Some friends bought me a really spiffy coaxial RC helicopter for my
birthday. Holy canoli these things are a stinkin blast! A little humbling at
first too, it took me a while to figure out the trim hickamajobs, and flying
one without it being trimmed is damn near impossible. I crashed pretty badly
once and it cost me a set of rotor blades, truly embarassing.

I've seen some comments that they fly like the bigger ones, and to a
limited extent I agree, but mostly its its own animal and my more general
knowledge only helped a little. I mostly have to follow the thing around and
stay behind it so that I don't get confused with the controls. Trying to
visulize being inside is still very confusing for my old synapses if its
tail is anywhere between 9 and 3 o'clock.

The whole reversed sensing / control thing led to a really simple circuit
idea that could make it so that the controls were always oriented for the
observer/controller. If you put an ADF circuit and a slightly more
complicated antenna on the helicopter so that it listened to the phase and
doppler from the transmitter's frequency, you could pretty simply make it so
the helicopter always knew where it was relative its controller, and mix it
in to the servo controls. This way left is always left, and right is always
right. The circuit would be pretty dirt cheap. Anyone know if this has
already been done?

I know the rc purists will say bah , and poo poo the whole idea, but truth
is youre cheating anyways with that lil yaw gyro keeping the tail in place
automagically. Besides, my idea isnt just applicable to these lil choppers,
it would work for every ROV that is controlled by an observer physically
watching it.

Bart