How to hover an RC helicopter

Hovering is the foundation of helicopter flying. Every other skill, from forward flight to aerobatics, depends on being able to hold a helicopter still. The good news is that it's a skill you can practise in a living room, and it comes with repetition.

Set yourself up to succeed

• A calm space. Indoors, or a still day outside. Wind makes learning to hover far harder. See flying RC helicopters indoors.
• Stability modes on. Self-levelling and altitude hold let you concentrate on one thing at a time.
• Soft rates. Set low dual rates and some expo on your transmitter so small stick movements give small responses. RC helicopter controls explained covers rates.
• Training gear on collective pitch helicopters.
• Short sessions. Twenty minutes of focused practice beats two hours of frustration.

Drill 1: the lift-off

Tail towards you. Raise the throttle slowly until the helicopter is light on its skids. Use the right stick to stop it sliding, then lower the throttle. Repeat until you can feel when it's about to lift.

Drill 2: the hop

Let the helicopter lift 5 to 10cm and immediately set it down. Then hold it for two seconds, then five. You're learning to make tiny corrections before the drift builds up.

Drill 3: the box

Put a target on the floor (a sheet of paper or a mat) and hover over it. The goal is to keep the helicopter within an imaginary box about a metre wide. Start low; aim for 30 seconds, then a full battery.

Drill 4: height

Once you can hold the box for a whole battery at low level, raise the hover to knee height, then waist height. You'll find it actually gets easier above about half a metre, because the helicopter is out of its own downwash (ground effect).

Drill 5: turning the tail

Turn the helicopter 45 degrees left, hold, and turn back. Then 45 degrees right. Then 90 degrees, so you're looking at the side. This is side-in hovering, and it's the bridge to forward flight.

Drill 6: nose-in

With the nose pointing at you, left and right are reversed. Work up to it in small turns: 90, then 135, then 180 degrees. Many pilots imagine they're sitting in the helicopter, so the stick moves the way they would. When you feel lost, turn back to tail-in.

Trims and drift

If the helicopter always drifts in one direction with the sticks centred, trim it. If you need a lot of trim, check the setup: a swashplate that isn't level or a flybarless unit that has moved on its pad are common causes. See swashplate levelling.

Practise on a simulator too

The same drills work on a simulator, and every crash is free. Many pilots learn nose-in hovering almost entirely on a sim. See RC flight simulators.

When your hover is solid in all four orientations, move on to forward flight in how to fly an RC helicopter. All the learning guides are on the RC helicopters hub.