Draco

do you have throttles bound to something?

What were you doing when you crashed? Were you flying slowly and descending slightly? Could have been vortex ring state. Where you loaded up heavy and slowed down? You might have dropped below ETL and been too heavy for an out of ground effect hover.

Double mouse? I'm not sure what you're talking about. When I click "Use mouse" I have a single mouse controlled cursor that disappears after a few seconds of inactivity. Or are you talking about how the cursor changes shape when you mouse over a usable switch?

Under the VR tab in options, check "use mouse". you can also hide the cursor completely with L+ALT C.

It looks right to me in VR with a CV-1. F-16 cockpits are really small. I got to spend some time in one on the ground recently. I'm a smaller guy at 5'8" and it was a pretty cozy fit. I was uncomfortable with how tight and small everything was. I was also surprised at how small the MFD's are and how far away from the pilots face they are.

when you enter auto hover it trims the cyclic to hover but keeps any rudder trim the same. I almost always fly with the input visualizer on just so I know where my rudder is. So trim out any yawing tendencies once your in the hover.

I have bit of a gripe with the brown out implementation in the game. I like to do a lot of "Off Airport" operations in DCS. Slope landings, confined area approaches, pinnacles, etc. My problem is that when I get near the ground visibility drops to zero, my computer slows to a stand still and usually results in dynamic rollover if I force the landing, or aborting and pulling as much pitch as the limiters will allow to get me out of the dust bowl slide show before I ball up the helicopter. My problem isn't that my machine can't handle it, it's just WAY to much dust for a grassy area. Maybe right for Afghanistan, But not Southern Russia/Georgia. It's just not realistic, not to mention frustrating. I've landed in many grassy fields and all I've ever seen swirling around me is loose grass and plant debris. Except once when I was hover taxiing over a field of Buttercups... That was like flying in a yellow Snow Globe. I've landed in sand to and it was maybe an eighth as thick as in DCS. As someone who flies helicopters for fun and does Particle FX work for a living, I would try to go for something like on the loading screen. I would probably opt for a sparse dry grass texture on smaller sprites to avoid the render hit from a lot of transparency overlap. If there's a way I can mod the effect I'd love to play with it. Or if you guys find time to tweak it to something less disastrous in an upcoming release that would be great to. :pilotfly:

might work in the KA-50... but I fly an R-44. I say a prayer every time I take my hand off the collective to tune the radio. The control forces are so light and so responsive, if I let go of the cyclic it would flip upside down, turn inside out, explode and fall out of the sky. Your right hand is glued to the helicopter the moment the skids leave the ground.

I get the wheels stuck in the dirt sometimes when I respawn at a FARP and it puts me in the grass. If that happens, quickly applying a higher collective setting will get you "unstuck". However, if it happens after you land in the grass... you're experiencing dynamic rollover. It only takes a few degrees of tilt before physics takes over and the helicopter falls over. The way I was taught to lift up was to slowly add collective until the helicopter gets light on the skids wants to move one way of the other, lower collective slightly, correct for the undesired movement, and continue adding collective. continue this process of fine adjustments until the helicopter is balanced and gently lifts off the ground. If the helicopter has sideways movement and bumps into a clump of grass it can roll over. And remember in the shark, the front wheels lift off first.

Loosing altitude after a quick stop will lead to VRS. After you slow down, add collective as you level the ship. It's better to gain a few feet after the flare then settle into your down wash and crash. To recover I was taught to both lower the collective to break up the vortex and use cyclic to gain airspeed and move out of the down wash. The problem is you usually encounter it on approach close to the ground and may not have enough time/altitude to recover before impact.

The unrecoverable low-RPM state in the R44 or "catastrophic rotor stall" as the R44 POH calls it, occurs at 80% rotor RPM plus 1% for every 1000 feet density altitude. What happens is as the blades slow down below the critical RPM, they stall. This causes a sudden increase in drag slowing the blades down even further until they aren't producing enough centripetal force to hold the blades flat. This allows them to flex upward considerably under the weight of the helicopter, possibly to the point of blade failure. This state is often referred to as "Tuliping" or "Folding the blades up." It is absolutely unrecoverable. there is nothing you can do to fix it. One of my instructors referred to what happens next as "sky diving with a helicopter strapped to your back." The Robinson factory safety course says you have 1.1 seconds after engine failure to enter the auto or you seriously risk this happening. This is why I never put the collective friction on all the way, just enough to hold it in place while I change the radios or set the GPS.

In the R-44 it'll drop slowly. I'm not a fan of using collective friction becasue in the event of engine failure we have 1.1 seconds to enter the auto before the rotor rpm decays below critical limits and the blades fold up.

I look at the OAT gauge everytime I fly to determine available power and probability of carb ice.

lol... my girfriend has the exact same shoes. And they are great for "the occasional late night"

Also Low-G pushovers get really bad really fast. I've have a few sayings regarding contol, "Helicopters don't like to do anything fast, except crash..." and "Helicopters are like women, go slow and be gentle and you'll have a good ride."

While not free... the Principles of Helicopter Flight(Second Edition) by W.J. Wagtendonk along with The FAA book listed above have been great sources for me in my helicopter training. The first being a bit thicker and more technical than the FAA version is still a good source of helicopter concepts from vortex ring state to effective translational lift. My first instructor told me it would be to abstract for me. so of course it was the one i went with.

Longbow... now that takes me back to my childhood. Most of the folks here came to DCS from Lock-on, So there's a strong fast jet base to the community. Traditionally for me when it comes to sims, I've been focused on High performance A2A platforms and dog fighting. But since I've started flying Helicopters in real life they appeal to me more in games. so while I'm not here exclusively for the Helo's they will be getting allot more of my time.

Hmm... seems it won't let me quote. Sundowner, actually two blade Helis can't experience ground resonance because they lack Lead-Lag hinges, Only 3+ blade fully articulated rotor systems can become imbalanced about the hub.

Oh no... I meant .50cal minigun. It can mount at least one GAU-19. http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/8973/steveah6jsmallcq4.jpg

This should have gone in the Lock-On forum. But if you bought it from the Lockon.ru website log in and it's under files-->Downloads on the left menu bar.

I would wet myself for a Kiowa. don't know why, but I've always loved that airframe. Also an AH-6J would be awesome.. hellfire, stinger, .50 cal miniguns, 40mm grenade launchers, rockets... Imagine doors off straffing runs in the mountains at night Something about the Scout/Light attack role apeals to me and both of those helos are based on aircraft I might end up flying someday.

I know this isn't high on the list, but I've found two problems with landing on ships. When ever I try to land on the Piotr Velikiy, as soon as my helo passes over the deck my frame rate drops to 10+ seconds per frame unless I'm above 50 meters, and returns to normal as soon as I'm no longer over the deck. And second when I land on the moscow everything is fine except the helo slowly slides off the deck, usually to the left side. I'm really impressed that you guys included the ability to rearm and refuel onboard. If only you could use them as a mission start point it would make for some interesting mission making ideas.

It's called "Blade Sailing." I seem to remember being told that in the helicopter I fly it can lead to blades cutting off the tail boom or coming into the cabin. Ooh! I've been meaning to try and get into ground resonance I'll go give that a shot... lets see how many ways there are to rip the blades off.

Are you sure Rotor RPM was good? Because I managed to replicate blade collision at high airspeed, low rotor RPM, and high Blade AoA regardless of Alt or Temp. As The RPMs decay there's less centripetal force holding the blades level allowing them to flap more. At high forward speed the rising advancing blade and the drooping retreating blade will come in contact with spectacularly bad results. I've also found that sudden left then right rolls will tear the blades off. But I don't have an exact explanation for this yet. Helicopters don't like to do anything fast... except crash.

Nice... About how high where you. I'm used to flying low, so I've never tried to find the ceiling.