Fishbreath

The ease-of-maneuver gains from FD mode are useful for rocket runs in tight quarters, or if you need to evade fire quickly. I don't think it's worthwhile to use FD mode outside of those circumstances, and while I'm perfectly capable of flying the helo without any of the AP channels on at all (usually as a result of battle damage), it's a vastly greater load on the pilot. I don't think that there are any combat efficiency gains for veteran pilots ignoring the autopilots, and I certainly don't think it's appropriate to encourage newcomers to try to fly in combat without the helo's assistance. (And I say that as someone who encourages people to learn to fly by using FD mode all the time, on the grounds that you have to understand how the helo flies before you can use the autopilot to full effect.) It's artificially increasing the difficulty, like flying the Eagle with Sparrows or the Su-27 with just EOS. As erjdriver said, though, to each his own. If it works for you, it works for you.

Yes, but flying with FD on is a significant handicap over using the autopilot well when it comes to combat usage. My feeling is that the most correct method, given the hardware most of us have, is to press and hold the trimmer through maneuvers. (FFB users can get away with the method shown in some of the Ka-50 videos, where the pilots tap the trimmer repeatedly through the course of a maneuver.) Note that the helicopter behaves as though FD mode were on when the trimmer is held down.

The pitch channel only attempts to hold speed in route mode. Otherwise it does attempt to hold pitch. The reason you might get a bounce while accelerating from a stop, especially past 50-60kmh, is twofold: 1) While accelerating from a hover, the pitch forces on the aircraft are rapidly changing. If you release the trimmer before you've found the rough point-of-trim--that is, where the stick needs to be to hold the given pitch--the AP will quickly run out of authority. 2) As you pass 50-60kmh, you start to enter the effective translational lift regime, where airflow from the aircraft's forward motion is a significant component of the airflow over the blades, and therefore the lifting force. The aircraft will want to climb, and so it'll also want to pitch up around that speed.

Use a target point for bullseye—check its coordinates using F10 at the start of the mission (part of your briefing, so it's okay), and punch it into the PVI-800 as a nav target point. That'll give you an ABRIS marker and a navigational reference.

Glad you got it sorted out!

I'll give it a try when I get home from work today and see what I can see.

Certainly—it's excellent having feedback from someone who's going through the learning process. The avionics cheat sheet in particular comes from scrawled handwritten notes I made well after I'd learned to do most of the things I put on it, so it needs a pass at being more newcomer-friendly.

I was thinking maybe the throttles aren't getting set to auto, or are jumping away from the auto setting, and the generators are clicking on once the engines have to spin up for a certain blade angle setting. The Shkval isn't blinking on and off, though, and there's no EKRAN warning for electrics on battery. JC, post a track. It's either something with your setup, or something with the game. If we view the track and get the noise, it's the game. If not, it's your setup. That'll help narrow things down, at least.

Huh. That's terribly strange.

Step 5 is two actions: designate (the Lock target binding, default Enter), and uncage (the Uncage Shkval binding, default O). After the second action, the PVI should show the coordinates.

Can you record a video? It may be something in your new PC's sound setup.

Assuming you mean INU/UPDATE, that's right next to the datalink power switch at the bottom of the PVI-800 panel. Note that it's labeled poorly—INU UPDATE is its function (which location source to use for INU updates?). The down position uses the helo's location. The up position uses the location at which the Shkval points.

The PVI-800 doesn't store information for transit speeds and altitudes—FD mode isn't commanding climb or descent, or acceleration or deceleration. The speed and altitude in route mode (whether out of FD mode or in it) are the speed and altitude from the last time the trimmer was pressed. The FD bars are the same. They're merely indicating the pitch when I last hit the trimmer.

Okay, the three images attached show, from right to left, route guidance working. In the first image, I have a waypoint selected, but route mode off. I don't get any route guidance. In the next two images, route mode is enabled (note the HUD symbology with the speed offset, instead of the speed tape), and route guidance is working as expected, first to a waypoint off to my left, then to one off to my right. I did an air start to make sure I'm not flipping any switches normal people don't.

I should probably have some time to play with this for you tonight—I was flying a few nights ago to check out a few things for my guide, and was receiving bank guidance in FD mode (incidental to another thing I was working on). I'll try to characterize it.

I'm on a bit of a DCS kick right now, so as I'm powering through more sections in my Ka-50 guide, I'm also working on this a little bit. In the next few weeks, I'll have a version 5.0 available, which, at minimum, will restore the friendly tankers spawns and complete the move to script-based spawns. (The latter gives me a lot more latitude to do complicated things, a la the current BVR range.) If I'm feeling ambitious, I might work on the COIN range, too—decide how I want to do it (with a random selection from a few spawn points and a few paths through a town, maybe).

The Ka-50 is a deeply idiosyncratic aircraft, it's true--I found myself saying, "Really? *That's* how it works?" an awful lot while I was learning it. Some of it has to do with the Ka-50's prototype status, I think--they might have cleaned it up a little if it had ever gone into production. Some has to do with Russian design philosophy at the time, which was not heavily based on making sense. (In a way, I guess, the 1980s were Russia developing its philosophy of how aircraft with automation and computerized systems ought to be laid out. I suspect it's better for more modern things. Unlike the A-10C, the Ka-50 was one of the first of its kind in its homeland.) For all its weirdness, though, it remains my favorite DCS aircraft because of how effectively the automation eases pilot workload. It's certainly a pain to learn and to get comfortable with, but it works.

Yup--the section I posted is just about order and priority of targeting references. The datalink section will have the full procedure.

Aircraft weight and drag index are irrelevant. There are four things you need to know to calculate an impact point. (Five, if you're correcting for terrain altitude at the point of impact, but we'll ignore that for now): 1. The ballistic characteristics of the weapon. (Which includes temperature and pressure, I guess.) 2. The release platform's altitude. (Which becomes the weapon's initial altitude.) 3. The release platform's speed. (Which becomes the weapon's initial speed.) 4. The release platform's dive/climb angle. (Which becomes the weapon's initial dive/climb angle.) In those conditions, you can precalculate offsets for windage.

Aha! You've missed a step. After selecting the target and verifying it on the ABRIS, hit the DL INGRESS button on the overhead datalink panel. As long as the DL INGRESS button light is active, the datalink point will be the targeting and navigational reference. Hit the DL INGRESS button again to turn off ingress mode.

It's impossible to offer a fixed correction factor—the deviation experienced by the bomb depends on the time it takes for the bomb to fall, which depends on the delivery parameters

Huh. That seems like it should be sufficient. You might try uncaging before enabling ground moving target mode (note: it doesn't have to be enabled for ground targets—IIRC, the only thing it does is adjust the Vikhr guidance to lead the target instead of fly directly at it) and auto turn to target, but I wouldn't expect that to change it. If it still doesn't work, feel free to post a track, and I can have a look at it.

Have you solved your slewing-to-datalink problem?

Sorry, nothing comes to mind. I have some Ka-50 time scheduled tonight, so maybe I'll give it a try and see if I can turn anything up.

1. Yes. (Or rather, reset weapons system is the only way to cage the Skhval.) 2. Yes. If it's flashing on the ABRIS, do reset weapons system (this does not, IIRC, reset the datalink target selection), then uncage the Shkval (O). This text (from part of my Ka-50 guide which I haven't released yet) describes the Shkval uncage behavior: