopter I bought was the Micro Mosquito that Radio Shack was carrying. I made the mistake of buying one that is somehow 220v so I had to pick up an extra 110v-220v power converter to be able to charge it. I think I paid about $75 US for this one. It has what is called a coaxial rotor design, meaning it has 2 main rotors, one on top of the other that spin in opposite directions to make the thing hover without spinning around. To move front to back, it has a tiny little motor on the end of the tail boom that attempts to tilt the craft forward or backward.

Micro MosquitoThe remote has 3 channels (directions of stick). The left side stick goes side-to-side, controlling what direction the heli is facing by changing the proportion of power into the main rotors and front-to-back, controlling the forward and backward motion by tilting the heli. The right side stick is overall power into the main rotors which translates to the height it flies at.

My first attempt at flying the mosquito was in a small office downtown in Chicago. I charged it up all the way and slowly upped the right stick until it was starting to lift off the table. I had to play with the controls a bit to get it to hover stable in the air and not spin around wildly. After about 20 crashes I could reliably get the thing up in front of me and hold it facing me, just by getting good at tweaking the spin control. What I learned immediately is that this helicopter isn't really capable of much more than hovering. It looks neat, being mosquito shaped and having multi-colored LEDs blinking on the front, but I found it to be a complete waste of money.

I brought it over to a friend's house to show off my new toy. Nothing was broken at this point and I was fairly sure this was a durable toy. I let someone less adept with controllers and video games try it out. Within 30 seconds he hit the ceiling then cut all throttle and dropped it to the ground, breaking one of the rotors. A word of advice: Don't let careless people play with your expensive toys. They WILL break them. I ordered some spare parts then started looking for something better...

The real deal

After some online research and a few phone calls, I had decided that the heli I definitely needed is the Blade CX2. I drove out to one of the only hobby shops on the north side of chicago that carries it and had a look at it in person. The man at the hobby shop was more than happy to pull out his demo model and show me how "easy" it was to fly. He fired up the remote, plugged in the battery on the chopper and was flying it confidently in his store as if the thing could tell where walls were and would automatically stay away from them. He told me it would take me some practice and I could count on ordering several parts to keep the beast in action but I was sure I'd have no problems. $189 later and I was driving back home with a box full of excitement in my trunk.

E-Flite Blade CX2The Blade CX2 is a very capable mini coaxial helicopter made by E-Flite. It comes with a 5 Channel remote, 4 of which are used out of the box. What's the big difference between this new one and the mosquito? Servos controlling what's called a swashplate. The swashplate is connected to the rotors in such a way to change their angle in all directions. This means it can really go forward, back and strafe side-to-side. It is also equipped with a gyro which helps hold it's heading. It's interesting because if you hit the throttle but hold the helicopter in your hand and twist your wrist from side to side, the gyro causes it to actually fight you to try to stay facing the same direction.

The controls on this helicopter are very standard for an RC heli but are set up differently from the mosquito I was used to flying. On the left stick, up and down controls the throttle while side-to-side controls the mix, causing it to spin. The right stick makes it go front to back and sway side to side. This stick configuration is referred to as the "B" setup for RC aviation remotes. It doesn't matter here as all the RC hardware is included, but if you're ever shopping for just the electronics, you'll want to know that.

Getting started

It felt like forever for the battery to finish charging (about 2 hours if I recall) but once the little light turned off, I turned on the remote, put the battery into the heli, plugged it in and watched it arm itself. You need to arm it on a level surface sitting still because this is the stage that it centers out its gyro. After it was ready to go, I placed it in the center of my kitchen, which is a very large room, with the tail facing me. The tail thing is rather important. You always want to have the tail facing you when you're just learning because it's very disorienting to have forward not go direction away from you. So, ALWAYS keep that tail facing you. Always. I can't say that enough.

I started by ever so slowly throttling the rotors up until it just started to lift off the ground. My goal was to hover about a foot off the ground while keeping it in roughly the exact same spot. Any time it started to move away too much and I didn't feel like I was in control, I would let it back down to the ground, put it back in the center of the room and start over. Any time the tail would drift away from me, I would adjust so that it was facing me again. I had to do this for about 20 minutes (2 full charges) until I felt comfortable just hovering at a low height.

I was told it would be easier to learn with some training gear, which consists of 4 long plastic legs with foam balls on them, but I opted to just learn it the whole thing as-is. The risk is that you can hit one of the blades on something which almost immediately breaks it or if you drop the heli from any height over a few feet it will break the landing skids. Careful steps will keep you from breaking almost anything, but it does take a while to learn that way.

With my new hovering skills I decided to get a little more ambitious. My next goal was to fly it from my kitchen into another room and land it without breaking anything. I brought it up to about eye level in front of me, and started inching it over to the doorway. I was amazed at how many tiny adjustments I had to do with my thumbs to keep the thing from flailing out of control. I seriously brought it over at about a turtle's pace, keeping it right in front of me the whole time. Finally after about 3 minutes of this, I set it down on the floor in the next room. Success!

Next Steps

Setting up little things to fly through and land on is fun for a while, but it gets frustrating losing control when looking at the heli from the side and front. After about 3 hours of total flying time, I had decided it was time to learn what is called cross-control. The way to start is very simple. Just do the exact opposite of when you were first learning! I set up my helicopter in the center of my kitchen but this time I was going to keep it facing me the whole time. It's a little disorienting and frustrating to be bad at what you were previously very good at but it pays off quickly. Within about 20 minutes of this I had the hang of it, and was now able to fly it any way I wanted to. I comfortably jumped it up off the ground, turned it facing me in the air and backed into the other room to set down on a coffee table, for example. This is when I started craving something more exciting...

I spent some time researching outdoor and 3d aerobatic helis and while I really wanted to buy an Align T-Rex 450, I just couldn't rationalize the price. It's supposedly a really great helicopter, but it runs around $600 for the cheapest package. I absolutely loved the Blade CX2 from E-Flite so decided to take it to the next step and bought a Blade CP Pro. While purchasing, the hobby shop employee tried very hard to convince me not to take it home and to wait for the T-Rex. He said he trashed his CP immediately and really hated that model. I'm always up for a challenge and saw some really interesting videos online of it so for some reason this was even more encouraging for me to get it and get good with it.

E-Flite Blade CP ProThe CP Pro is a single main rotor with independent tail rotor design. It has the same sort of swashplate, but there's one important addition - Collective Pitch. Collective Pitch is the ability to change the pitch of the main rotor while in flight. Think of it like this: The rotor is spinning at 200rpm but the heli is sitting flat on the ground because the blades are spinning perfectly level with the ground. Press up a little on the throttle and instead of the blades spinning faster, the pitch changes to push air down. That is the concept behind collective pitch. The controls of the CP feel identical to the CX2 but there are a few additional knobs and switches. One switch controls what they refer to as acrobatic mode. What this does is sets up the pitch so that the bottom half of the throttle actually has negative pitch, pushing the craft down! This is used to fly the helicopter upside down, as you'd need opposite force for that. The knob controls how much power goes into it in that mode. It's all very advanced. Read your manual.

I took the CP out to Wicker Park to try it out the first day. There was a gentle breeze but I was feeling good and capable of flying it. I had a hard time lifting it off the ground without completely losing control. I immediately crashed it. Then I crashed it again. A few tries later and I ran it up into a tree and wrecked my first rotor blades. I was getting very frustrated. I was trying to learn this heli the same way as the last, by holding it in one spot outside and gently moving it around. The problem is that there is no gentle with this thing. It is EXTREMELY responsive. Any little touch to the controls makes it jet off in that direction. It can also flip itself over very, very easily. I found that out as a gust of wind hit it and I simply couldn't keep it level to the ground. It fell hard from about 30 feet up and broke a few plastic parts up on the top assembly. Broken, covered in mud and looking generally beat up and useless, I took my new CP Pro home to sit on the shelf until calmer weather hit.

Unfortunately I haven't had time to take it back out to try it, but I would really like to get good at the acrobatic flying. Expect an advanced tutorial as soon as I figure it out!

Update 08-14-2007: After a few hours of work, my CP Pro is repaired and flying again. I've had it out a few times and can report difficult but successful flight. I'm noticing that it does not handle wind as well as the CX2 and am hoping that increasing the gyro gain may help a bit with that.

Summary

Flying model helicopters can be a lot of fun! I found it challenging but doable, provided you're flying the right thing. Micro RCs simply aren't that good. Go with a fully-functional mini and you'll have a better time. Don't get too far ahead of yourself. I've heard stories from friends who lost their heli on a rooftop the very first day. These mini and micro helicopters are just too light to fly outside in anything but absolute calm weather. Keep it indoors, keep that tail pointed at you when you start and buy some spare parts!