Kenny Keller gives an instructional tip on using the cyclic trim (trim hat) in Enstrom helicopters. He advises introducing the trim early in training, explains the practical technique—"trim toward the pressure" in all four directions—and emphasizes that frequent trimming makes the helicopter much easier to fly (even allowing near hands-off flight around the pattern in his anecdote).
Now I want to talk a little bit about the trim hat on the cyclic and the instrum. Start from scratch. When you have somebody brand new in the first few hours, it's very hard to get a student to use this trim hat. So in the very beginning, if you're not using it right off the bat, don't worry about it. But as soon as you start kind of getting comfortable with the controls, starting to learn to hover. The sooner you can get somebody using this trim hat, the better off you'll be. I can remember when I started in Innistroms a long time ago. The guy I was working for said, the guy I was working for said, you need to be trimming this thing all the time. Trim, trim, trim. Trimming on takeoff, trimming on landing, just trimming all the time. And that's really true. Once you get the feel of the trim, it makes this instrument so absolutely easy to fly. You'll battle this thing without the trim hat, without using the trim, and it'll wear your arm out. You learn to use this trim, it makes life so much easier. So the sooner you can master this thing, the better off you're going to be. And I found over the years, it's kind of hard to teach people how to use the trim button. I mean, you can explain it to them. The simple, you know, if you feel pressure, if the cyclic is moving to the right, and you keep feeling like you're pushing cyclic to the left to counteract that, you trim towards the pressure. So if it, if it's pushing, cyclic's moving to the right, and you feel like you're hand is going to the. It's like it's going to the right. And your hand you're pushing to the left, trim towards that pressure, and that will relieve the pressure. So it works in all four directions, forwards, backwards, and sideways. The more you use this thing, the better off you're going to be and the easier this thing is to fly. I can tell you I can take an N strim all the way around the pattern. And pretty much just after I. After takeoff, I can take all my hands off the controls, the pedals, the collective. Don't recommend anybody doing this, but I can do it. And I can fly almost the entire pattern with only making a couple collective changes and only making a few changes with the trim. You can fly this thing all the way around, the whole entire pattern with just a trim. So remember, trim, trim, trim, trim, trim, and more trim.
