450 How to manage windy conditions in a 450 size heli?

M

merajoek

New Member
Hi,

I'm still learning to fly my HK450 Pro FBL and struggle a bit in windy conditions. I find that when I turn away from the wind the heli will just drop like a rock! Caught me by surprise today but luckily thanks to ground effect and finally adding some collective I pulled up in time.

I also find that turning into the wind it climbs quite dramatically.

I am used to flying planes and they don't tend to react so dramatically to wind.

How do you experienced heli pilots manage it? Do you guys just anticipate the dropping/climbing and add/reduce collective from experience? Is there another way to turn away/into the wind to minimise the effect?

Apologies for the dumb quesitons.

Here is a video from today's flight showing what happened. Best to watch it in HD and fullscreen otherwise you might not see the helicopter at all!

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Tony

Tony

Staff member
Hey Joe, welcome to the forum! I hope it was you and not the forum that double posted this thread, but I'm going to delete the other one.

What you are experiencing actually has a name. It's called Translational Lift. Every helicopter feels the effects of this, and every pilot has to learn to anticipate it. I guess that answers one of your questions lol.

When you are flying into the wind, you have nice clean air that is hitting the disk and clean air provides more lift. In FF (Forward Flight), you are pushing more air down in the rear of the disk than you are in teh front. So the air in the front of the disk is pretty much stagnant and swirling, but the air in the rear, getting the awesome clean undisturbed air, is creating the maximum amount of lift. So your helicopter is going to gain altitude.

When you are flying with the wind, it has the exact opposite effect. You have the same dirty air in the front of the disk, but the air at the rear of the disk is not as clean as it was when you were going into the wind. Because you are now flying in "dirty air", you are not going to generate as much lift as you would going into the wind. So with the same amount of collective, you are going to descend in altitude until you give it more collective.

I hope this helps you understand what was going on that you couldn't see. When you are flying in any kind of wind, just remember that into the wind, you are going to go slower, but will need less collective. And going with the wind, you will carry much more speed (just link in an airplane) but you will need more collective input to stay in the air.

Here is a picture that shows clean air that is moving pretty well. This is right before what they call Effective Translational Lift. Hope this helps.

Fig_2-47.gif

Fig_2-47.gif
 
murankar

murankar

Staff member
We have a plethora of new words today, :lmao:. Nice explanation of translational lift.

Sent from my LG-E980 using Forum Runner
 
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