1. Whenever you start your helicopter, whether it’s a nitro, gasser or electric, always hold the blade grips tightly. If your throttles not all the way down, or there’s a glitch, your heli can spin out of control and cause serious damage.
2. Always stand a minimum of 5 – 10 feet away from your helicopter and never fly towards yourself. Similarly, don’t fly around other people or pets.
Blade tips can be spinning in excess of 250 miles per hour and a carbon fiber rotor at those speeds can do some serious damage and even cause death.
3. Always disconnect your battery / motor before trying to adjust anything on your heli.
4. If a blade separates during in flight, it can fly in excess of 100ft, so make sure your nuts / bolts are tight.
5. Perform a quick pre-flight check to make sure everything’s as it’s supposed to be. Make sure nuts, bolts and screws are tight, linkages aren’t loose, and your batteries are charged.
6. Don’t fly alone if it can be avoided and always have a cell phone or other means of communication available.
7. Don’t fly near trees, power lines or other obstacles.
8. Use common sense.
9. Avoid flying your RC heli in close proximity to another heli to avoid contact and a potentially fatal crash.
10. Don’t fly any non-electric RC heli indoors. The fumes are toxic and not good for your health.
11. Practice new moves on a simulator first for safety and your wallets sake.
12. When flying on windy days, always fly upwind from your RC helicopter so a gust doesn’t blow it towards you. Better yet, don’t fly when it’s windy out.
13. Don’t adjust the radio when your heli is powered. If you accidentally reverse the throttle bad things can happen.
14. Avoid flying your RC helicopter at head heights. If something comes loose or there’s a glitch (electrical or human) you’re less likely to loose an eye.
15. If you want to manually slow down the blades do so by adding friction to the button and keep loose clothing and other bodily parts away from them.
16. When walking towards your heli, make sure that the throttle hold switch is on, on your transmitter.
17. Only use hardened bolts for any bolt that has a load being placed on it. If possible, stick to stock parts.
18. Program failsafe settings into your receiver if possible.
19. If you’re new to RC helicopters, make sure that an experienced heli pilot checks out your helicopter and radio setup prior to your first flight.
20. Don’t fly powerful RC heli’s indoors that were meant for the wide open spaces of outdoors like the stupid guy flying the Raptor 90 in this video. I don’t need to tell you how dangerous a glitch or dumb thumbs can be in this situation.
Battery Safety Tips
1. Always charge lipo batteries on non-flammable surfaces such as metal, concrete and ceramic in well ventilated areas.
2. Use a proper charger that can specifically handle the battery type you’re charging. This is especially important for lithium polymer (lipo) batteries.
3. If your battery pack becomes damaged in a crash, always have it professionally repaired before using it again.
4. Use lipo storage sacks for long / short term storage of your batteries.
5. Balance your batteries.
6. If your batteries get hotter than 140 degrees Fahrenheit, stop what you’re doing immediately until you can diagnose and solve the problem.
7. Never let the batter leads touch. There’s huge amounts of current stored in batteries which can be discharged very quickly leading to a fire or explosion.
For more information on LiPo batteries, please see the LiPo Battery Charging & Safety Guide
Here’s a quick video of what can happen to a lipo battery when things go wrong:
