- How Does a Normal Helicopter Fly?
- How Does the Micro Mosquito Fly?
- Dissecting the Micro
- Tips on Flying the Micro Mosquito
- Is Your Micro Mosquito Busted?
- Summary
Tips on Flying the Micro Mosquito
Let’s discuss our flying experience a bit. As previously mentioned, we can maintain fairly good control over the device, and have gotten to the point where we can take off, fly around, and land on an area about the size of a pie pan. However, this took some practice because the Micro requires constant interaction and tweaking. So, here’s a few tips to help shorten your learning curve, as well as help you avoid some really bad crashes.
The best way to familiarize yourself with the dynamics and controls of the helicopter is to practice hovering and landing. This might seem boring, but new users will have a difficult time at first just trying to hover the Micro, much less trying to land it without crashing. Once you are able to keep it up in the air, and land it softly, the next step is to understand the spinning trim knob in the center of the controller. While hovering, use this knob to keep the helicopter in place. Note that you will have to adjust the trim several times during a flight due to changes in battery strength and other external influences.
Now you are ready to move the helicopter forward and backward. Use the controller to try to move the helicopter a few feet forward, and then resume hovering. One of the quirks of the Micro is that the blades can slowly tilt together, which causes the helicopter to sway around in the air until it crashes. You can avoid this by keeping the Micro moving forward in a controlled fashion. However, too much spinning while moving forward and up and down can cause the swaying action. Another issue you will quickly discover is that the Micro will stick to ceilings and walls, thanks to the vacuum of the lift. Try to fly the device in the middle of a room, away from solid objects and drafts, or you will find yourself trying to recover an out-of-control helicopter.
I included a couple short movie clips of us flying around and landing (movie1.mpg), and even crashing (movie2.mpg). As you can see, the makers of the Micro really did create a durable indoor helicopter that is great fun to fly.