How does helicopter pilot control its horizontal movement?

Question

What is the purpose of the four red rods shown in the picture?
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=5xpy4o3

Answer 1

Those rods are driven up and down by the disk they are attached to, changing the pitch of each blade independently. The rotating disk is tilted, and raised and lowered, by the stationary disk below it, which is attached via a bearing. The tilt, controlled by the left-right stick via the blue links and the fwd-aft stick via the yellow links, determines the amplitude of the cyclic pitch variation. The collective, controlled by all 4 links, determines the average pitch. The cyclic pitch allows directional control and also compensates for the very different airspeeds of the forward- vs backward-moving blades in a moving helicopter. Directional control is achieved by tilting the helicopter body off the vertical via the lift imbalance mentioned in a previous answer, which provides a horizontal thrust component.

Answer 2

The red rods are 'pitch rods' which control the pitch of the rotor blades as they rotate. By having more lift on one side of the rotor disc than on the other side, the helicopter will move in the direction of lower lift. The amount of change is controlled with the 'cyclic' (or stick) and the pitch of all of the rotors is controlled by the 'collective' (usually a bar on the left side of the seat).

Doug

Answer 3

there are two sticks.. one contrails strait movement and one contrails the horizontal ..