Thurston Helicopters - A Brief Guide to Helicopter Controls

The main controls on the helicopter are explained rather more fully in the brief, however they are as follows:

1 - The Collective Lever and twist grip Throttle:

The collective applies pitch onto the blades collectively i.e. together at the same time and by the same amount. It controls the HEIGHT of the helicopter. The twist grip throttle controls the RPM which the rotors revolve at. Once adjusted correctly by your instructor it should not need to be touched throughout the flight.

The Cyclic Stick controls the pitch which is set on the blades cyclicly. Consider a cycle as one complete revolution of the blades. The cyclic controls the pitch of the blades at different amounts depending upon where about the blade is in its cycle. If, for example, you wanted to take the helicopter out of a steady hover into forward flight you would move the cyclic very slightly and gently forward which would cause the rotor disc (the revolving blades look like a disc) to tilt forward and start forward flight etc. etc. (the way this actually works will be shown to you on your introductory lesson). The cyclic therefore controls ATTITUDE and hence also SPEED.

The pedals, or more correctly the anti-torque pedals, control the direction the helicopter faces whilst in a hover and in forward flight holds the machine in balance so that it does not go along in a crab like fashion! The power produced by the engine 'wants' to turn the fuselage in an opposite way to the rotor blades and the tail rotor is placed where it is to stop this. The pedals control the amount of pitch (collective) set on the tail rotor blades. Please don't worry if you find all this rather confusing; we cover it further on your pre-flight briefing. It also helps to have the helicopter to hand whilst this briefing takes place so that we can manipulate each control in turn and see what it does! At the end of the flight, for about the last 3 or 4 minutes we will introduce the student to the art of hovering.