Rolling Circle
Piro Circle Prelude
Sorry for the long delay guys. With the end of the semester and more gigs than I planned in April I have been bogged down. Plus I had a lot of building to do among other things. Tonight as I worked on Mobius on the sim (still am), I started thinking about the times I have searched the internet for tips on performing this maneuver. I found nothing but videos with someone describing what to do, but not really giving a lot of detail. For me, stick inputs would help, sort of like sticking for a rudimental piece or step by step movements for a martial art move. The Bujinkan has several books from our Grandmaster that lists step by step movements, but they really don't help until you feel the move happen. We call this transmission. It is the same with the tips I am listing. These are just blow by blow steps I think might help, but it won't make sense until you can feel it for yourself. I am hoping that this collection will prompt people to attempt the maneuvers. Because I could not find a detail account of the moves, I started writing my own and hoping someone can find some use in this. That is why I do this.
Even though pirouetting circles and rolling circles are completely different, I thought it would be good to describe this. I actually found that working on piro circles will help with rolling circles. First, get used to doing piros in different areas of your field while you are standing in one spot, which we will call the 50 yard line. Do a circle, but then stop let's say in the East quadrant. Do some piros. move on to the North quadrant. Do some piros. Move to the West quadrant, do some piros and the same to the south, which I think of as the closest point to myself. Now, begin to fly a circuit. Once you are very comfortable with that {again, if a circuit is not second nature to you in all orientations,back up and work on those basics} begin to do a piro when you feel in complete control. You should be comfortable doing circuits forwards, backwards and sideways. If not, you will misunderstand the stick movements.
Once you are comfortable doing some piros and stopping during your circuit, work on performing a straight line while doing piros. Also, work on performing stationary piros and keeping the helicopter within a 3 foot square or smaller depending on wind. Once you feel good with this, start doing piros in a box formation. Move to one point, let's say to your left, do some piros, move away from you and do some piros, move to your right, stop again and do some piros, then move back towards you, stop and do some piros. After that, work on doing piros the entire time you follow the box or square. When you are comfortable with that, try to bend the corners of the square in to a circle.
I listed a lot of info, but really this is easier than it sounds. As you are moving in a direction while doing pirouettes, you should spot just like a dancer would do. I don't want to get into this too much, but when a dancer or skater is doing fast pirouettes, they find a spot on the wall and have their eyes connect with that spot every time they turn. In this case, let us say you are thinking about the helicopter moving forward nose first. This will be your spot. Each time the piro will point the nose in the direction you are moving in the circle you should think about how you perform a basic circuit. Once you start turning the circle, think about the stick movement to make that turn, even though you are pirouetting. To explicate, if you are moving clockwise with right piros, once you need to make a right hand turn, think about performing that right hand turn without the piro initially. As you get comfortable with this, you will not really stop the piro but keep it going, but you will understand the movement for the piro circle.
This is NOT to be confused with a piro funnel, but it is a precursor for something I plan to get into later this summer as part of the stick stirring maneuvers.
Now on to the Rolling Circle.
Each of the aforementioned exercises listed should be done in the same manner, but instead of piros replace those actions with rolls. Get comfortable rolling in a straight line down the flight path both forwards and backward, and using right aileron or left aileron. The next crucial step is to perform rolls in all orientations. Even start stationary rolls from an inverted position. You must get used to seeing the helicopter roll in these different vantage points. If you can think about the four orientations as 1/4s of a pie or clock, break it down into 1/8ths. This will help tremendously when you start doing a circle. Also, don't do all of the stationary rolls in the different orientations right in front of you. Even though I recommend that at the start, you need to experience the rolls away from you because the circle will place the helicopter in different focal points and distances. After spending a lot of time on stationary rolls in different orientations and distances, begin doing a forward circuit. When you are ready, throw a roll in there at a predetermined spot you feel comfortable with. Make sure you stay on a level flight pattern and don't break the line. It sometimes happens due to several factors, but practice to the point where it doesn't happen much. Once you can do the roll and continue the circle, do another roll in the opposite portion of the circle and the predetermined spot. Once you can do that, do a roll in all four points of the circle. Then try to do 8 points of the circle, and then 12 points, sort of like a clock.
I feel most comfortable doing a clockwise circuit with right aileron rolls. But before I felt I could write this article, I personally wanted to do counterclockwise circles with rolls. Then do both directions with opposite rolls, such as clockwise circles with left rolls and CCW circles with right rolls. Then I started working on backwards circles with rolls. I recently started doing figure 8 rolls. At that point, I felt ready to write the article. Especially when I could do these with my new E7se and at low head speeds. Even though there is a bit of a stirring motion that some do for rolling circles, I am not discussing that just yet, because I have not explained this motion, but it is coming up soon.
Control the circuit with yaw and using some slight elevator inputs will help you to keep altitude. The collective inputs are really just to control your speed. Initially you might want to do the turns banked with half rolls to get a feel for this.
I recommend counting how many rolls you do in a circuit. Say you did 36 rolls from start to finish. Next time around try to make sure you hit 18 rolls at the half way mark before getting to number 36. If you are only getting 16 rolls in from start to finish, then try to do 8 in each half. Another thing you can do when learning this is to do a roll, keep moving forward, do another roll, keep moving forward and so on. This is similar to learning the piro circle and why I included that move. If you can do a piro circle, you should have confidence that you can do a rolling circle.
If you aren't having fun then it is wrong and you should do more rolls!
