OK, so now you're standing about five meters behind your machine which is sitting there burbling away, waiting. Take a few deep breaths and slowly start moving your throttle stick forward. You'll hear the engine start winding up and the rotors will start turning. It's all on now! Keep advancing the throttle stick slowly and as you get around mid-stick, the helicopter will probably start to get 'light on its feet'. Don't worry, your training gear will stop it falling over. The aim of these first few flights is to get a 'feel' for the helicopter. You don't want to be a hero and try and fly around cause 90% of the time the heli will bite you on the ass. Little steps... You'll probably notice that the heli will be moving around on it's training gear, and may or may not be where you first put it down on the ground. Don't worry about that, just try and get a feel for what the helicopter feels like when it's about ready to take off. Gradually start advancing the collective until the helicopter is just off the ground. Don't let it climb too high though cause you'll probably lose it. Just get it to the point where it's lifting off the ground. While it's off the ground, use your cyclic controls to stop it drifting around. If it starts moving off and you don't feel you can bring it back, just drop the collective slowly and it will settle on the ground (now you know why you brought the training gear!). By now, sweat will be pouring down your legs. Don't lie, I know it is. Walk up behind it and try again, and again and again and again. Keep trying until you can keep the helicopter within a two meter radius. If you can do this in one tank of gas, good on you, if it takes ten tanks, who cares? As long as you're having fun!

Controlled tail in hover
OK, so now you can keep you machine in within a two meter radius, you're doing good! The story is now to try and keep the machine in one place.

So, lift off again, and try to anticipate it's movements and correct for it. Helicopter's have natural tendencies to wander off to the side on take off, so try to counteract this when you lift off.

The exercise now is to take off, hover for 10 seconds in one spot and land again in the same place you took off. Keep doing this until you can confidently take off and ascend vertically, hold the machine in a hover about five feet off the ground for ten seconds, then put it back down in the same place.

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