- 3D (flying)
- High performance flying, usually combining two maneuvers at once.
For example, mixing a loop and a roll, to loop while rolling etc...
- 540 Stall
- A high speed climb followed by a 540 degree Pirouette as the heli
stops climbing. See Pirouette.
- ABC / Non-Ringed
- These letters stand for aluminum, brass and chrome or a composite
such as nickel. These engines have an aluminum piston and a chrome or
composite coated brass cylinder sleeve which allows them to be more
efficient for higher performance. They have no piston ring and rely on
a very tight piston/cylinder fit to obtain a piston/cylinder seal. New
ABC engines are normally hard to turn over by hand. Because of the
tight fit, it is very important that the engine is broken in properly.
- Aileron
- This is really an airplane term, but is easier to say than
"cyclic roll." Ailerons are what banks a plane left or
right, but does not really exist on a helicopter.
- Airfoils
- The shape of a wing which produces lift.
- Angle of Attack
- The angle between the direction of the cord of the blades and the
relative direction of the wind.
- ARF
- A prefabricated model - Almost Ready to Fly
- Autorotation
- A maneuver to land in the case of engine failure; the momentum of
the rotor blades can be just enough to slow the heli down just before
landing.
- ATV
- An adjustment on many transmitters that allows you to adjust the
maximum throw of a servo. This is used to avoid binding. See binding.
- Ball Link
- Connections that allow for adjusting controls using a ball on one
end, and a link that "snaps" onto the ball on the other.
- Backlash
- Describes the play in the meshing of two gears. Too much backlash
and the gears could slip or break the teeth, too little backlash could
cause excess wear and tear. The common rule is the thickness of two
sheets of paper for the right amount of backlash.
- Base Load Antenna
- A short "whip" antenna about 6 inches long used instead of
the long dangly antenna that comes with the receiver.
- Bell and Hiller
- A control system commonly used for r/c helicopters that allow the
pitch of the blades to change depending on where they are in their
rotation with the aid of paddles to take a substantial load off the
control system. Bell is the control system that involves the
swashplate and linkages to adjust the pitch and Hiller is the part
that uses a flybar or paddle to make the cyclic more responsive.
- Binding
- A bad condition where the control adjustments can not move as far as
the maximum servo travel. This puts extremely high torque on the servo
constantly and can ruin a servo with time.
- Boom Strike
- A devastating event when a landing is hard enough that the momentum
of the rotor blades bends them down to the point that one of them
makes contact with the boom. This generally destroys the blade, boom,
control wire, and tail drive sy stem. This is also one of the most
common events experienced by new pilots who overreacted and pushed the
heli into the ground.
- Brain Fade
- A mental condition where the person flying the heli, suddenly
forgets which way to move the controls, or which control to move at
all. This can happen for no apparent reason, even when you think
you're comfortable at flying.
- Buddy Box
- Two similar transmitters that are wired together with a
"trainer cord." This is most useful when learning to fly --
it's the same as having dual controls. The instructor can take control
by using the "trainer switch" on his transmitter
- CA Glue
- A form of "super glue" commonly used in model building,
don't use it on foam.
- CCPM
- Cyclic-Collective-Pitch-Mixing, CCPM mounts the servo's pushrods
directly to the swash plate at 120 degree increments, like an
equilateral triangle. With these three servo's the swash plate can be
tilted in any direction, and when they all move in the same direction
the swash plate can be raised and lowered. All the mixing is done
electronically by the transmitter, which means you MUST have a ccpm
compatible transmitter..
- CG ("Center of Gravity")
- For modeling purposes, this is usually considered -- the point at
which the airplane balances fore to aft. This point is critical in
regards to how the airplane reacts in the air. A tail-heavy plane will
be very snappy but generally very unstable and susceptible to more
frequent stalls. If the airplane is nose heavy, it will tend to track
better and be less sensitive to control inputs, but, will generally
drop its nose when the throttle is reduced to idle. This makes the
plane more difficult to land since it takes more effort to hold the
nose up. A nose heavy airplane will have to come in faster to land
safely.
- Channels
- There are two types of "channels" when talking about R/C.
One is the channel the Tx transmits on, the other is how many control
surfaces a Tx can control.
- Clunk
- A weighted fuel pick-up used in a fuel tank to assure the intake
line is always in fuel
- Clutch
- R/C helicopters use a clutch so that the engine can idle without the
rotor blades spinning. Usually they use clutch shoes which when
spinning spread out and rub against the clutch drum causing it to
rotate and spin the gears.
- Centrifugal Force
- The imaginary pulling force the helicopter applies to the blades
while they're spinning.
- Collective (Variable Pitch)
- Describes the control which adjusts the pitch of the rotor blades;
causing the heli to ascend or descend without the need to change the
rotor RPMs. This is usually the up and down movement of the left stick
on the Tx. Having the ability to do this means you can use the
momentum of the blades when spinning to do an autorotation if the
engine dies and gives quicker response time as well.
- Cyclic
- Describes the controls which adjust the horizontal attitude of the
helicopter, as in roll left-right and pitch forward and backward. Both
of these movements are controlled by the right stick.
- Dead Stick
- The term is more common with R/C airplanes (because you have enough
time to say dead stick), but it's a term that describes an emergency
landing due to a power loss when the engine quits.
- Dialed In
- The term used to describe when you're power / cyclic / tail rotor
mixing is set up just right, so that when you add power / cyclic the
mixing adds / removes tail rotor thrust to maintain the exact same
heading without needing input from t he pilot. Usually, you must spend
quite some time making the mixing more or less sensitive via trial and
error, by rapidly adding and removing power / collective. All heading
hold gyro's are already "dialed in" by nature, all that
needs to be done is to adjust the sensitivity so the tail does not wag
/ act sluggish. All mechanical and non hh piezo gyro's will need to be
dialed in manually by tweaking the mixing on the Tx. Heavy cyclic
inputs also affect the torque on the helicopter and must be mixed w
ith the tail if that is possible on the Tx you are using. Again, this
is already taken care of with a heading hold gyro and only applies to
standard mechanical and piezo gyros.
- Dissymmetry of Lift
- Describes how the advancing side of the rotor disk is moving faster
and thus produces more lift than the retreating side. This causes the
helicopter to bank in forward flight and is dampened by flapping
blades.
- Drag
- The force that air pushes back onto a moving object when resisting
it's movement.
- Dual Rates
- A feature of some Tx models which allows a person to flip a switch
to make the controls more or less sensitive.
- Elevator
- This is another airplane term, but is easier than saying
"cyclic forward / back." The elevator is what pitches the
plane forward or back, to dive or climb, but does not really exist on
a helicopter.
- Exponential
- A feature of some Tx models that allows a person to program in
different control sensitivities depending on the position of the
stick. Usually, this means the further the stick movement, the faster
the controls. This allows the middle area of the controls to be less
sensitive, but also allows full servo travel on the outer limits of
the controls.
- Failsafe
- A feature of some Tx and Rx models that support PCM. Failsafe is
used so that the servo's go to a predefined position if the signal is
lost. In an airplane this can be to go to a low idle while putting the
plane in a gentle turn, but in a helicopter it is not as useful since
helicopters are naturally unstable there is no predefined setting to
prevent a crash.
- Feathering Shaft
- A rod which helps support the rotor blades and give them more ridged
strength. A flapping head has two feathering shafts (one for each
blade) and a sea-saw head has one feathering shaft (running the span
of the head)
- FFF
- An abbreviation for Fast Forward Flight. Usually in excess of 50
MPH, or near the maximum speed of the helicopter.
- Fixed Pitch
- A term that describes a helicopter with no collective adjustments.
This means that you control the height strictly with the rpm's of the
rotor blades. These are easier to maintain, stronger, and simpler to
build but lack major feature s of the collective (variable pitch)
type. For one: you can NOT do autorotations with these helicopters and
the "vertical control" is much less responsive than the
collective of a "standard" heli.
- Flapping
- A type of rotor head where the two rotor blades are not connected
directly through the feathering shaft (a thick wire), each blade can
move somewhat independently of the other resulting in smoother control
of the helicopter and the to some degree the feel of a .60 size heli.
- Gasser
- The slang term which describes a R/C heli that has a motor which
runs on gasoline.
- Governor
- A device used to automatically hold the rotor RPM constant. Used in
conjunction with idle-up modes. This device is not needed, but aids
when flying 3D.
- Ground Effect
- Described as an increase of performance within 1/2 rotorspan of the
ground. Which means, near the ground your blades produce more lift.
- Ground Resonance
- This describes the phenomena that can make a helicopter shake itself
to bits on the ground, even when it is perfectly balanced in the air.
This is more common in seesaw type heads which aren't as dampened as
flapping heads, and is also more common on pavement or hard surfaces
which don't absorb vibrations.
- Gain
- Usually a term associated with gyros, it describes the sensitivity
of the gyro. Too much gain causes the tail to wag back and forth,
while too little gain won't hold the tail steady.
- Glow Fuel
- The special kind of fuel R/C vehicles typically use. It contains a
good portion of nitromethane and other chemicals.
- Glow Heater
- A device you connect to the glow plug on a engine which heats the
coil element so that the fuel can ignite and the engine can start.
- Glow Plug
- A plug that looks like a small spark plug, but has a wire coil in it
which stays hot enough once the engine is running to ignite the next
combustion cycle, and keep the motor running.
- Gyro
- A device used to help stabilize the yaw of a helicopter. They come
in three forms right now. Mechanical, Piezoelectric, and Piezoelectric
with heading hold. Mechanical gyros use a real spinning disk inside a
small enclosure and help resist the yaw due to the torque of the main
rotor blades by adjusting the tail rotor pitch. Piezoelectric gyros do
the same thing, but are more accurate / responsive. See Heading Hold
for the third type.
- Gyroscopic Precession
- A physical property of a spinning object too complicated to explain,
but to put it simply, is the same reason when you're holding a
spinning bicycle tire and you try to turn it, it banks and when you
try to bank the wheel, it turns. The rotor blades act the same way, so
then when you want to pitch the helicopter forward, the force that the
blades must apply would make it seem like it should bank left.
- Header Tank
- A small fuel tank connected between the main tank and the engine. It
purpose is to capture air bubbles / foam that would otherwise be going
into the carburetor. This extra fuel tank is mostly used by 3D fliers
due to the nature of the ir flights. This small tank can also be used
to see when you're about to run out of gas, if you can't see your main
fuel tank while the canopy is on.
- Heading Hold (HH) or Heading Lock
- A feature mode of some gyros that stands out by its property to hold
the heading of a helicopter and resist the tendency to weathervane.
Once trimmed, the tail needs very little input to hold a directional
heading, even in high cross-wind conditions.
- Heli Transmitter
- A transmitter with special features for flying helicopters, the most
important of which is mixing. Most heli's need at least 5 channels to
fly. Computer Heli Remotes allow you do program advanced and custom
mixing rates for vario us flying styles. Computer remotes also let you
store multiple "models" so you can save all your programming
to memory for multiple aircraft. I use 1 model for real flight and a
2nd model for Sim flight.
- Hot Start
- The ability for the engine to start itself (without the glow-warmer)
if you turn the start shaft after the engine has been running a while.
This is because the engine is so hot the heater is not needed to cause
ignition. This is also dangerous because it can catch you off guard
and send your blades into a frenzy.
- Hovering
- The process of flying, while not going anywhere.
- Hydraulic Lock
- A condition where the cylinder has filled with fuel and can not
complete a rotation. Forcing the cylinder to rotate if you try and
start the engine can ruin the connecting rod. You remedy the situation
by removing the glow plug and letting the fluid drain. This can be
caused by over-filling your gas tank which 'spills' into the muffler,
from where it has direct entrance into the cylinder.
- Idle up
- A feature on most transmitters that will not allow the throttle to
fall below a minimum setting. This is useful because the vertical
portion of the left stick simultaneously controls throttle and
collective. When flying inverted you need negative collective, you do
not want your engine to go to idle when you move your stick all the
way down, so idle-up will keep the RPMs high so you can maintain
inverted flight indefinitely. Effectively putting a "cap" on
the low-end of the throttle.
- IRC
- Internet Relay Chat, a real-time chat medium that has been part of
the internet before the world wide web existed. Here you can talk to
many people real-time in groups called "channels." Each
channel has a specific topic you're supposed to ta lk about, but as
you can imagine, the topic usually drifts.
- Jesus Bolt
- Most helicopters have two of these bolts. The Jesus bolts are the
bolts that hold the main mast to the frame, and the head to the main
mast. If you loose either one of these bolts your entire rotorhead
will separate from your helicopter. They're called a "Jesus
Bolt" because when they break the pilot was known to say "Oh
Jesus!"
- Too Lean
- This means that fuel to air ratio is too low, and the engine will
run hot. This can damage the engine rapidly, so it is recommended to
start adjusting the engine on the rich side and work toward the lean
end. Usually, turning a needle valve clockwise makes the mixture more
lean.
- Loctite (Red / Blue)
- A special glue for holding metal to metal screws in their sockets so
they don't come loose in a strong vibration environment. Loctite is
color coded by strength, red being the strongest and blue being
medium. Most people use blue locktite because if red is used the
screws may never come out again.
- Mixing
- A term that describes a function of many transmitters that allows
one control movement to affect more than one control surface at a
time. Revolution Mixing is an example of this, but mixing can also be
used to add power when you input large cyclic movements.
- Mixture
- As in "Fuel / Air" mixture. This balance of fuel and air
is what determines the effectiveness of the engine, as well as how
fast the engine runs. You tune the mixture with the needle valves.
- Needle Valve
- A small dial near the carburetor of the engine that adjusts the
mixture of fuel and air into the combustion chamber. Some carbs have
two needle valves, one for high rpm and one for low. The low RPM also
controls how smooth the transition is from low to high.
- News Group
- A special part of the internet where everyone and anyone can discuss
anything. The part that discusses RC Heli's is rec.models.rc.helicopter.
This link will only work if a news server is specified in your
browser. If your browser was configured automatically when you
installed the software from your service provider, it will probably
already be set. However, if you downloaded the browser you are using
now, you must specify your ISP's news server.
- Nose-In
- A term that describes hovering or maneuvering with the nose of the
helicopter pointed at the person controlling it. This is a advanced
step in the learning stages of flying a helicopter because both roll
and yaw are backwards in relation t o the controller.
- Paddles
- These are the shorter stubby blades on the end of the two rods
opposite the rotor blades. These aid in pitching the main rotor blades
for quicker responses and less servo stress.
- Paddle Timing
- A term to describe how far off the rotation cycle the paddles
rotation should be. There is a delay from when the pitch is applied to
a paddle and when the paddle is actually moved up or down, it turns
out that the paddle pitch must b e applied about 90 degrees before you
want the paddle to have risen or lowered. This delay is designed to
work with gyroscopic precession which is why the movement of the
paddles and blades may make it SEEM like forward cyclic would actually
make the helicopter pitch backwards. 90 degree timing offset + 90
degree gyroscopic precession turns the backward control into the
correct movement. This is also why you should look at the swash plate
to test the servo reversing, and not look at which way the blade s /
paddles move.
- PCM / PPM
- PCM is Pulse Code Modulation which means the signal is somewhat
digital, meaning the receiver can tell the difference between the
transmitter signal and rf noise. Most PCM receivers can be set for a
"default" so that when transmission is lost you can have the
controls go to a predefined position, this is also called failsafe.
PPM is strictly FM, and is susceptible to RF noise, but not as much as
AM. PPM, or FM, is the most common because it's cheaper than PCM and
the failsafe abilities of PCM are not as useful to a helicopter as it
is to an airplane, since airplanes can somewhat fly themselves if
trimmed right.
- Peak Charger
- A peak charger automatically shuts off when your battery is fully
charged. This means longer run times for your vehicle. Peak chargers
are nearly foolproof, if you forget to turn it off, the charger does
it for you. No more overcharged batteries
- Pirouette
- A maneuver described as a high yaw rate of a helicopter, when the
tail spins around the canopy one or more times.
- Pitch Meter
- A measuring device used to check the varying pitch settings of your
rotor blades and paddles. You need the pitch of the corresponding
blades to be very close or they will not track evenly.
- Pressure Patterns
- The distribution of pressure over an airfoil.
- Push/Pull
- A method of connecting servos to the control points with two
connections, one on either end of the servo connection / control
connection. This allows the servo to push a connection on one end and
pull the connection on the other end. The is is used to fight slop and
use the servo power more effectively by "balancing" the
pivot point.
- Relative Wind
- The direction the wind his hitting the rotor blades taking in to
consideration flapping and retreating blades.
- Resonance Frequency
- Every rotating or shaking thing has a resonance frequency. When
something is at it's resonance frequency, every imbalance adds to
itself at every cycle. This leads to a force which mathematically goes
to infinity and no helicopter can handle those stresses for long.
Using large training gear usually change the resonance frequence to
right around that point your helicopter likes to hover. This can
result in violent shaking even if your blades are balanced and all
your mechanics are good. What you can do is change the resonance
frequency, or avoid it by changing your hover rpm. Shorten or lengthen
your training gear to easily solve this problem, or increase your rpm
a bit.
- Retreating Blade Stall
- A dangerous situation resulting when in fast flight where the blade
that is flying towards the helicopters tail looses enough airspeed to
generate lift. This can result in loosing control of the helicopter.
- Revolution Mixing
- This is a mixing function on a transmitter which lets you program a
throttle to rudder mix so that as you add more power the transmitter
automatically adds more rudder to compensate for the increase in
torque. This function should be inhibited if you're using a heading
hold gyro.
- Rotary Wing Platform
- Term which describes the main rotor blades of a helicopter.
- Rotational Velocities
- Describes how the airspeed over the tips of the blades is different
that that over the other parts of the blade.
- Rudder
- Yet another airplane term, but not as common as aileron and
elevator. This is what controls the yaw of an airplane, and is
synonymous with the tail rotor / vertical stabilizer a.k.a. "tail
fin."
- Rudder Offset
- This is a transmitter function that lets you specify a additional
amount of rudder trim for idle-up modes which usually have a higher
RPM or different blade pitch curve and thus different amounts of
torque to compensate for. This function should be inhibited if you're
using a heading hold gyro.
- Too Rich
- This means that the Fuel to Air ratio is too high, and the engine
will garble. This does not damage the engine, but it does drastically
reduce the power output. Usually, turning the needle valve screw
counter-clockwise makes the carburet or run more rich.
- Rx
- Abbreviation for Receiver, the portion of the radio system that is
mounted in the helicopter and adjusts the servos according to the
transmission from the Tx.
- See-Saw Head
- A form of rotor head where the two rotor blades are
"connected" through a feathering shaft (thick wire) so that
when one pitches up the other pitches down. This makes for a more
stable helicopter an a simpler design, but does not hand le as well as
a flapping head type.
- Servo
- A device that can turn a lever arm one way or the other with many
points between the two extremes. These adjust all the control points
of a R/C vehicle.
- Settling with Power
- A dangerous condition when descending from a hover where the
helicopter's rotor blades enter their own down-wash. This can cause a
crash if you don't recover soon enough. Note: This is not a fatal
condition on model helicopters because they have such a huge power to
weight ratio, however it can catch you off guard and it does require
more time to stop descending if you're in this state.
- Slop
- Describes the imprecision of a control system, meaning the controls
can be "wiggled" without the servo's moving. Slop can make
the helicopter more unpredictable and less responsive to control
input.
- Stabilizers
- There are two stabilizers, the horizontal and vertical. These help
the helicopter to weathervane, so that while in forward flight, the
helicopter points into the wind. 3D fliers will have smaller
stabilizers so that they can fly sideways / backwards faster without
weathervaneing. The vertical stabilizer also prevents the tail rotor
from hitting the ground.
- Sub-trim
- This is a feature of many transmitter models that allows you to
adjust the trim of control surfaces while still having the trim
control on the Tx centered. This way you have full trim adjustment
while flying.
- Swash Plate
- A device that the control arms spin around on so that the pitch of
the blades is changed depending on their relative position to the
helicopter.
- Thread
- A particular subject being discussed on a news group, or the grooves
that a screw has / grooves that a screw screws into.
- Throtle Curve / Pitch Curve / Programmable Points
- Somewhat like exponential in that you change the way the servos move
as you move the stick. Usually you would have a different curve
setting for each idle up mode. In idle up one you might have th e
throttle at 100% when the left stick is full down, at 50% when it's in
the middle, and back to 100% when the left stick is full up. This way
you can fly upside down. Some radio's have more curve points than
others, which means you could have parts of the stick less sensitive
than others, so you could make it easier to hover gracefully on a
machine with a very sensitive collective.
- Throttle Hold
- A feature that comes with many transmitter models. The opposite of
Idle-Up, as in, this switch will keep the throttle at idle so that you
can increase the collective without gaining high rpms / power. This
switch can be used as a "safety" switch while you carry your
heli to the flight line, but is more commonly used to practice
autorotations or if tail rotor control is lost causing the heli to
pirouette rapidly opposite rotor blade direction, because when the
engine is at idle, the tail rotors loose power so the heli will slow
down it's pirouettes and you can autorotate to the ground in a more
controlled manner. It is also advisable to hit this switch in the case
of an emergency so that if the heli hit something it has no power bei
ng applied to the rotor / tail blades.
- Torque
- Torque is applied to the body of the helicopter because of the
engine spinning the rotor blades, this causes the helicopter to want
to spin in the opposite direction of the rotors.
- Total Aerodynamic Force
- The net force vector applied by the various forces of lift.
- TR or T/R
- Short for Tail Rotor. Used to counter the torque then engine puts on
the rotor blades which left unbalanced would make the heli spin like
crazy.
- Training Gear
- Larger landing gear so that landing at a angle is less dangerous.
Beginners use these while learning to hover and they typically are
made of two crossing sticks with whiffle balls on the ends.
- Tracking
- If the pitch of both rotor blades is not exact, one rotor blade will
be slightly off axis of the other blade, it will look like one blade
is higher then the other. Viewed from the side with blades at eye
level rotor blades would look like this: >< Ideally, you want
perfect tracking, so that the blades appear to be perfectly flat and
look from the side like this: --
- Translating Tendency
- When holding a heading with a helicopter hovering level the force
the tail rotor puts on the helicopter to keep it aligned causes the
entire helicopter to move the opposite direction of the tail thrust.
This is compensated wit h right-cyclic in most US helis, but depends
on the direction the rotor blades spin.
- Transitional Lift
- When in forward flight, the spinning rotor disc produces more lift
than in a hover.
- Transverse Flow Effect
- When in a slow forward flight, wind in the rear part of the disk
enters at a lower angle of attack due to the leading edge of the disk
pulling air down, which results in vibrations.
- Tx
- Abbreviation of the remote control unit. "Transmitter"
- Washout
- When you're talking about a wing or a rotor blade, washout is a
twist in the blade so that part of it is at a different angle of
attack than the rest, allowing you to recover from a stall before it's
too late. The term washout mixers, levers or arms are also used in the
rc helicopter community and are referring to the mixing arms that
connect directly to the top of the swashplate and are mixed with the
paddles and main blades through a set of linkages and joints.
- Weathervane
- The property of the helicopter to point into the wind like a
windsock. The amount of weathervaining is determined by the size of
the vertical stabilizer.
- Windsocks
- A funnel shaped tube of fabric that generally signifies a 10 knot
wind when fully extended.
- Yaw Rate
- A term that describes the control input of a heading hold type gyro.
Instead of the rudder control adjusting strictly the tail pitch, as it
does with a other gyro, a yaw rate gyro will uniformly control the
rate at which the helicopter ya ws.
- Yaw / Pitch / Roll
- Terms that describe the change of attitude of a helicopter. Yaw is
the movement about the vertical axis; Pitch describes leaning forward
or backward; and roll describes leaning to the left or right (bank).
- Z-Bend
- A simple Z-shaped bend in the wire end of a pushrod, which is used
to attach the pushrod to a servo output arm.
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