How to control the altitude of the helicopter

ArduCopter Traditional Helicopter
1

Hello everyone

I had one question about flying the helicopter this time.

The helicopter is very difficult compared to a quad copter.

This can be called the charm of a helicopter, but it is too difficult to recommend it to others.

Here I got one idea.

It does not fly through the pitch angle and fix the rpm through the governor.

The rpm changes freely according to the position of the throttle.
And the pitch angle is like the rotor of the quad-copter, which fixes the pitch angle.

Are there any brave people who have done this?
Or is this idea simply a stupid idea?

I have not run this yet.
So I can not imagine what kind of problems will arise.

If i use this type of flight, what kind of problems do you think will happen?

2

Go to the internet and find fixed pitch helis.

Try

3

There is little doubt that helicopters require more experience to fly than multicopters. I supposed it could be called “charm” of the helicopter. They have unique flight characteristics.

But otherwise I don’t understand what you are saying. What are you flying? What firmware version? What is the setup (params)?

Collective pitch helicopters have been flown successfully for 80 years since Arthur Young designed and built the first ever one to receive Type Certification in commercial aviation. It is a proven design that does things every single day that no other aircraft can do all over the world.

Re-inventing the wheel has historically been unsuccessful because there’s only one shape of round that actually works.

4

A little history in the development of the helicopter:

The early pioneers actually first attempted rotor wing flight using multicopters, because using more than one rotor seemed to be the natural solution to the problem of VTOL flight.

The very first experimental attempts of taking off with a rotorcraft were mostly done with multirotors. Around 1907 Jacques and Louis Breguet, built and tested Gyroplane No 1, a quadcopter. They managed take-off, although the design proved to be very unstable.

In 1924 French engineer Etienne Oehmichen flew his quadcopter a distance of 1,181ft setting a world record. In the same year he flew a .62 mile circle in 7 minutes and some odd seconds.

The early designers experimented with quadcopters, because the alternative, using a single main rotor with a tail rotor to counterbalance the torque created by the main, seemed to complex to accomplish.

However, three men and their experimentation changed that forever. Those three men are Igor Sikorsky, Stanley Hiller, and Arthur Young.

The single rotor helicopter had huge advantages because it was naturally stable. A weight hanging below a single attachment point naturally ‘wants’ to hang straight down and so naturally corrects unwanted tilting.

Second thing that made it successful is that the design is readily adapted to combustion engine power with relative simplicity.

Basically Igor Sikorsky mastered the design and figured out how to make it work with collective and cyclic pitch. This is the man that forever changed the world of aviation.

As of 2018 it was estimated there is approx 38,140 helicopters in civilian service all over the world, and an undetermined number in military use. Compare that to the airline industry where there is approx 4,850 aircraft in service worldwide. The helicopter is, in fact, the most successful powered aircraft design in aviation history.

The only thing that made multirotors successful in RC is the fact they are simple, cheap injection molded plastic and carbon fiber, and lots of creative marketing. But in the real world where they were tried over 100 years ago the CPPM helicopter won in efficiency, inherent stability, performance and practicality. And that has not changed today.

5

One of the really neat things about arduheli, is that now it isn’t that much harder to fly a heli.

6

No it’s not. But to fly one successfully there’s skills required beyond what multirotors require. Multirotors are pushbutton appliances. Helicopters are true aircraft and require knowledge of flight. They have a nose and tail and require airplane skills to fly, learning how to make coordinated ball-centered turns, learning the applications of dive, climb, bank and power.

Unlike a multirotor they do not require power for making a safe landing. So required training for any helicopter pilot is to learn how to autorotate your machine to a safe landing. Nobody in their right mind is going to fly a large $5,000 machine without knowing how how to autorotate it safely. I’ve seen it claimed on this forum where some folks have said autorotating a UAV heli is impossible because of the weight, which is pure booya. A 800-class machine might weigh 40 lbs with disc loading of 1.5 lb/ft^2 - not even the disc loading of a Bell Jet Ranger. Believe me, the UAV ones autorotate just fine. Every pilot needs to learn it.

RC UAV helicopter pilots should also learn about height-velocity diagrams and not do foolish things like flying them in the critical area in autopilot modes. But this is not taught in the world of autonomous aircraft, instead depend on the autopilot and one day end up crashing it. Even the Canberra team crashed their GX-9 because they depended on automation to fly it. Bad idea. It’s not a multirotor.

So they still tend to require more training, more practice, experience to fly safely. Because they are a more advanced aircraft not really suitable for beginners without training. A little 450 - yeah, you can crash it, you’re not out much. But once you step into a large one that easily cost $10,000 you should’ve long ago shed your dependence on the autopilot to fly it.

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