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Understanding the Parts of a Helicopter Main Rotor Pitch Control Ok, so we can see how the heli moves around, but how does it go up and down? In these examples, the middle portion of the swash plate (not actually part of the plate in this case) moves up and down to adjust the pitch of the rotors as shown here. The little brass looking cuff and the mess of black on the mast that are pointed out are the collective controls attached to the blades. On this helicopter when the pitch control is all the way up there is no pitch on the blades, when it is all the way down there is full pitch on the blades.
The only part of this system that spins is the upper part. The brass cuff is attached to the control linkage to move it up and down. On larger helicopters (and in real life...) like my scale EC-135, it uses a 90 degree swash mix to control the four blades. To adjust the pitch on it, the whole swash plate moves up and down for pitch in addition to the other controls on it. |
