Fishbreath

The Gazelle is a pilot's helo, and the Ka-50 is a fighting helo. Even with its touchy controls, the Gazelle is an easier beast to come to terms with as your first helicopter, because it behaves largely how a helicopter ought to. The Ka-50, although its autopilots are sophisticated enough so that when I'm flying combat missions, I'm usually touching the stick less than half the time, does not behave altogether like you expect a helicopter to behave. The Gazelle has the edge on my Principle of Least Surprise test. At the risk of sounding all self-promoting, I'd encourage you to take a look at the trim and flight sections in the Ka-50 guide linked in my signature, when you're ready to dive into Ka-50 piloting. A lot of the explanations out there overcomplicate things, or (IMO) make them harder than they need to be. Now, of course, back to the Gazelle, and it delightful handling. I don't think I'm going to have much time this week, what with the recent release of Stellaris, but I'm excited to continue to figure the Gazelle out when I have the chance.

I haven't quite 'turned the corner' like you have—I'm not good enough with the Gazelle yet—but I doubt I'll get the same feeling when I have. The Ka-50's stability and autopilot systems are so much more advanced. Flown correctly, it's far and away the safest whirlybird in DCS, in my opinion.

I haven't flown the Huey since 1.2.x (x < 10) was the state of the art, so I could certainly be remembering wrong. :P

It was a joke. Probably some sort of shadow rendering issue.

I've noticed that the Huey seems a little lighter now, too—I had to add some antitorque when I spun the engine/rotor up to normal RPM the other day. I don't remember ever having to do that before.

Must be the border with California. :P

I second Rowan and gospadin: I'd love to see a rudder trim option a la the Ka-50 and Huey, and for that matter, a central position trim option, too. Big help for those of us with spring-loaded controls.

Thanks for writing this up—I keep handwritten checklists in a folder by my desk, but you've cleared up/compiled everything I needed to know that wasn't in the first training mission.

Are there any plans to add the ED/Belsimtek-style trim options (center position mode and trimmed rudder)? I fly with the same kit for fixed-wing and rotary-wing, and can't afford another set of pedals to turn into helo-only pedals. Center-position trimmer and trimmed rudder are important to me, especially for helicopters with autopilots, and since they're input abstractions, it doesn't make for any loss of realism to include them.

The manual doesn't really describe what the SAS does. Do you have a link to somewhere I could read up on it some?

It's possible that they've broken it in the move to 1.5/2.0. I've been looking for a reason to hop into the Ka-50 for a bit of fun lately; maybe I'll give it a try tonight.

We're still at square one, as far as I know.

If you make a NAV TGT point with the Shkval and PVI-800, it shows up on the ABRIS correctly, so St3v3f is correct—there is some interconnection. It's just purely one-way. Nothing in the K-041 nav/targeting complex is drawn from the ABRIS, but the ABRIS does draw some information of various types from the K-041 system. (It's misleading to think of 'the datalink' and 'the PVI-800' as different pieces—they're both components in the overall Rubikon system.) (There's also the occasional debate about whether the GLONASS in the ABRIS is linked to the PVI for INS updates; whether or not it's actually true, I like to claim it is, since we don't have INS drift. :P) You are generally correct, though, that making an ABRIS flight plan will not drive the navigation systems, and outside of manual copying, there's no way to move an ABRIS flight plan into the K-041 system.

I've spent the hours on hours, and the ABRIS section in my employment guide is eventually going to be the longest one, I think. It's extremely useful if I've landed at a FARP and want to deviate from my briefed mission, and for planning approaches and such, but 95% of its uses in a given, prebriefed mission are outside of the EDIT tab, and drawing lines isn't that hard to remember. Certainly in-depth knowledge of the planning functions of the ABRIS is not at all necessary to be combat ready. They're very useful for more advanced pilots, but I don't think newcomers need to worry about it all that much.

You need almost none of the ABRIS editing stuff for flying preplanned missions. It's most useful if you're trying to plan a new route on the fly.

The unbindable-flaps problem may be on ED as much as LNS. Remember when they added new functions to the Su-27 and F-15, and you ended up with joystick input files that couldn't use the new functions? Seems like the case here.

I've had a little alternate-history COIN campaign in mind for a while. It would be really fun to have a mission where you take sling loads into the mountains somewhere to set up a FARP.

I've had this happen when I'm right on the edge of AB/normal, as far back as release.

I have a CH Products HOTAS setup. This is an improvement for me—I can fit a bunch more two-position commands now. I appreciate the work that went into it, although I'd like the old ones back for a few things I used all three positions for (flaps, gear).

With DCS Open Beta 1.5, I get the MiG-21-requires-activation page. When I tell it to re-activate, it says unable to activate because another instance of the program is running. Edit: fixed by running the activation-reset registry fix, opening DCS 1.2.16, and activating there. n.b. the last time I ran DCS was in Windows 7 and I updated to Windows 10, so that probably caused it.

Now that 1.5 is almost here, I'll be releasing v5.0 for it, instead of for legacy DCS. (The work is about 90% done—we've moved to script-based spawning for everything—and I can probably pound out the rest this weekend.) If anyone wants to donate the NTTR map, I'll happily port it, too, for some Groom Lake action. (I spent my gaming budget this month on the Battletech Kickstarter. <.<)

Note you can also use the Shkval in gunsight mode as a combat backup, if (for instance) your HUD goes down. Gunsight mode on the Shkval is also better for unplanned rocket attacks, especially if you're wearing NVGs instead of the HMS. Switch to gunsight mode and tap the designate button to rangefind just prior to your attack, and the HUD pipper will show you the POI of your rockets without having to slew the Shkval onto your target.

Yup, erjdriver, that's right. And kingpinda is also right—flying with an FFB stick changes everything. I don't have one, or even have access to one, so I can't really say anything further on that topic.

Certainly true. If I had infinite time, I'd try and train people on the Huey and put them into the Ka-50 next, so they realize just what the FLCS and coaxial rotors buy them. Most of them have resisted that idea. Maybe, once we get the AH-1 or the Gazelle done, I'll put them in the back seat and see what they think. :P

Flying with AP channels off is a fun diversion and useful emergency practice. It's not a good place to start, and it's not necessary to understand how the Ka-50 flies. FD mode+pitch/bank/yaw is more than enough for a newcomer to learn the helicopter without the AP getting in the way, and without the added difficulty of having to do damping and stability control yourself. This has been my experience both learning the helo myself, and teaching three or four others how to fly it. I'm not saying it's bad practice to momentarily turn off AP channels, or to practice flying without them. (Like I said, I frequently find myself RTBing without AP control because of battle damage—it's a skill every Ka-50 pilot should develop eventually.) I'm saying it's not a good way to teach someone new how to fly it, because it adds in a whole new set of challenges that the FLCS ordinarily handles without bugging you about them. Not quite. AP channels on, active AP off is still autopilot-controlled—it'll attempt to hold pitch, bank, and heading. Holding the trimmer or turning on FD mode instructs the AP to stop attempting to hold pitch/bank/heading, but leaves the stabilization and damping effects on. Try an experiment: enable all four AP channels, then trim for forward flight. The helo should fly itself hands off, barring any rapid changes in terrain. Then turn on FD mode and retrim for a steady forward flight. Unless you get the trim dead on, you'll have to keep your hands on the controls and make adjustments to maintain the same flight parameters. Preach. :P