AT FIRST GLANCE, a beautiful scale helicopter might seem like a luring, but evil, temptress guaranteed to turn your wallet into stone or expose every hobby weakness you may possess. But it's really not that way. If you are excited about the prospects of wandering into one of the most exclusive areas of RC, I am here to promise that you can do it. HOW you go about entering this realm will bear on how satisfying it winds up for you. Let's get going.

KNOW YOUR WHY TO FLY

To run the gauntlet of scale helicopters -- especially giant scale models -- you MUST know your "why." There is simply too much time, too much energy and too much money at stake to casually jump into scale helicopters. For those who are coming from a sport/3D background, your advantage is your flying skill. Though not all of what you know will translate, your command of the sticks will remove a ton of the trepidation experienced by pilots who do not have rotary wing experience. But that isn't the point of this first hurdle.  The point is to know why you want to move from sport/3D to scale. A turbine jet or warbird pilot likely knows their answer at a deeper level.  Most of us who fly scale helis know that the why comes from both commanding and observing a beautiful scale replica course through the sky with a precision and appearance that is convincing enough to inspire onlookers (and yourself).  Most scale heli flying is actually quite boring when compared to sport/3D flying. So that's not where the joy lies for scalers. The joy is found in the appearance and perfection of the routine flight patterns of a full scale helicopter. There is also a sub-segment of pilots who find immense challenge and joy in scale activities, like bambi buckets, cargo drops and winch work. Even without those specialized maneuvers, just flying realistically and smoothly for 8 minutes will marshal most or all of your brain. 

I am not telling you why you want to fly scale; I'm just telling you to KNOW WHY. Once you tap into that, you'll find endless energy (and somehow, the money) to navigate the path to scale heli heaven.

SMALL, MEDIUM OR LARGE?

Assuming proper setup, smaller helicopters are less expensive and larger helicopters are more stable and easier to see in flight. I recommend balancing those factors to determine where to begin. If you already know how to fly helicopters, I'd recommend anything larger than a 600 sized machine. There is nothing wrong with smaller machines, it's just that the larger they get, the more realistic they appear in flight and the less susceptible they are to wind variations. If you have never flown a helicopter, DON'T START WITH SCALE! Learn on a pod & boom machine with training gear. Scale is your reward for success.

GAS, GLOW, GAS, ELECTRIC OR TURBINE?

Glow/Nitro helis are wonderful for training. You simply burn fuel, refill and repeat. But, they are noisy, oily and smoky.  Next best for training is electric. If you have enough charged packs, electric helis are actually more convenient and less expensive than fuel helis, all other things being equal.  As you move through the heli food chain, there are different factors you will wish to consider, like venue restrictions, costs to fly/maintain, and scale effect.

SETUP IS EVERYTHING!

All RC pilots know how important setup can be, but helicopter pilots know more than most exactly how critical a role setup will play in your model's first flight. From blade balancing to phasing, the array of variables is likely the single aspect of model helicopters that prevents would-be pilots from entering this segment of the hobby. Airplanes fly naturally. They glide. They almost never need rudder attention. They are like loyal pups. A helicopters is like a cat waking up in a circle of cucumbers. Chaotic and finicky, a helicopter needs a calm and prepared pilot who understands how and why the machine flies and who is not afraid to dig into things like gyroscopic precession and P-Gain (whatever that means). I'm not trying to make you run away screaming. To the contrary, I am highlighting the very attributes that set helicopter pilots from the rest of the RC crowd. To become expert in these things means you have elevated your expertise in engineering, aerodynamics and otherworldly knowledge that nobody (including your spouse) will be impressed with, except you.

Get a grip on the following main concepts and you will be able to confidently maiden and fully fly any model you build or acquire:

Blade Balance

Airplane guys know that an unbalanced prop creates problems. Now multiply that by 10 and you get the magnitude of issues caused by unbalanced rotor blades. Ideally, each blade will weigh the same as every other blade. Each blade should also be the same length and have identical chords (width).  Aluminum blades are typically balanced well from the factory. If one blade is lighter, you can add weight to it (outside the scope of this article). If the blades weigh the same, you want to ensure that the center of gravity (CG) is in roughly the same location on each blade. Most decent blades will pass this test, but some won't. You can ask the seller to exchange or you can re-balance yourself (also outside the scope of this article). A good video on the concept blade balancing is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0jfb8PEdqQ (the blades in the video are super small, but the concepts are the same for a larger blade). On larger blades, a gram difference in weight will not require you to make modifications. If you want to achieve perfection, you can use tape or paint.

Pushrods

Whenever possible, getting your servo-to-swash pushrods parallel to each other, equal in length and at 90-degree angles to their respective servo arms. For measuring pushrod lengths and other neat tricks, check out this wonderful tool from Vario. Doing this helps ensure uniform geometry of motion in both up and down directions. How you setup your swash-to-grip pushrods will depend, in part, on whether you are using a multi-blade head and how much electronic vs mechanical phasing. On many rotor heads, the pushrods running to the grips will not appear to be vertical at all! That's the way it should be, even if we are aiming for that as an ideal position to prevent ball link pops during flight. For rods going to the grips from the swash plate, the phasing elements of setup will dictate ideal positioning.

Phasing

Pilots often get intimidated by phasing. At the root of phasing is a concept in physics known as "gyroscopic precession." In plain English, it means that a force on a spinning disk (in this case, a rotor system) will cause the spinning disk to react 90 degrees from the force. Again, this is the subject of another article, but suffice it to say that in a counterclockwise rotor system, if an upward force is placed at the 9 O'clock position beneath the disk (looking from the top), the helicopter will pitch forward. When we setup a helicopter, we must set the swash follower such that we ensure a forward push on the cyclic stick will cause a pitch up of the 9 O'clock blade (in a counterclockwise system -- it would be the 3 O'clock blade in a clockwise system) without moving the 12 and 6 O'clock blades at all. You achieve this by either manually adjusting the swash and then locking in the follower. This is a mechanical phasing. Or, you can do the same thing digitally in your FBL gyro. Sometimes, a 100% mechanical phasing will cause your swash-to-grip pushrods to slant severely. This places obvious stress on the attached ball links. You can compromise by doing only a portion of the phasing mechanically and then making up the rest digitally.  The cool thing about phasing (beside the fact that you absolutely will crash your helicopter if your phasing is way off) is that the lightbulb will go on for you once you sit down with your helicopter and play with it. DON'T GET LAZY and count on someone else to do this. Learn it. You can verify your results 100% of the time by flipping on your transmitter, placing the test blade over the boom or 90 degrees to the boom and moving your cyclic control. It's the answer key you always wanted. 

Pitch Perfect Tracking

To eliminate vibrations in flight, it's critical to correctly set the pitch on each blade so that at any given collective stick position each blade has the same pitch (at the same position for comparison).  To accomplish this, you'll need a good digital pitch gauge. Attach the pitch gauge to the blade grip (some gauges will attach to the blade but with blade droop on larger models, using the root is best). Set the collective stick to mid stick and read the gauge while the blade root is 90 degrees from the fuselage. Do this all the way around the head and when you are identical (or even .1 degree within identical), you can be comfortable knowing that your blades will track properly.

Gyro

Full gyro setup is beyond the scope of this article, but conceptually, you will need an FBL gyro that is easy to program and one that stabilizes both the head and tail. There are pilots who use a separate tail gyro, but that trend is fading as gyro technology improves. My favorite gyro is the Bavarian Demon Axon. The programming is relatively easy and I've written a pretty detailed guide on how the settings in the gyro affect flight. One trick that I learned from a seasoned pilot is so simple that I was embarrassed that I hadn't thought of it myself. After plugging in your gyro and all of the various cables and after you do your initial setup, HOLD the gyro and tilt it forward as if it were sitting in the helicopter flying forward. Trying to tilt medium and large scale helis to test your settings is cumbersome and not as efficient as simply tilting the gyro to determine whether the controls have reacted properly. 

WHO TO BUY FROM?

Where-oh-where do you go to get started? Most local hobby stores (at least in the US) have zero selection of scale helicopters and even less knowledge. That leaves a new entrant to the hobby reliant on what their flying buddies or online acquaintances say. I've been flying scale helicopters for 20 years (and RC for 50). I can tell you that every purchase I've made has been from a knowledgeable distributor or professional builder.  I'll qualify that by saying that my scale helicopters have all been very large. If you are purchasing a Roban helicopter, it is pretty easy to know what to purchase. On the other hand, if you are purchasing a Vario kit, it can be quite challenging.  After having owned 7 Vario models, I still don't know exactly what goes with what!

If you are considering a Vario in the US, we recommend HeliWorkshop. The owner, Mark Smith, is a Vario Team Pilot and one of the most experienced and knowledgeable builders in the US. If you are looking to have someone else build you a sweet model, I recommend Heli-Factory. They are a capable group from Germany that will build you a fantastic model and ship it to you ready to fly. If you want the pinnacle of models (in my humble opinion), open the vault and visit HeliClassics. At around $40,000 USD you will have a museum-quality model that you can fly like a bat out of hell (just ask John Christensen; he has 3 and flies them like jets!).  For Roban, just visit MotionRC. They have decent support, but not the level of personal attention you will get with Vario, Heli-Factory or HeliClassics. If you purchased a model and want a killer paint job (and soon a cool line of scale helis we hear), check out Tyler Gray Models. Tyler painted the 1/4 scale Lama in the picture above. He is super-detailed and can print any 3D parts you want!  You can also get HeliWorkshop to do custom paint work as well. 

TIME FOR YOU TO FLY!

If I haven't frightened you from the wonderful world of scale helicopters, you can consider yourself a prime candidate for this crazy niche inside a tiny hobby. Like the goalie in hockey, you can be proud to be "that guy" at the field -- nuts enough to take all of that cash, chaos and commitment and put it into the atmosphere. We have a great community of pilots worldwide and a massive selection of models from every era and every country on the planet. If you need advice, post a question in our discussion area. If you are building, start a chaptered build story and show us your progress!  Whatever you do, enjoy flying in the rarified air of scale helicopters.