willatc

Thanks Squirrel. Yeah I agree that ASI should be monitored carefully but I just find that I hardly look at it when on a short final. After I learned how to land the Mi-8, most of my LZ's were in small clearings or in a car park/built up areas (due to the SAR type multiplayer missions I've been playing) so I found myself concentrating like mad on the tight surroundings (buildings etc) and the VSI. Whats on the attached track by the way?

I know this post is a few months old now but make sure you have a good look in the mission editor before entering the mission. You'll see all the way points there. I might be wrong but you can't see this by looking at F10 during the game. I just used my iphone to photograph the mission editor screen. I followed the geographical path and the triggers popped up and it was all good. Mission Success!

I'm not an expert but in my opinion the most important thing to keep an eye on is the VSI. As everybody is saying dont drop below 3m/s on the VSI when descending. To be honest I dont really look at the speed (unless during the en-route phase in order to avoid overspeeding-keep it below 23ish on the ASI) as landing is a visual manoevre and you can easily tell if you are approaching to fast by looking out of the window (i'll probably get a slap for saying that). So when you are making your approach to land its important to stay one step ahead of the helicopter. Try to constantly anticipate what its going to do then add tiny corrections to prevent it from doing so. That way, I can keep the VSI exactly how I want. If I drop or raise the nose slightly in the manoeuvre I will increase/decrease collective in anticipation so the heli doesn't have the chance to go out of control. Before you know it, you will be adding lots of tiny corrections without even thinking about it. I went from a success rate of 1 landing out of 50 attempts to pretty much 100% success rate and it took me 10 minutes. Seriously. All I did was watch the VSI like a hawk. Thats literally all I did. Just dont let the VSI fluctuate violently (although sometimes this is normal if you are manoevring or doing other stuff at higher speeds etc) Also, you must be patient. Shes a heavy old bird but if you respect her and do not rush things, she'll produce the goods. Take your time when landing. Dont just slam it down when you are 50 feet above the landing zone, use that last few feet to fine tune your input even more and you'll be landing it on eggshells no problem. Small clearings in the forest will start to become relatively easy to land in and you'll soon be looking for harder challenges. Vertical landings are no different. Once you are pretty much established in the hover slowly descend directly over the landing area. Just keep the collective input to an absolute minimum. Maybe descend closer to 2m/s on the VSI and just take your time. Don't forget to anticipate what you think the heli is going to do so you can calmly add the relevant input on the collective. Since being able to land this thing, I now like it 1000 times more than I used to!