Are your hands shaking yet? I know mine were at this stage. The instruction I had was to spool it up and jump up to 3’ in the air. This is WRONG! If you do it, you will crash because the helicopter will end up surprising you and you will panic.
One of the most important things now is face your helicopter into the wind. The wind should be coming straight at the nose of the helicopter and straight at your face. This will keep the helicopter more stable in the air and during spool-up. There is also what is called translational lift. Translational lift is when the helicopter gets into some clean air and without collective input, will rise into the air when facing the wind. The exact opposite is true when you are going away from the wind. Instead of gaining altitude, you will lose altitude. You will have to give more collective input to keep it in the air. Remember this, because as you are hovering in the wind your helicopter will want to go up and down on its own. It’s your job to keep it in one place. I will go into more detail about translational lift later on, but for now, just remember, going into the wind it will raise, going away from the wind it will drop, so be ready for it.
The next most important thing about learning how to fly is to ONLY FOCUS ON THE NOSE! If you focus on the tail, and you want to make the tail go left, you are going to give left rudder, and the tail is going to go right. When you give rudder input, you are telling the nose where to go, not the tail. This is one of the reasons that you want to always have a bright colored canopy on your helicopter.
