6. Powering Up The Helicopter

The first thing to do if you want to get your helicopter off the ground is to charge its power source, the lithium polymer battery. The charger is a pretty simple thing to use. You just plug it into the wall and then plug the battery into it. The red light means it's getting power. While the battery is charging, there will be a green/amber light that will appear or flash. In about 45 minutes the green/amber light will turn off, which indicates that the battery is fully charged and good to go.

Take the charged battery and install it in the helicopter. In the case of the Honey Bee, it sits on two battery holders between the landing gear. You can move the battery forward or backward and adjust its position so that the helicopter balances in your hand and doesn't tip forward or backward. Once the battery is properly placed, do not attach any wires to it. That happens later.

If you haven't already, install the eight AA batteries into the transmitter. Turn the transmitter on and make sure the power indicator is in the green. Flying when it shows red is a bit dangerous because the power is running out; you don't want to run out of power while the helicopter is flying.

Next, set the trims. Trims are the fine tuning adjustments that sit beside the two joysticks on the transmitter. Each joystick has an up-down trim and a left-right trim, and you can adjust these while flying to compensate for unwanted flight characteristics of the aircraft. For instance, if you find the helicopter spins to the left a bit while flying, you can move the rudder trim to the right to compensate for that and make it easier to fly.

These are the trims.

For now, though, we just want to set the trims to a neutral position right at the center. The one exception is the throttle trim, which must be set at the bottom position.

With the trims set, the last thing to do before powering up the helicopter is to set the throttle joystick to the bottom (off) position. If both the throttle and throttle trim are not set at the bottom position when the helicopter is plugged in to power, the helicopter will not turn on.

With the transmitter switched on, the throttle and throttle trim set to the bottom position and the rest of the trims set to neutral, the helicopter is ready to be plugged into its battery. You can now take the helicopter's battery lead and plug it into the matching lead on the helicopter. When this happens, the helicopter's receiver will sense that the transmitter is working and calibrate itself. While calibrating, a light on the helicopter's receiver will flash red, but once it is successfully calibrated it will glow green. The solid green light means that the Honey Bee is armed, or ready to fly.

If it doesn't glow green, something is wrong and the helicopter will not work. Chances are the problem is something simple, like plugging the battery in before the transmitter is turned on, or forgetting to set the throttle and throttle trim to the bottom position before plugging the helicopter in.

Assuming the helicopter showing green and is ready to fly, it's still not time to take to the skies. We have to make sure the controls are responding properly.