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The Divine Art of Hovering

INTRODUCTION
Having learned the fundamentals of controlling the helicopter in forward flight, the
next step is hovering.

To the Hover!
In many schools, hovering is one of the last items to be taught, as it is perhaps the
most difficult skill to master*.
Since its the most difficult, it is covered after youve learned the fundamentals.

Hovering More Easily

Do you remember the first time you tried to hover? It was probably in a large, open
field. (If you havent tried hovering a helicopter yet, you probably will be put in such
a place wait for it) It is obstacle-free, and everything is uniformly green (or brown
or white - depending upon the season).
What is the typical result for the student? A lot of wandering around the field, with
little real learning and lots of frustration. Why? What sort of information is there to
give visual cues about movement? Not a lot. Everything is the same color and texture,
so there is very little real information about what the helicopter is doing. Everywhere
the student looks, there is a very small amount feedback about how he is doing with
regard to trying to hover. Also, there is no real incentive to be accurate - one part of
the field is as good as another. More detailed reasons as to why this makes things
difficult will be given in Chapter 27,"Advanced Helicopter Flying", but for now, here
is a possible solution to the problem.
The situation is much better if there is something for the pilot to look at - for hovering
at 3 to 5 feet above the ground, the cues should be somewhere about 30 to 50 feet in
front of the helicopter. Any further away, and the feedback of cues is too little, and the
hover cannot be maintained accurately. If references closer in are used, this may give
too high a feedback and overcontrolling will result. It is also necessary to have two
references - one in front for lateral movement, and one slightly to the side (about the
2 oclock or 10 oclock position) for foreaft movement.
I have used runway signs, marks on the runway, etc. as cues, and had good success in
having non-pilots hovering reasonably (within 10 feet of the spot) within 45 minutes.
The incentive of something that could be run into immediately in front, staring you in
the face helped to concentrate the student on where to look. The student has an
immediate cue about movements, (backwards, forward and side to side) and can make
corrections very easily.

Vertical References
Vertical references are most worthwhile. What is meant by this? It is difficult to obtain
information about lateral or foreaft drift or height when hovering over a uniform
surface. Some of this information can come from the horizon or distant objects, but we
need to see things close by to get good overall cues. Vertical cues are subtly different we need to have something to measure height by - and looking at an object sticking up
in comparison to its background, lots of good cues can be gained. Figure 14-1 shows
how this works. Note the relative distance vertically between the top and bottom
edges of the sign and the things behind it, or the vertical distance between the sign
and the edge of the runway. As you move up and down or back and forth, these relative
* Other things learned later are more difficult to master, but the concept of hovering is initially not easy.

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distances all change, and that is how you judge perspective. When hovering OGE for example,
use the sides of buildings or the tops of trees with respect to more distant objects, and so on for
vertical cues.

Figure 14-1 Vertical Cues

Aim of Hovering
The aim of hovering is to maintain a steady position over the ground. This means the pilot
must know how accurately the hover is to be maintained, and there are sufficient visual
references to be able to know youre hovering this accurately. It is nearly impossible to hover
accurately over the ocean, for example, without other references to tell you if you are moving.
Waves and the foam on the surface wont do, by the way, they move too. If the rotor downwash
is visible, it can be used as a rough guide, but conditions need to be ideal for this.
Anytime except calm conditions the wind is going to push the helicopter around. Your task is
to keep the helicopter in one place. Accept this as a fact of life. The change in wind is a change
in relative airspeed, which causes a change in pitch attitude, and a movement across the
ground, and a change in power required to maintain height, and a change in the torque
balance, and a change in the transverse flow effect - Hey if it was easy, anybody could do it!
Correcting back to the desired position is straightforward, and consists of making adjustments
in the controls to correct the attitude and stop the movement, and then further control inputs
to return to the desired position.
It should be remembered that in ground effect (IGE), the collective lever is a height controller,
so only very small changes in collective lever should be necessary. Changes in airspeed affect
the power required to maintain height as well, further emphasizing the need to make only
small changes in speed (ground and/or air speed). This is another way of saying if a large
change in groundspeed is made near the hover and the collective lever isnt moved, expect the
helicopter to climb or descend quite markedly.

CONCEPTS OF HOVERING
A few exercises may help to get the concepts of hovering straight, but first a pesky difference
in wording must be sorted out.

Hover - Zero Groundspeed vs. Zero Airspeed

Earlier we talked about the zero airspeed hover in order to simplify the aerodynamic
explanations. We know full well pilots want to hover with respect to the ground, so in this part,
were going to talk about the stationary with respect to the ground hover. This means anytime
theres a wind, the helicopter is affected by it.

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Most of the time when youre flying, youll be blessed with a wind, however, from time
to time, the wind will be calm*, and you may notice some differences in the way the
helicopter reacts. In a calm wind, youre in a zero-airspeed hover at the same time as
youre in a zero-groundspeed hover.

Effects of Controls - Hover and Low Airspeed

Having described all the problems of flying the helicopter, it is time to stop making
excuses and get down to making the machine do our bidding. First, we should examine
the effect of the various controls. You will notice the title of this section is introduces
the term low airspeed, so before we examine the effects of controls, we need to
understand what we are talking about.
In the previous chapter, we were in forward flight, up and away from the ground. All
the controlling was with respect to airspeed, heading, and altitude. Now, were closer to
the ground, and we are using different references, such as groundspeed, track across
the ground and height above ground. To make a clear distinction between the two,
because the controls are used in slightly different ways in the two areas, well call one
forward flight and the other area low airspeed.

Forward Flight and Low Airspeed

Forward Flight will be defined in this book as airspeeds above 40 KIAS, with the
direction of flight roughly the same as the direction of the nose of the helicopter,
leaving Low Airspeed to be anything slower, including side and rear airspeeds. The
reasons for this arbitrary division are many: the pitot system doesnt function well less
than 40 KIAS; flight at speeds slower than 40 KIAS is with reference to the ground
whereas flight above this speed is with reference to airspeed and the air mass. Besides,
a line had to be drawn somewhere

Figure 14-2 Forward Flight vs. Low Airspeed Division

Back to the effects of controls.

In simple terms, the easy way to understand how to fly the helicopter is to consider the
cyclic stick as the way to control the tilt of the rotor disk (or the thrust vector), and the
collective lever as the controller of the size of the thrust vector. Because it is difficult to
split out axes and controls in a helicopter (there are no ailerons or elevators), the terms
longitudinal and lateral cyclic stick will be used. Longitudinal cyclic stick is fore/aft
cyclic, and lateral cyclic stick is left/right cyclic. The pedals are used to point the
fuselage with respect to the wind or chosen heading.

* Those of you into Zen would try to figure out if the wind is coming from everywhere all at once, or going to everywhere all at once...
and hopefully the nose of the pilot as well.
as will be shown in a later chapter.

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The Divine Art of Hovering

Hover / Low Airspeed

It helps to consider the cyclic stick as the controller of position and ground speed. In a zero
airspeed hover, the rotor disk is parallel, and the thrust vector perpendicular, to the ground.
If a wind is present, the rotor disk and thrust vector must be tilted into the wind to stop the
helicopter moving. The collective lever controls the height above the ground.

Cyclic stick
In the hover, think of the cyclic stick as independent of the direction the fuselage is pointing.
Where the cyclic stick is pointed is where the helicopter will go, regardless of the heading of
the fuselage (within reason). To move to a new position, visualize a line between the top of the
cyclic stick and where you want to go. The thrust vector needs to be tilted in that direction. For
example, the point desired is slightly to the left front, about the 10 oclock position. From a
steady hover, apply slight pressure to the cyclic stick in that direction, and the helicopter will
start moving across the ground. With zero wind, the fuselage stays pointing close to its original
heading. The helicopter may slow down again, or do something that appears strange, but keep
applying the slight pressure to the cyclic stick in the direction of the desired position, and you
will move towards the target.
This method presupposes a good idea of where you want to be - visualization of the objective,
and a good set of references to tell you when you are there all make a large difference.
(Remember if you want to hover over a spot, you wont be able to see the spot when its
underneath you, so you need to pick some surrounding features to tell you when youre over it
- another reason why large flat fields arent of much help.) This may sound like an overly
simplistic approach, but it works.
When nearly over the desired spot, it is natural to slow down to stop. The disk and thrust
vector must be tilted slightly away from the direction of travel position in order to slow down.
At the zerogroundspeed hover, the cyclic stick should be back at the same position as at the
start of the maneuver. The pressure on the cyclic stick is thus initially in the direction to start
(and keep) moving, a slight pressure opposite the direction of motion to slow down and a final
correction to stabilize in the hover. Figure 14-3 shows the sequence of moves from start to
finish of moving slowly to a new hover position.

Figure 14-3 Sequence of attitudes from hover to hover

Overcontrolling in the Hover

I know youre supposed to concentrate on the positive, and not tell people the mistakes theyre
going to make, but learning to hover is a classical example of a problem every helicopter pilot
has experienced. Ill describe the problem, as students will immediately identify with it
because theyve seen it, and then describe the solution.

The Problem
There is a lag between the time a cyclic stick input is make and when the machine is seen to
respond to the input. While is lag is whiling away the hours, the student pilot is uncertain
about what has happened - nothing seems to be going on. This is especially true in the pitch
axis, which has a large inertia compared to roll.

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The problem is something is going to happen, but the student doesnt know when that
will be. The typical response to having put a control input in with no immediately
apparent result - (nothing happened!) is to put in another input. The total input will
then be so large that an opposite input will be required to correct for the first one.
Unfortunately, the second input has the same lag as the first. The result is a lot of very
large control inputs and increasingly large and alarming attitude changes until the
instructor takes control.
Youre hovering over a spot and the instructor gives you control. You start to drift
forward. Here, in step-by-step fashion is what happens when you overcontrol:

A small aft cyclic stick input is made

Nothing seems to happen
Since you want to stop the forward motion, a larger aft input is made
The nose starts to pitch up, then it really pitches up
Helicopter starts to accelerate backward (all too rapidly for your liking)
You put in a healthy forward cyclic input
Nothing seems to happen to the pitch rate or the rate of travel across the ground
More forward cyclic stick input at about the same time as the nose starts to drop
Helicopter starts to accelerate forward

You have control you yell at the instructor as you wonder if youll ever get the hang of
this game.
Sound familiar?
Now lets look at how to correct this. Its called anticipation.

A small aft cyclic stick input is made and the stick returned to about the same place it started from.
Nothing seems to happen, but youre cool, you know it will in just a second or so.
Nose begins to pitch up, but not too rapidly
The helicopter stops drifting forward
The nose settles to the correct position

...and so on.
Much easier wasnt it.
The real question is how to learn about the anticipation. This is another of those skills
only experience can teach you. If I could put this in a bottle, Id be rich.

Cyclic Stick as a Position Controller

The other way to look at the cyclic stick is as
a controller of lateral and longitudinal
position, and to a lesser extent, ground
speed. When hovering along a line, lateral
cyclic stick controls lateral position with
respect of the line. Too far to the left? Add a
bit of right cyclic stick until you are where
you want to be. Similarly, longitudinal cyclic
stick controls forward speed along the line.
In total, the cyclic stick controls tilt of the
rotor disk and thrust vector. Figure 14-4
shows this in a different sense.
Figure 14-4 Cyclic stick vs. Direction of
Travel in Low Airspeed.

Collective Lever

Collective lever control has two distinct parts

in the low speed environment. The first is in
the in-ground-effect (IGE) hover with zero wind; the second is the out-of-ground effect

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(OGE) hover, or the IGE hover with wind. Reasons for this distinction are given in more detail
in Chapter 6,"Basic Helicopter Performance". Remember, the collective lever controls the
amount of thrust.
In the IGE hover, with
zero wind, the collective
lever controls height above
ground - a small increase
in
collective
lever
increases the height, after
one or two oscillations.
This assumes a steady
position, both laterally or
longitudinally.
See
Figure 14-5 for a graph of
this.
Figure 14-5 Height Change Following Collective Lever Movement In an OGE hover, when
In Ground Effect
you change the power, the
helicopter will continue to
climb or descend*.
OGE, (or if there is a wind or groundspeed when IGE), the collective lever is a rateofclimb
controller. Increase the collective lever above the power required to maintain height, and a
steady rate of climb happens. Again, this assumes the airspeed hasnt changed.
Any power change causes an alltoofrequent problem when learning to hover, namely
controlling heading. Any small changes in collective lever change height and introduce
problems in heading control, etc. Instructors should encourage students to be very smooth
about changing power when hovering close to the ground. Any variation in airspeed changes
the power required to maintain height, making things worse

Pedals
In the hover and low speed, pedals have one basic function - to keep the nose pointed where
desired. In a zero wind hover, the pedals control yaw rate.
When there is a side wind in the low airspeed region, the pedals are still used to control
heading of the fuselage, but have some complex effects. Hovering with a relative 225 wind in
most helicopter will cause problems which youll see as a lot of dancing on the pedals. This is
covered in more detail in Chapter 34,"Further Peculiarities of The Helicopter".

* Within reason of course. The power required to hover OGE does not change much within 500 of the starting point, unless
you descend into ground effect.
Otherdirectionofrotation rotor systems will have a problem with relative 135 wind.

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