Ask and ye shall receive.

A lot of people have been asking how one actually controls a helicopter. I've been doing a lot of reading on the mechanics of flight controls... so let me share what I've learned so far.

There are three basic types of movement in a flight; yaw, pitch and roll.

yaw: is the rotation around the axis of the main rotor blades. Think, turning your head right or left. That's yaw.

pitch: is the change in the angle of the nose. Nose up, nose down. Again, think looking up and looking down.

roll: is the only other motion you can do with your head... tilt is right or left. Banking the helicopter to the right or left.


Now, the interesting part is how this is all done inside the cockpit.

The cyclic is joystick like control between your knees that moves the helicopter forward, backwards, left and right - or any combination of these. It actually deforms the main rotor in such a way where the whole blade plane tilts in the direction you want to go.

The collective looks like an emergency hand brake in your car. Except in this case, it's job is to change the angle of the rotating main rotor blades. The more you pull up on the collective, the greater the angle of blade twist - and therefore the more bite the blade takes out of the air. This increases the lift on the blades and the helicopter rises. A side effect of changing the angle is that this increases the load on the engine and you need to compensate by increasing the throttle. The throttle is a twist handle on the collective.

The anti-torque petals control the pitch of the tail rotor, either increasing or decreasing the thrust at the back of the tail boom. This thrust effects the yaw of the helicopter. A lot of things can result in the need to step on the pedals; changing throttle, turning, wind, etc. The biggest reason you need the tail rotor in the first place is to counteract the rotational torque caused by the spinning main rotor. As the blades turn counter-clockwise, the body of the helicopter will want to rotate clockwise. Obviously, you don't want this... so you need to make sure there is enough thrust keeping you pointed in the direction you really want to go.

Flight is a combination of all three controls... cyclic, collective and pedals. With these you can move in any direction you want.

...and that is how Airwolf and Blue Thunder fly.