LAST year Raynia Pikari-Kaiwai couldn’t fly a radio controlled helicopter, but now he flips his upside down and “mows the lawn” with it.
A year ago, the man known as Ray or Raynman to his mates went to a Fun Fly at the Wellington Model Aeroplane Club based in Trentham. He helps Wellingtonians learn the art of blade control.
He’s the club’s top helicopter man and he loves flying his metre long Compass K3D chopper which with its two horsepower motor.
“I’ve always been into aviation and those mechanical things and this was the closest I could get to actually flying,” Ray says.
Learning to control a model helicopter can be fiendishly hard because of the many controls for manipulating the blades. But Ray picked it up so fast that online store Hobby Hanger now sponsors him to attend Fun Fly events all over the country.
Model helicopter enthusiasts meet at the Seddon Rifle Range at Trentham on Sundays to hone their skills and play helicopter games such as “herd the sheep” where they blow objects around a field.
Loop the loops are common fodder, and people like Ray can pull out tricks such as flick rolls and hovering upside down which would be impossible in a manned helicopter.
“After that orientation is the big factor because if you can figure out which way the helicopter is pointing then flying becomes second nature.”
He says most flyers have a signature move, and his is the “Lawn Mower” - possible the hardest.
“I flip it upside down and bring it so close to the ground it mows the lawn. It’s one of those moves you can only pull off with a helicopter,” Ray laughs.
However, while flying is the glory side of the business, the set up and tuning of the machines is the grunt work.
“The possibilities are never ending. People see the flying, but there has been a lot of work to get there,” he says, and adds, “There has never been a dull moment ­– the sky’s the limit.”
Ray would dearly like to see a public space in Wellington where helicopters like his could be safely flown – to ensure safety  perhaps only by ‘licensed’ flyers.
Note: Flying a real helicopter is reasonably tricky because the pilot has to manage many controls effectively to stop it falling out of the sky.  In a way a model helicopter is even trickier, because you are not at the controls and while standing on the ground have to imagine yourself in the helicopter and to move the controls as if you were.   You have to keep imagining yourself facing in the direction the helicopter is facing even though after  a couple of barrel rolls and a loop it may be 100  or more metres away and now flying upside down and backwards.