marked23
Veteran
Location: Lynnwood, WA
| If I have a lot of horizontal momentum (if I'm moving fast) then I can trade that momentum for rotor speed by flaring with negative pitch. You really have to finesse the angle agressively to get it to go right, so flaring with negative pitch seems to me like an advanced maneuver.
I've done this also by angling the helicopter into a steep dive and trading falling speed for rotor speed at the end of the fall. This is also a more advanced technique. This is how folks do low-rollout inverted autos.
The flare is really just doing whatever it takes to stop the forward momentum of the helicopter without gaining altitude. (Gaining altitude means you unnecessairly spent rotor energy.) If you don't have a lot of forward speed, you'll flare at about zero pitch. The more speed you have at flaring, the more negative pitch you'd need and the more agressive the angle will be.
If you are getting started with autos, try not to have much forward speed and just smoothly stop descending and end in a one-inch hover... keep feeding in more pitch until the heli drops that last inch onto the ground, done.
-Mark |
and get a feel for it. I never run out of stick +11 unless I really let it hang just off the ground till it just wont stay up any more.
