Tasky

The pressure thing was a British Army instructor teaching new pilots to take off/hover in their first Gazelle lesson, in a 1990s documentary. I figured he'd know what he was talking about... I already have no curve set, nor any saturation. It's all on default, +/- zero. I'll have a play with the trim later tonight... and try not to look at my dashboard!

Prepare yourselves - This is going to be embarrassingly abysmal... TaskyGazTrg1.trk I have an old CV-1 Vive and I decided to give that a go... It did make situational awareness much easier, though I still didn't have much control over the aircraft. I also found it hard not to just reach out and touch the controls, such was the immersion. Firing weapons was great, looking outside and seeing the rotor swash arms actually move was great, and it all went well until I had to start rolling the aircraft into turns.... BLEURGGGGHH!!! Auto-Hover was similarly nauseating, as it suddenly wibbled all around. Ultimately though, this headset is pretty useless as I don't have the resolution to read text, so can't see any instruments without putting my nose 2" from the dashboard. Damn good fun, though! I think there are two main issues... Firstly as TFS said, I can't (or don't know enough to) recognise what's going on, so can't apply whatever the correct inputs should be. I also find that whenever I'm watching the instruments to make sure I'm at the right levels, the stuff outside goes to rat-spit, and vice-versa!! Secondly, my WinWing stick is so very, very light around the central 2" that the slightest touch can have you at half deflection and you can't physically feel any difference from zero. I don't really want to set a 50% deadzone, but the idea of using "pressure rather than movement" (as the aforementioned British Army guy said) only works if there's pressure to push against. I might need to change the cams, or fiddle with the dampers perhaps? I may also need to reconfigure my chair setup, as the weight of my feet on the pedals create stiction and fine control is abysmal.

I can get to the point of light skids, torque pedals balanced. From there it should be a gentle collective lift into the hover, according to the demo videos... Instead I usually either end up with left stick to counter a right roll and start bouncing along the ground, or I start sliding left or backwards even with full forward stick. I'll have a bash at making some .trk files over the next few days. I'm only messing about in the training missions so far - Do those record too, or do I need to hop on a server somewhere? I'm also thinking I need a proper collective. The WinWing throttle is awesome, but I often find myself pulling to lift collective, instead of pushing the levers... which is weird, as I don't have any muscle memory for a collective!! Every flight is a confusing disaster, yet somehow still so much fun!

I did also pick up the Huey and Apache, as they were both on sale, if that helps? I saw a documentary about British Army pilots in the 90s, where they did a short course in a Chipmunk before going straight on to the Gazelle. Guess that was too much to hope for, eh!

Thanks all! Max - I'm using a WinWing setup - the Orion2 throttle, enhanced F16 stick and Skywalker pedals. The plan was to get their Black Shark collective so I could swap between planes/spaceships and rotary wing, but they discontinued that right after I bought the base HOTAS. I've been binging YouTube videos. Most cover the collective/pedal bit and I can get to that point, as well as usually avoiding the right rollover. But instead of lifting up into a hover (which some YT wizards seem able to do without any cyclic), I usually end up sliding left or backwards into the scenery. No amount of extra collective or cyclic seems to help. It's like I know what I should be doing, but can't see what's happening in order to react accordingly. The best I've managed is a hazardously aggressive launch into the air at 80-90% collective, whereafter I can transition to forward flight and enjoy bimbling around the Georgian countryside... and while I understand how to land in theory, I can't yet manage it without smashing myself into a ball of flame!! Other than that, I've really enjoyed the Gaz module, and have even fudged an Auto-hover enough to get a few HOT-3 hits on targets. It's just the fundamental manoeuvres I'm desperate to figure out.

Hi all, First post and sorry it's such a noob question... I've just started DCS, been going through the F/A-18 tutorial and found it pretty great in terms of learning basic flight stuff. Of course my real love is helicopters and the Gazelle is one of my favourites, so I decided to have a bash at that, thinking the tutorial would be comparable to the F18 one... The Startup chapter was great and I really loved learning the sequence. Only thing missing was voice narration. But the next chapter is Weapons, for which you need to start in a stable hover. Since there's no tutorial on how to hover, land or fly in general, and since I seem to be pretty naff at figuring out how to do it with the trial-and-error method, the obvious question is... What would people recommend for learning to actually fly a helicopter in general, so I can get to flying the Gazelle? Many thanks, Tasky.