bradmick

I personally use man stab all the time in reality. It’s super useful, especially when I configure my crewstation for comfort and drop my seat.

We don't use it in the real aircraft because it will perform its intended function during a critical phase of flight when you've forgotten you turned it on. This will lead to the pilot believing there's been a malfunction when there wasn't one and react accordingly (read poorly). It's super easy to just manually drive the nose down when you need the increased visibility over the nose and then reset the stab by just z-axis'ing (pushing) the stabilator button and returning it to auto. We actually actively discourge the use of the NOE/A mode because it's to easy (and better) to achieve the same effect manually.

Attitude hold has no influence on heading. Heading hold does though, and heading hold is always on once you’re off the “weight on wheels” (squat) switch. Also, the main rotor torque is massively exaggerated in the dcs Apache, this is why it requires so much more pedal than seems reasonable and the heading hold struggles so much.

You also have the flight path vector which tells you this information too…so I fail to see what the issue is. The FPV is available in the transition symbology when The 3D velocity of the helicopter is >5kts

There is, it’s called the velocity vector. It represents 6 knots of ground speed in hover mode symbology and 60 knots of ground speed in transition mode symbology. It’s a literal top down, gods eye view of the helicopters magnitude and direction of travel. The center of the line of sight reticle represents the mast, and serves as the origin of the velocity vector. Its sole purpose in life is to tell the pilot in what direction and how fast they’re moving.

1000fpm is definitely better since the expected range for VRS in the Apache is roughly between 760 to 4100fpm. Airspeed gets a vote in that range. At the end of the day, it’s super hard to get into VRS. The dcs VRS mechanic is…what it is. The problem is it’s super binary in dcs. The other fun thing is you have to force the helicopter to stay in the bad column of air, because the tail rotor will naturally pull you in the direction of tail rotor thrust as the main rotor stalls…because the tail rotor is actually becoming more efficient. It’s why the Vuichard technique makes sense, the aircraft is already naturally going to want to go in the tail rotor thrust direction.

I’ve flown factory fresh Apaches, and they aren’t this clean.

WIP. The real bird is as stable as the DCS Kiowa and Shark.

You have that, it's called holding the force trim intrupted, which is what you do during takeoff, landing, approaches to OGE hovers, basically anytime you make large changes to the aircraft attitude, airspeed or altitude.

I answer how I answer. And because they’re not powered by the battery bus. If the battery bus powered them, they’d turn on when the battery was turned on.

Because the battery *doesn’t feed the displays*…you ever do a cold start? When do the mpds turn on? That’s right, after the apu is turning the accessory section of the transmission…to which the generators are attached. So it’s a lack of knowledge and understanding of the systems that’s getting g the better of you. Also, the hydraulic pumps are attached to the accessory section too. If you don’t get the collective down and restore the rotor speed, the accessory section won’t spin fast enough to power these critical components.

I explained how you do it. And we overshoot all the time. It’s super easy to overshoot.

Nah, George needs to call you a dirty name for overloading the helicopter for the conditions and telling him to do the impossible.

The conditions are effecting the engine performance and rotor performance. Also the % in the top left of the HDU is the torque sensed at the engines. Not the collective, not the engine rpm, the main rotor torque as sensed by the engines.

You get good. That or you put in the smallest amount of pedal, interrupt the force trim, input the tiniest amount of pedal, force trim, etc until you align the i-beam. It takes a lot of practice.

Pedals are definitely the one peripheral I’ll always recommend for helicopter folk. Flying without pedals is a rough time. I’ll add too that the SAS has a limited authority before it saturates (runs out of authority to do work to stabilize the aircraft). Total authority is 10% months n all axes except for forward pitch, which has 20%. The 20% has been attributed to recoil damping during gun firing and compensating for transverse flow effect (difference in lift between fore/aft sections of the rotor disc). There was a third reason, but I can’t remember it at the moment. I’m. Partial to the transverse flow reason myself since it’s ever present during forward flight.

Nope. The force trim is held interrupted until the aircraft has been stabilized at the desired attitude and altitude, then released. Once released the hold modes come on. This ensures the system has the maximum authority to keep the helicopter at the desired attitude and altitude. This is the way.

The INUs provide ground speed data. The doppler does not.

I just did a series of power off autos, and other than the rotor not recovering to 101% (known issue with the fm that's been there since the begining), and the aircraft dropping airspeed because of the loss of Nr, she'll sit with the rotor at 93% or so and around 60 to 70 knots, the generators and hydraulics don't kick offline. Without seeing what you're doing, i'm inclined to lean towards user error. If you're going to insist on doing things like this, then step 1 is lower the collective, step 2 is bring the power levers to idle then off after getting stabilized in the auto. The rotor in the real helicopter will bleed rapidly if you keep the collective in while bringing the power levers back. This is the way helicopters work.

It’s not talked about because it doesn’t happen. VRS in DCS is as far from reality as you can get. The accidents don’t happen because VRS isn’t this omnipresent boogeyman that “just happens” because some magical parameters have been met.

I happen to know the real Apache pilot whose helmet was the reference. You’re wrong. The helmet is correct. You need to quit while you’re ahead. Imagine presuming you know more than two actual Apache pilots….

I don’t know of any, because if the engines quit, there’s no power to the hydraulic pumps. Attaching them to the transmission means that during an auto the pumps have power. The rotor back drives the transmission. This is also the case for the generators, which are also attached to the transmission.

Pull the LRFD trigger to the second detent.

Settling with power and vortex wing state are not the same. One is a power management problem (settling with power) the other is an aerodynamic problem (vortex ring state). Settling with power comes about when you’ve allowed a rate of descent to build that you don’t have power to stop. I.e. you’re descending at 800fpm but only have power to stop a 500fpm rate of descent without over torquing or exceeding engine limits and drooping the rotor. Vortex ring state requires all three of the commonly quoted items to exist at the same time to get into and is the result of the inboard portion of the rotor system developing a second set of vortices that stalls the rotor.

Typically when the public is in view, yeah, that's true. But your overall impression would be incorrect. We fly stabilized but fairly quick approaches, they keep you out of the dead man's curve, and provided you've done your pre-landing performance evaluation, you will have the power to arrest the descent. It's not uncommon to hold say, 40 knots and 500fpm for the approach and then do a decel, pull in the power required to arrest the descent and stop solidly IGE. When the publics around, we are extra well behaved, to many eyes and to high profile to be doing anything else.