sc_neo

Got a new lightning fast inet connection for a couple of weeks now.Once 2.5 drops on whatever brnach and is stable enough, i will delete all the old versions and do a one time clean install. Thats vodoo, I know, but why the hell not. EDs file validator and repair tools work fine enough I reckon, so updating should provide the same result!

It has so called dry clutches installed. You open up the base (can't quickly adjust it on the fly apparently), and then you cann tighten them up or beyond the point where they overcome the springs tension and your stick stays in whatever position you put it in. First, you cannot easily switch between helo and jet flith. You have to open up the base unit each time you want to change the level of friction. Second, and i don't own a gunfighter so i hae no real hands on experience, if you set it up for helicopter flight and tighten it up so it stays in place, i reckon it is kind of hard to move. A force trim system allows free movement around what ever centre position you set via the brake system.

Can you link that post about microhelis.de working a such a thing?

Hey guys, the one thing i personally miss with the VKB gunfighter base, is a 'force trim' mechanic for proper helicopter flight. I, for one, would like to have one joystick with extension i can use for both jets and helos. A gunfighter pro with MCG pro grip and a real force trim mechanic would be a dream. Apparently there is no helicopter specific flight gear (cyclic) we can buy, that has a real force trim system build in. There's a thread over at the official VKB forums, where we can discuss whether this is something VKB might think about sinking there theeth in. There are a couple of threads here and elsewhere of people showing there various diy solutions. Maybe we can pool and share all the knowledge of homebuilds and best practice so we might eventually have an out-of-the-box purchaseable solution. http://forum.vkb-sim.pro/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2801&sid=cd878300c1e869b6792b5586203bfa7c

Will this be lost with each DCS World update and thus needs to be copied again and again? Can i present the file with Ovgme to the game?

''However in the scenario of using more power to lift off it would take more correction to counter the forces on the aircraft.'' and if the FM enhancements to come go as far as implementing this as well i shall be a very satisfied customer!

Concerning CoG as Fragbum mentioned. When we were talking about this last month (https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=186653&page=17), Jester986 explained that helicopters tend to roll in one direction (US or european style) mainly for two reasons (i hope i recall his explanation correctly). 1.) For catching a wheel or skid on the ground because of translating tendency when the tail rotor is pushing the helo to the left or right. 2.) Or for CoG being above or probably mostly below the rotational axis of the tail rotor. How strongly the helicopter rolls on pickup should thus change with different loadouts and fuel and its influence on CoG. One aspect i myself am not completely sure about but might be important in addition to CoG, is the question of how violently you lift off (gently with barely enough collective or max collective). Hence, if you really quickly put in max collective and rip that helicopter off the ground, you needed to put in way more left or right pedal to counter that strong torque. This means stronger pitched tail rotor blades, more translating tendency, and thus a stronger roll around the CoG. Is that what should go on in real life? If this is correct, you needed to deflect the cyclic even further when takin of fast/violently in addition to what is needed because of CoG alone. @borchi_2b thanks for letting us know that you are aware and talking about this specific issue. Except for that missing rolling thing on lift off i am very happy with the Gazelle and i appreciate your continued effort to get this bird closer to the real thing with each patch.

haha nice catch, i tested that just now and its true...although my cyclic is completely deflected to the right or left and locked with the magnetic brake, it lifts off just fine, perfectly centred. If i deflect it directly by hand without locking the magnetic brake, it rolls over as expected. Anyway, i still struggle with the notion of that perfect hands-off roll stability when lifting off. Its just that i don't know whether the real thing is for whatever reason really perfectly stable in the roll axis because some SAS or whatnot, or whether this is a part of the flight model thats not in its final state. We were talking about this a month back quite extensively, the latest modifications to the FM seem not to have changed the roll behaviour. The devs are probably still waiting for input from the french guys....

I will probably take mine apart around Christmas and sand and regrease properly. I wonder, maybe one could actually give it a harder, smoother surface by applying a coat of epoxy resin on all touching surfaces. Provided it would not squeeze and adhere properly on a roughened plastic surface, the new epoxy coating would make a very smooth and pretty strong hopefully scratch resistant surface. Not completely sure whether epoxy might corrode the Warthogs plastic and whether all that work pays off in the end. @Sporg ...congratz to your next message!

Also ich hab nen niegel-nagel neuen Warthog und auch von Anfang an etwas stiction. Hab das aber vor dem Kauf gewußt, und wenn man sich den Preis des Virpil Produkts bei amazon.co.uk sammt Verlängerung und Versand anschaut (knapp unter 500€ glaub ich), dann is das eben doch ne ganz andere Liga. Das eigentlich verwunderliche am Warthog ist doch: niemand schreibt was von stiction beim T-16000m. Ich habe diesen selber seit 2 Jahren und der Gimbal (auch son rundes Ding) läuft absolut Sahne. Ja, der hat nicht das Gewicht und somit nicht sone feste Feder, aber warum ist das premium Produkt in Bezug auf diesen Punkt schlechter als das 40€ Teil? Und Metallgimbal hin oder her: wenn viele ihr stiction Problem mit Nachschleifen und Silikonfett wegbekommen, warum ist diese Firma einfach zu faul, diesen kleinen Schritt in der Produktion anzupassen, das man als Kunde auf die Bastelei verzichten kann? Plastik heißt doch selten schlechter als anderen Materialien. Und grad wenn man sich das bemühen und korrespondieren mit dem Kunden bei Virpil und VKB anschaut, da könnte sich TM ne Scheibe abschneiden. Bei Virpil gabs an einigen Stellen unsauber verarbeitete cams aus Metall (beim ersten Produkt ist sowas wohl kaum durchgängig zu vermeiden), aber sie reagieren drauf und änderns und der Kunde bekommt das kostenlos getauscht. Also ists nicht so sehr Metall vs Plastik, sondern das Bemühen ein durchgängig zufriedenstellendes Produkt im Rahmen dessen was finanziell möglich ist zu machen.

thx for the input guys. Good to know it wasn't me doing anything wrong, cheers.

Short question since we are talking ground attack here. Two things i am not sure about. How do i konw which bom i have selected? On the HUD i just see b for bomb, and the weapons indicator to the left of the HUD says bomb or rocket, but nothing specific. Do i really have to either remember from the briefing or take a quick F2 look to know which bomb is attacked to which station? Second, does the salvo mode button do anything? I am surely unable to release one bomb at a time, its always at least the entire weapons station or with dispeners at least, all of the same kind.

wow...gotta get fresh pair of pants...

Thx for the clearing that up Sokol1. Force trim really seems to require a diy home solution. By the way, does a helicopter like force trim system usually completely lock the helicopter cyclic in one place, or does it just move and lock the centre and you still retain full motion around that new centre? I am just trying to gauge how useful the dry clutches in the Gunfighter really are when it comes to helo flying. Just an idea that popped into mind; looking at the picure below got me thiniking. Those dry clutches seem to have a screw going through one side that losens or tightens the clutch. Disregarding for one moment the place constraints inside the housing, if one isntalled a pin-based electronic locking mechanism that opens and locks the dry clutch on a button press, that could be a helicopter like force trim system, i reckon. Can one operate the gimbal base unit without he bottom plate installed to gain some space and access from below?

Hey guys, i am not completely sure about the dry clutches. These are not to be confused with a force trim system, were i have to press a button so the stick stays in a specific position, right? The friction of the dry clutch is adjustable through a srew, if i read correctly, but can i do this on the fly in mere seconds without opening the base or unscrewing it from a floor position?

Really looking great them new screen shots! Looking at all this water makes me think: will there be a real stormy wave system coming some time in the future (or has anything been mentioned), with rolling 10m waves and such? Imagine doing emergency rescue operations with the MI-8 and Huey at night over a really rough sea! Secondly, rain drops etc. on canopy?

Jester, your explanation with the rolling movement when the tail rotor is above the centre of gravity makes sense. So unless the Gazelle can automatically compensate for this via SAS or something whatever its takeoff weight is, we should see different degrees of roll to the left when we take off with different loadouts right? So a fully loaded Gazelle (four HOTs, Sandfilter, full fuel i.e. overloaded...) should have a greater left tilt than a 30% fuel, no weapons Gazelle i reckon?

This thread is very informative...i learned quite a bit since yesterday. I retested for translating tendency in the Gazelle and i see it in both 1.5 and 2.0. If i compensate for torque and forward pitch without any roll input, i find the Gazelle to be drifting to the left, but completely level, no tilt in the roll axis at all. I cannot produce a rollover in either Dcs version when lifting off. The Gazelle is very skiddy on tarmac or sand in both versions. Maybe that thing is just so light that or something that it lifts off before translating tendency can push it to a degree which would make it roll even slightly. And i must say; i always wondered why helos move to one side, but i could not come up with a likely explation. I did not see anything about the main rotor which would explain it. I just thought the tail rotor thrust was completely ''used up'' to counter torque. When i look at pertinent documentaion its clearly explained...huh. Still, i struggle with the idea of a one sided rolling tendency or tendency to tilt in one direction in the roll axis. If a helo has static or dynamic instability in the roll axis, shouldn't it go in both directions? So i think we have established, that this in not happening in either game version in the Gazelle. The only time the Gazelle tends to rollover is after a hard lading and it either gets stuck with one skid (bug?) or something else in the rotor systems gets damaged. But on a clean start i cannot make it roll over. @Jester986 Its weird that we have different findings on translating tendency in 1.5 and rollover behaviour in 2.0. No idea whats going on there. Anyway, the Gazelle has an autohover feature which obvioulsy means it can compensation for roll by itself. Whether this explains that perfect roll axis control when lifting off i don't know. In autohover mode, its not as perfect and the Gazelle swings slowly from side to like a pendulum. So what force in a helicopter would explain that fairly strong tendency in the MI-8 to tilt over to the left, for instance? I do get that rolling over when lifting off can be due to the skid or wheel catching on the ground because of translating tendency. But why this tilt in the roll axis after lift off? If i look at the MI-8 i don't see anything that would explain a left sided centre of gravity. Is there some force (be it with us) i am oblivous to? Or might a helicopter be designed i a way to be slightly unstable in one direction, so that the pilot knows which direction tilt most of the time happens and thus can reliably counter instability in that one direction?

In the end it comes down to whether the french pilots or a real life civilian Gazelle pilot can confirm whether this aircraft (like all other helos apparently) has a tendency to roll over to one side (left i think with the Gazelle?) because of gyroscopic precession when lifting off to a hover. I have just tried it again in 1.5 and there is no roll instability at all. If you happen to get the perfect minute backwards cyclic pitch and right yaw you are golden. The MI-8 really needs a good deal of right and backwards cyclic ptich in addtition to right yaw. Quite frankly, i am fairly new to the MI-8 although i love the Gazelle, having to counter that instability on all three axis is way more fun. Actually, the point can be made that properly hovering the Gazelle is slightly more difficult. If you have a joystick with even a slight center detent/friction point (i hope you get what i mean) which you have to overcome each time when i need to make minute adjustments on pitch and roll, you are bound to oversteer and start a nice dance. If on the other hand, you are out of the joystick centre by default you don not have to fight that centre friction many joysticks have. So my test in the Gazelle showed no influence of the gyro or the three SAS flips (bottom right of pilots console) on the aforementioned lift off characteristic. Maybe the Gazelle has some additional stabilization system built in which counters the roll tendency all by itself. Only real life Gazelle pilots can enlighten us on this one. But if this is a liberty taken by the devs to make our life a bit easier, i would humbly ask to rather go the Belsimtek way and let us counter all forces by hand. Cutting out (if that was in fact so, again we don't know at this point) a complete axis of control to make it easier for us is called arcady, i reckon. With that said, after you have put all real life ingredients in, you can of course implement it in a way that accounts for having not the same sensory inputs as if sitting in the real thing. Anyway, interested which style of implementation you guys prefer.

I'd be especially interested concerning the first test made concerning ''positive and negative dynamic and static stabilities'' when lifting off and hovering, specifically what the french pilots say about it. And its true, there is a small amount of positiv cyclic pitch needed to go to a straight hover, but no countering roll cyclic input. I don't know, up to now i maybe put it down to the SAS helping me out on this. @Jester986 Could you explain a bit more in detail what you meant by ...''So ask yourself do you prefer a more realistic hover when you are trying to be in control, or when you let go of the controls?''? Why would this (necessarily) mutually be exclusive? Ideally, we needed to counter as realistically as possible all static and dynamic forces induced by the two rotors and still be (able with sufficient practice and gear) to achieve a realistically stable hover. The PC simulation should help us out only in sofar as we do not sit in the real thing with all the sensory inputs that this provides that we must forgo when sitting infront of a monitor and in a non moving chair.

I wonder how a spring and cam based gimbal like the ones from vkb and virpil compare to this. Both designs come without hydraulic dampers, I ask myself whether this mod achieves an even smoother and more precise movement.

Has there anything mentioned whether the devs entertain the idea of adding sling loading to the Gazelle via another info channel i might have missed? Sure would be the sweetest thing, even if it can carry only very light stuff. Notheless, it would open so many gameplay routes.

Thx for the info. Looking forward to what your conversation with the french pilots resulted in. I'd appreciate if you guys could let us know (later down the line) what these pilots actually said about the current FM and what you think you can alter to make it as close as possible to the real thing.

I have noticed this on the TBS website as well today...some time down the road....:)

totally forgot about this thread, thx for the info. Especially the last graphic @Ramsay. Is that specific for the Gazelles turbine? Very informative. I don't quite grasp why there is this sudden spike in airspeed in the exhaust gas section after it has long past the turbine. Especially with no AB and only military power, why do we see a jump from 600 to almost 2000f/sec? Is that small narrowing we see at the end doing this?