Excerpt from a helicopter ground-school video explaining the two primary flight controls: the cyclic (right-hand) used for directional control and maintaining position in a hover, and the collective (left-hand) used to change overall rotor blade pitch to climb or descend; includes brief mention of throttle at the collective end for RPM control.
Now, this control that's in your right hand, this is what we call the cyclic. And basically, starting at a hover, when you're in a hover, we're using this control to keep us centered in one place. Now, the trick to using to learn it is it's a series of tiny movements or tiny pressure changes. We often say it's more like you're willing it to move than even trying to make it move. If it's a smooth day and you're doing well, it takes very little, very little changes in this cyclic to keep yourself in one position. Basically, when we take off, we're adding power with the collective on the left hand, but we're also just pushing a little bit of forward pressure on that cyclic. That's what makes the helicopter go forward. We want to turn left, we just gently push to the left. We want to turn right, we push to the right.
Now, this control right here is what we call the collective. Move this seat belt out of the way, we have a lock right down here that keeps this in place during flight. This is relatively simple. And we want to go up, we raise the collective, we want to go down, we push down. This collective increases the pitch on all the blades. As it increases the pitch, that increases lift. That's what makes you go up, you want to go down, you push it down, decreases the pitch, and the helicopter descends. Here on the end, we have the throttle. Just wipe for throttle on this way for throttle off. So we're raising and lowering this collective, and we're also adjusting very slight, just very slight minute changes with the throttle to keep the rpm and the operating range collective is what makes the helicopter go up and down. Basically, it's in your left hand. When you raise the collective, it changes the pitch on all three of these blades. And the instrument is three bladed. And that's what makes you go up. When you want to go up, pull the collective up, Increases the pitch of the blades, increases the lift, and it goes up. You want to descend, you want to go down. Exact opposite. You just lower the collective. As you lower the collective, it collectively decreases the pitch on the blades, and then you descend.
