This, in my opinion, is the hardest thing to learn how to do. You will want to practice this for a while on the sim before you try it on your helicopter. When you are hovering nose in, all of the controls on the cyclic are backwards. Forward will make the helicopter come towards you. Right cyclic will make it go to the left and so on. The best way I have found to learn nose in, is to move the cyclic in the direction the helicopter is moving. So, if you are trying to hover, and the heli is going to your left, give it left cyclic to bring it back. Same for forward, right and back as well. Again, you should practice this on the sim for quite a while before practicing on your helicopter.
Think you’re ready to take it outside and do the real thing? Let’s go!
Set your helicopter on the home box tail in. I know some will say to actually start nose in, but how are you going to learn how to transition into nose in? I always start tail in and rotate the helicopter around to the left and right until I am nose in. Once you get into a nose in hover, try to hold it there. If you get in trouble, the best thing to do is just lower the throttle and set it down and start again. If you would rather start out nose in, it’s up to you. You may actually find it easier to do it this way to start.
You will want to practice this as much as you can. It took me about 5 batteries until I could actually do it and hold it in one spot. Like I said before though, practice this on the sim a lot first. If you have the Blade mSR, it’s a perfect helicopter to practice this on. In my case, and this is optional for you and only if you can hold a good hover, I practiced this 3 mistakes high. When I started to learn how to do nose in, I would get into a stable hover about 30’ up, then rotate into nose in. There is something about the helicopter being farther away which made all of this easier for me. You can try this, but only if you can hold a stable hover.
Once you can hold a good nose in hover, do the exact same as you have for every step up to now.
Start with the helicopter on the home box and raise it up into a hover. Rotate the helicopter, right or left, it's up to you, whatever feels most comfortable to YOU, until you are nose in. Once nose in. give the helicopter backwards cyclic to move the helicopter to the farthest away box. Stop over the box into a stable hover, then give forward cyclic to bring it back to the home box. Now, give forward cyclic to bring it to the closest box, stop in a stable hover then give backwards cyclic to go back to the home box.
Now, while over the home box, give the helicopter right cyclic to move the helicopter to the left box. Stop in a stable hover, then add left cyclic and bring the helicopter back to the home box and stop in a stable hover. Now give left cyclic again to move to the right box, stop in a stable hover, then give right cyclic to bring the helicopter back to the home box. Rotate the tail around and land on the home box.
Now that you have a grasp on what has to be the hardest part to learn in flying a helicopter, it's now time to move on to the best part. Getting into forward flight!
