lmp

The radios are very similar to the ones used on the Mi-8. This is something we've seen in I believe all the Russian/Soviet aircraft in DCS. The OFF/ANT/COMP/LOOP switch selects the operating mode of the ARK-15 ADF. Comp stands for compass and is the normal operating mode. ANT and LOOP enable the sense or loop antenna only and are used for testing the set or tuning to a beacon frequency (you might get a clearer signal if only the sense antenna is receiving). Besides this switch, the ARK-15 panel contains frequency inputs for the two channels, a channel selector, a VOICE/CW switch (CW would enable the BFO, leave this in VOICE in DCS), a LOOP button for testing the loop antenna in the LOOP operating mode and a control button. This last one is new and I believe it allows for switching who has control of the ADF set (the pilot-commander or pilot-operator) - but I haven't tested it. The ARK-15 drives the "1" needle on the HSI. To listen to the ARK-15, move the rotary selector on the intercom panel (below the ARK-15 panel) to the ARK-15M position. In addition to that, we also have the very same R-863 radio that we had on the Mi-8, though there is no manual frequency input - only preprogrammed channels available. This is your main radio for talking with your wingmen and ATC. Controls for it are between the ARK-15 and landing gear panels. Big red knob for picking channels, AM/FM switch, and three switches above the channel selector for enabling squelch, enabling guard frequency monitoring (if this set has this feature, the one in the Mi-8 didn't) and I forgot what the third one is. Probably a switch to listen to the ADF simultaneously - didn't work in the Mi-8, probably won't in the Hind. There's the R-828 set, which we already had in the previous two Russian/Soviet helicopters. Panel for it is all the way back on the left side. It's used for talking to ground units primarily, FM only, VHF. You can look it up either in the Ka-50 or the Mi-8 manuals. The tooltips I believe use it's codename ("Eucalyptus") rather than the R-828 designation. There's the YaDRO set, panel to the left of the ARK-15 panel, controls identical to the ones in the Mi-8 - look it up in the manual. This is your long range, HF set. There is the ARK-U2 set, which is another radio direction finder that can be driven by either the R-828 set or the R-852 emergency radio. It's panel is below the R-828, it needs to be enabled and then the radio source needs to be chosen with the three position switch. I don't know if the middle position does anything. The R-852 radio is a VHF/AM set with four preset channels: 1 - 114.116 MHz 2 - 114.333 MHz 3 - 114.583 MHz 4 - 121.5 MHz The controls for it are way down, below the intercom panel. There's a channel selector and a volume knob. I encourage you to read not just Chuck's guides, but the Mi-8 manual. That's where I got most of the information above. The only thing I had to look up was the R-852 frequency list, because the Mi-8 has a slightly different set. Chuck's guides, as great as they are, only give you a very surface level knowledge of the module and if that's all you depend on, you'll never know your aircraft well.

I found it pretty accurate providing: a) you're over flat terrain, b) you're in range, the amber light is on, c) the rocket type is actually compatible with the gunsight's automatic mode - the S-13 and S-24 aren't. I also shot pretty much exclusively in unsynchronized mode, which works great in no wind against non moving targets. Synchronized mode is supposed to account for those factors but you then need to track the target for a bit before firing.

Currently when switching scales the whole changing out the card and realigning the cursor is done automatically. This makes the DISS map feel like a modern GPS rather than what it is. I don't think this is DCS level fidelity, we need something better :).

Did you hold down the cage buttons for a moment rather than just pressing them?

It's actually the same track we had in the Mi-8 since the beginning of time.

I haven't had this happen to me and I don't know the intricacies of the autopilot system yet, but here's an idea for the troubleshooters: Maybe the heading autopilot is messing up your trim? Do you have rudder trim enabled in the Special options? Can you trim it out? Does the problem persist if you fly without the heading autopilot channel? Are the pedals in the cockpit actually deflected all the way to the right as they should be?

Happened twice to me. The Mi-24 seems to pick up a lot of speed in an even shallow dive and doesn't tell you about it like the Mi-8 does.

I'd be in favour of having the option, but in its current state, I don't really care for it. As for the map, I hope it's implemented with realistic limitations such as having to realign the indicator manually after switching to a different map and not having an unlimited supply of maps covering the entire game world available to you at all times. And custom images, we need custom images, those will be amazing for campaigns.

The problem with an AI that is too autonomous in the tactics department and thinks on a too high level is that you sacrifice a lot of flexibility and control down low. It's nice to have to simulated command structure, but that command structure won't work for all military forces across all the periods we have in DCS. It's nice to have a "If a tree falls in a forest...." simulation outside of the player bubble, but what if you want that BTR to sit on that particular street corner for the player to destroy. It's nice to be able to plop a US battalion and a Soviet regiment on the map and have them duke it out, but sometimes you want your ground units to perform some very specific, repeatable actions to give the player a curated experience. In the end this is what DCS focuses on - the pilot's experience. Never mind the fact that whatever ED could come up with would be janky and flawed simply because of how complex this system would have to be. I think any kind of "command AI" along with "outside the bubble" simulation, unit spawning and despawning should be a new layer on top of the simple waypoints and routines that can be disabled. And the waypoints and routines should be expanded and streamlined to support both the high level command AI and better custom mission design. Dynamic and autonomous isn't always better than linear and curated - especially in a training scenario.

I don't think we can realistically expect the AI to be able to behave intelligently beyond some very basic things. Go prone, turn front of tank towards enemy - yes. Communicate your contact to the rest of the platoon and talk them onto it with a realistic delay and degree of accuracy - no. That's way too much work for not enough difference to anybody but maybe CA players. The Hind is a big, loud helicopter flying against a sky background. They'll all see us before we see them anyway. Same goes for fragmentation damage. Sure, it's nice to have, but will doing a bit more damage (and unreliably) to unarmored targets be such a game changer? I think not. IMHO the low hanging fruit would be to refine and clean up some of the tools we already have. I can "suppress" a unit or force it to "retreat" with the use of zones, triggers, go to waypoint and ROEs, but it's a huge pain in the rear. If we had branching, conditional waypoints, reliable ways to measure suppression, awareness of enemy, etc., we could easily create complex game plans for large numbers of units without being script wizards. We could easily make the AI units feel a lot less dumb and a lot more human. I would argue the same is true for your changes. There's no way to go from the current health bar damage model to anything even close to realistic in "maybe one day of work". Same goes for spotting. Sure, you can make the AI ignore what's not within the few degrees of FOV of the periscope, but then you need the units to realistically scan their surroundings and coordinate that scanning at least within a platoon... see how quickly that grew? All that is at least weeks of coding and weeks of research, data entry and testing for each of the great many units in the game.

It's a running joke I suppose. Initially the fan didn't work in the Mi-8 early access and a lot of people were waiting eagerly for it to be included in one of the updates. It is a focal point of Soviet helicopter cockpits, you instantly want to see if it works.

Thanks for clarifying!

In case I wasn't clear, that's also what I want. The AI crew should be able to perform any role in the helicopter (or none at all, if the player chooses so) and that of course includes the gunner's role of shooting and guiding the ATGMs.

AFAIK employing ATGMs in the Hind is very much a two person job. The pilots needs to keep the target within a rather tight angle off boresight throughout the flight of the missile. We seem to have a few people here quite knowledgeable about the Hind, feel free to correct me if I'm getting something wrong. Thus I don't think the AI gunner will just "fire at will" - rather that he will wait for a confirmation from the commander that the target is correct and that the commander is ready. I do think that there should be an option to disable the AI crew, but I also do believe that it should be able to work each of the roles to enable us to experience the Hind in SP to the fullest extent possible.

I would say the entire Fast Mission Generator should be greatly expanded. Who knows, maybe with the dynamic campaign engine they'll redo this feature as well, I can see how there's a lot of shared functionality.

If you can be precise enough with the throttle and stick to refuel, you'll be golden. I found that being able to fly warbirds well, particularly the trickier ones like the Spit and 109, is another good indication that you'll be able to fly DCS helicopters with what you have just fine.

How are the pots holding up on all axes? No spiking? If they're good, you should be fine. I flew my first couple dozen hours in the Huey using that stick. Then I ditched it because of pot spiking and got the t.16000m, which has a similar build quality save for using hall sensors instead of pots, and flew a few hundred hours in the Mi-8 and didn't feel like the stick was limiting me much. Do you have a separate throttle? That could possibly be the weakest part of the Logitech and I would be hesitant to recommend the Mi-8 if you're gonna use the one on the stick, but the Mi-24 will perhaps depend less on precise collective control because of the type of flying you will be doing.

I think the problem is less with fragmentation damage simulation and more with the rudimentary ground unit AI. The AI doesn't panic under fire but also doesn't disperse, take cover, fight back effectively. This decreases the effectiveness of area effect weaponry and at the same time increases the effectiveness of PGMs. You can't force an enemy to retreat with rocket attacks, which is bad, but you can park your Kamov a few kms behind the front line and plink away a whole company of tanks with Vikhrs, which is even worse. Sure, a better damage model would perhaps allow for a few mission or mobility kills here and there, but the real strength of tactical aviation is not it's amazing killing potential (particularly against armour the effectiveness of air attacks has been routinely and greatly overestimated) but rather the tactical and psychological effect it has on the troops.

@AvroLanc You focus a lot on the roles the Mi-24 was designed to fulfill, but that's not what it ended up doing and what it became famous for. There was no World War 3 in Europe, but there were numerous local conflicts and counter insurgency operations where the Mi-24 was utilised extensively, often in quite creative ways. We can draw inspiration from these conflicts, especially since our Caucasus and Syria maps recreate the areas where some of them took place. Escorting convoys or Mi-8 flights, free hunts (also at night, using illumination flares), attacks against predetermined targets, supporting ground troops in battles, CSAR... There's variety to be had. Not that Cold War gone hot scenarios wouldn't be fun, but they're not the only good fit for the Hind.

I am aware that each crew member can select which radio to listen to and transmit on in the real machine on his very own panel and that's great, but that's not the point. The Mi-8 has multiple radios because each set provides a different (non overlapping!) frequency range and different capabilities. Not for redundancy or to give each of the pilot's "their" radio set. No it isn't. There's a multitude of reasons why the crew might swap (before or mid flight) the roles of pilot flying and pilot monitoring. They don't have to be crazy edge cases such as the ones you listed above, it may be a simple case of somebody having more experience in certain conditions or being more familiar with a certain airfield or landing area. This is not my idea, this is done all the time and everywhere. And even in extreme cases which would lead the crew to abandon their mission, flying, navigating and communicating are the three key functions needed to get you home and on the ground - and where you want as much redundancy as you can get. You also can't have both pilots flying at the same time yet there are two sets of flight controls. They're there to give both pilots the ability to fly the aircraft and in the same vein they ideally should have the ability to perform other crucial functions such as communicating and navigating. The radio and navigation controls in the Huey are all in one area (cleaner and easier to memorize) and accessible to both pilots (more flexible). In our Mi-8MTV2 Hip yes. In this newer Mi-8MTV5 not so much: https://www.airliners.net/photo/Kazan-Helicopter-Plant/Mil-Mi-17V-5-Mi-8MTV-5/1320605/L Notice how each pilot has his own FMS console? As soon as glass cockpit technology freed up some panel real-estate the designers chose to do exactly what you said "you don't do" - duplicate controls. And you know what? Same is true for the AH-64A and AH-64D. In the latter, a lot more can be accomplished from either cockpit. This high specialization in the earlier versions is a design compromise made because you can only fit so many physical controls within sight and reach of a single person. As soon as glass cockpits alleviated the problem, designers started moving away from this solution. On both sides of the curtain, so to speak. This is true, but this is enforced by procedures and crew resources management not by inflexible cockpit design. It can also compensate for cockpit shortcomings.

Now I believe you're talking about the intercom and I really have no gripe with how it is designed (unless I'm greatly misunderstanding something about the Mi-8 and the real aircraft has two R-863 sets?). What I don't like is the odd splitting of the R-863 controls into two panels. Would it have hurt if all the controls were on the central pedestal, within reach of all three crew members? What if the situation is not normal? This is a rigid distribution of tasks, not a dynamic one. If for whatever reason the pilot-navigator is flying (instrument failure on the commander's side, hand injury...), he will still have to operate the R-828 and Yadro sets and all the navigation equipment alone because nobody else can reach it. In the Huey all radionav controls are on the central pedestal, each of the two pilots can perform pretty much all the radionav related tasks depending on who's pilot flying and who's pilot monitoring. The Huey crew has this flexibility, the Mi-8 crew does not. How's the Huey worse than the Mi-8?

It is messy, at least parts of it are. The radio controls are everywhere, you have some on just about every panel in the cockpit. The R-863 alone has some controls on the commander's overhead, some on the navigator's pedestal. This doesn't make the workload sharing dynamic, in fact it makes it more rigid. Operating a lot of the avionics can only be done from one of the seats. We can argue all we want how the Mi-8 is more complex but the bottom line is, the UH-1H - also a helicopter designed to be operated by a crew rather than a single pilot - has a much more logically organized cockpit.

A very nice summary of the ASP-17V capabilities, thanks

You didn't say it had a rangefinder. I wasn't trying to contradict you, but to expand on what you said. Employing unguided weapons will be easier in the Hind than it is in the Hip but the ability to estimate range which is pretty mandatory in the Hip to be effective will still be needed in the Hind in certain environments. I think this is a relevant bit of information to anyone deciding which of the existing helos to choose to prepare for the Hind release.