Fishbreath

I maintain a mission purpose-built for that sort of practice, as it turns out.

You still have to tap the lock target button to get laser ranging data. You may have to do so once or twice. The solution will jump as you replace the naive slant range estimation with actual laser data.

On the weapons system panel on the left side of the cockpit, set the AT/GS switch to GS (that's automatic tracking/gunsight).

I've never had any trouble flying any of the helos with a purely linear CH Fighterstick, personally. If I were inclined to change the curves, I'd probably go with simply reducing saturation to match the length of my controls—unlike in airplanes, in my experience you never really need full controls deflection in a helo, since trimming changes the centerpoint anyway.

Yes, they are.

Intriguing! Do you find that the SA loss from watching the monitor is usually offset by the greater distance of detection? How often do threats come in from off-axis?

It's nifty being able to drop bombs on a point target (I have that process written down from some time back, and I want to include it in my Ka-50 guide the next time I sit down to write some), but I can't help but think that rockets are the better option in most moderate-intensity bomb delivery situations.

Thanks for the tips. The ABRIS is certainly an underutilized tool in the Ka-50. I hope to put some of these into practice next time I'm flying. Perhaps I'll catch you sometime in the next Blue Flag season.

I was doing a little DCS stuff lately, fired this up, and realized it didn't work. Here's an updated version: doesn't have everything I said it would, but does function, at least.

This is what I've always heard. It's probably also why you see PIC on the left more often as the helicopter gets bigger: in e.g. the Mi-8 or CH-47, you can usually be assured that you'll have a copilot and/or flight engineer to handle the switchflippery while you're busy flying.

We'll see. I've had a book release to prepare for in the evenings over the last two weeks, so I'll probably won't get to it until next week or the week after. If I find it too frustrating, I'll just cheat and edit the timer in the mission. :P

Thanks for your work on this campaign! I flew the first mission last night, and it was great. (Thanks also to Mikhail Mil and his successors, for designing the best helicopter. Seriously. I've never met any helo so easy to fly well. I'm doing things in the Mi-8 after maybe five or six hours of total flight time that I would never attempt in the Huey.)

The sim might, but IIRC, this mission dates from before the cargo system, so Socket7 probably just added cargo weight with triggers when you make a pickup.

I had the smoke, but the pickup zone is a little tricky. I landed about 5-10m away, outside the town, and had to taxi past them into the town to get them on board.

I encountered a crash in the Mi-8 without using CTLD, just using a trigger zone transmitting a looping sound over the radio. There may be a bug in the transmission code in DCS. I'm going to see if I can reproduce it, then submit a bug to ED.

Ooh, good idea. Unfortunately, the other half of my idea is problematic—doesn't look like landing lights illuminate the casino buildings.

Got it on my second try—although I should point out that the mission, as distributed, has 15 m/s winds, not 15kt winds. 15 m/s is about 30kt, and that's well above my capabilities. I set it to 15kt for my second try, and had a better go at it, although pickup #4 was still a huge pain.

Is there a way to have AI helicopters use spotlights, or to fake it? I have a Mi-8 mission in mind (picking up a SWAT team from McCarran and landing it on top of a casino at night), and it would be delightfully atmospheric if I could have another helicopter or two buzzing overhead and pointing lights at the building.

For modern scenarios, I feel like you'd want to extend the map to the west a little more, so you could fit Aviano in, but I'd like a Balkans map for sure!

It's obvious in hindsight, but I didn't realize until I gave this mission a try that you can end up in a vortex ring state at the same speed as the prevailing wind. :P [ame=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1btSsDsM8I]Full mission video[/ame] [ame=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVStVsA3LA8]How it ended.[/ame]

As for hovering, I usually cheat a bit and leave the NADIR in ground speed mode. That gets me close, and I watch the sideslip string to zero in. Once we get center position trimmer mode and rudder trim, I'll be in hog heaven. (I know I'm an oddball that way, but I prefer to have everything trimmed.) In the other helos, I trim for very close to a hover, and use some tips I heard: look out into the distance, not at the ground right in front of you, and don't deflect the cyclic to correct: bump it to make the correction, and return it to center. Can't quite do that yet here, but I'm looking forward to when I can. (I suppose I could use the trim hat, but I'm still getting used to the idea that I actually have that in a helo!) Certainly, I'm with you on the last point. Great job, Polychop. Coming to grips with a new helo is probably my favorite part of DCS, given how I don't usually have the time to do multiplayer.

I had my first good flight last night—put two HOTs on the winglets, took off, flew around, hovered to fire the missiles, continued flying around, played with some autopilot modes, hovered, and landed on my chosen point. Controls saturation to 70% seems to have helped a lot. I can't picture any scenarios where full controls deflection would be required—the Gazelle has agility to spare even as is.

I set two buttons on my hat to AP mode switch up and AP mode switch down. Mode up gets me to altitude AP, 2x mode down gets me to speed AP, one tap away from either position goes back to neutral.

Just remember you don't have quite the same field of fire as an Apache. The Ka-50's semi-rigid mount is great for shooting at IFVs at 3.5 or 4km, but not so great for hitting things to your left. :P

There is no track to the first waypoint--the airfield is an airfield point, not a waypoint, so the K-041 can't calculate a path between the airfield and the first point on the route. Same when going from the last waypoint to the airfield.