Higher speed - steering by cyclic

As the helicopter starts to move faster and faster, you'll need to start navigating the helicopter by cyclic controls, ie bank the helicopter into the turn as you apply rudder. Now, it's not quite as easy as that, but this is how it generally goes...
Example: Helicopter flying into a left hand turn
Entering the turn, slowly move your cyclic control to the left.
As you're moving the cyclic to the left, slowly reduce pitch. The faster you're going, the more pitch you'll have to reduce.
As the helicopter starts to bank over, start applying left rudder to bring the nose around into the turn.

As the nose is coming around, the helicopter will be 'nosing down' and heading for the ground. To counteract this, slowly pull back on the cyclic control as you're adding rudder to bring the nose up a little. Again, the faster you're going, the more you'll have to pull back - or, if you want to tighten the turn, pull back some more.

Start practising this by flying your figure eight course. Start off by hovering round the course and as you get comfortable, increase the speed and begin to utilise the steps described above. As you get faster, the more impact those steps will have.

Often when you're learning the helicopter might not stay on course over the figure eight because you haven't got the co-ordination between all the steps just right. Don't worry, just bring the helicopter back and start again.

Figure eights are very important and handy for improving flying skill and orientation. Once you have mastered figure eights, fast forward flight isn't too much of a step up.

Keep doing figure eights and as you get comfortable go faster, higher and further, and in no time, you'll realise you're flying all over the sky!

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