7. Pre-flight Checks

With the battery charged and installed, we must now give the helicopter a pre-flight check before taking to the skies. If something doesn't work, it's best to find out before taking off and uncontrollably flying it into someone's forehead.

To check the controls, put the helicopter on a table so that you can get eye-level with the main rotor. Make sure your head is out of range of the main rotor, though, in case you accidentally touch the throttle and it starts spinning.

Holding the transmitter, test the right joystick - the one with cyclic pitch and bank controls. Pushing this joystick to the right, you should see the main rotor tip toward the right side of the helicopter. Pushing the left should result in the main rotor tipping to the left side. Pushing up should tip the main rotor forward, and pushing down should tip the main rotor back.

If these controls work, great! If they don't work at all, don't fly the helicopter, there is something terribly wrong.Sometimes the control might work in the opposite direction it's supposed to. In that case, you can invert that specific joystick axes with a switch on the transmitter.

Now have a look at the throttle and yaw controls. Take the helicopter off of the table and place it on a floor with a smooth surface.

Push the left joystick upward very slightly until the main rotor slowly spins. Be careful not to give too much throttle, otherwise the helicopter will quickly fly upwards.

If the throttle works, leave it on slightly and test the yaw by pushing the left joystick to the right. The tail rotor should change speed and the helicopter might turn to the right if the floor surface is smooth enough.

Pushing the yaw to the left should have the opposite effect; tail rotor speed will change and the helicopter will turn to the left.

Finally, we need to check the blade tracking. To do this, we turn the throttle on slightly and look at the tips of the rotor blades from directly in front of the helicopter. The tips of both blades should be exactly on the same level. If one appears higher than the other, the helicopter will wobble in flight. If this is a problem, simply bend the offending plastic blade so that both blades are on the same level.

Blade Tracking

If everything works like it should at this point, we're ready to start flying - but not really high just yet...