Quadg

the huey uses the backup generator as a starter motor and electricity to spin up the turbines and compressors to a speed where fuel can be added and burned to make it self sustaining. you can get two or three attempts to start, out of the battery. at normal temps. as a fan of ice road truckers i know they don't stop their engines in the cold because they don't want to have any problems restarting. wasting gas is not an issue. wasting gas is not an issue for the US military either.

Human life requires quite narrow temps for life to exist (37.5c) increase that by 5 degrees and you are dead. why would you assume the chemistry in batteries is any different? 12 degrees below zero is far greater than the 5 degrees needed to kill a human through fever. chemistry is a bitch. there is a very good reason why the mi-8 has battery heaters, and i can even tell you where the switches are, even though they are not modelled.

the ka-50 was an experiment in having a single pilot in an attack helicopter. every other one has pilot and gunner. As the Russian military has bought far more attack helicopters with 2 crew. you can assume the experiment failed. even the ka-52 (2 man) sees more service in Russian service than the ka-50. you don't go one pilot. you go no pilots (if drones have taught us anything) the mi-24 is an older gunship that used speed instead of stealth as its defence. just like the original huey gunship and huey cobra. with advances in SAM technology, speed is no longer considered a defence. you need to get low and hover behind stuff. which is where the apache and mi-28 come into the picture.

I had a similar experience to you. could not, for the life of me, figure out why she would not start. then noticed the temperature may be effecting the chemistry in my chemical batteries. with ground power she started up fine. as it was years ago im not sure on the exact temp. but it was repeatable.

its been like this for years. so its not something new. you need ground power to start the huey in the cold.

once you get used to flying the huey and getting her in trim the pendular action becomes a lot less to non existent . I think its exaggerated in the sim to give the pilot feedback that they are not getting from "feels"/"seat of the pants" its as much about getting your feet in trim as well as the cyclic. ie the whole airframe. balancing the two. after 1000s of hours I fly her smooth. and I'm not constantly stirring the soup with the cyclic. i fly with no curves or saturation, on a short joystick, with no spring and a good set of pedals. think of the wobble as trim feedback. and its either cyclic or pedals that are slightly out.

embrace the differences. the things they do differently may actually be done better. and it improves your understanding of the western helicopters. take torque, the west uses torque. the east uses engine pressure ratio. engine pressure ratio automatically adjusts for outside air temp and pressure. torque does not. you dont need a chart for maximum allowed torque at different altitudes. (like the one stuck to the gazelles dashboard) the EPR gauge does it for you.

the best analogy is cruise control in your car. when you have set cruise control and no longer need to mess with the throttle. the car will automatically add and remove throttle to maintain your speed even if you go up and down hills. in helicopters its maintaining rotor RPM. whether you add or remove drag, by changing the pitch of the rotors, using the collective. we would call this governed. by a engine governor. the first governors were invented for steam engines. the big industrial ones that provided power in mills or pumped water. that needed to run for days at a single RPM. the manual throttle is a backup in case the governor fails. they are cool looking spinning things with weights than manually open and close the throttle based on how fast they spin. naturally helicopters are a lot easier to fly with engine governors. but they do teach pilots to fly without them, just in case the governor fails. why they have a twist grip on the collective. but not all helicopters have a twist grip. the gazelle does not. the throttle is a leaver on the ceiling. if the governor fails, you set the throttle to zero and autorotate. the huey calls it a governor and even has a switch so you can turn it off and fly old school. In the mi-8 you have two engines but only one twist grip. so too call it a throttle would be wrong (the engines require different throttle settings to be in balance and have another level of governance to handle this). so they call it a corrector for maintaining correct RPM. and you only need to correct the RPM if the system for balancing the two engines output goes wrong. modern engines have a FADEC (Full Authority Digital Engine Control) instead of a manual throttle and spinning thing with weights. but it all does the same thing. acts as throttle and governor. depending on what you want.

@Mokisame here. I also have it next to my left hip and have the axis reversed so I pull for max throttle and collective up. and push to bottom the throttle and down the collective. having the throttle always at full back helps act as a guide for your hand. you know how much collective you are pulling by how close your hand is to the throttle. saves you having to check the EGT gauge as often as you can get a feel for it instead. (collective position in relation to throttle). having a short throw can make it a bit twitchy in the Hip and gazelle but for the huey I find it works well. the stick on the other hand has a way too strong return/centre spring. to fly the huey neatly. as the huey has no flight assist you need to "stir the soup" with constant little stick inputs. i removed the big centre spring (there are youtube video showing how). others get extensions to make the stick longer. (more leverage ) you can fly it with the spring in but it wont be as neat and you will have a sore hand after a long cruise.

this happened with multicrew. a little rock and roll during start-up.

do a hover check and note your torque. to climb add 20% to this torque and maintain a speed of 60knots for best climb. you don't need anymore collective from the hover torque to cruise. once you have translational lift. (you actually need slightly less) do not exceed the red line on the torque gauge. in real life hydraulic fluid gets sprayed out of the rotor hub and everybody can see that you exceeded it. its the same as shitting your pants. hard to hide and embarrassing. in the game the rotor will come off . use the torque gauge to tell you how much collective to use. the RPM gauge will tell you if you are moving the collective too quickly. any change in RPM and you are making to quick demands for changes in power. so move the collective slower. so the engine governor can keep up. also keep an eye on the EGT, balance torque with the engine exhaust gas temp. to keep everything sweet. most people fly around in DCS using as much torque as EGT will allow. (up too the red line on the torque) rather than sticking to set speeds and preserving engines/ gearboxes by using just enough torque. like you would in real life.

on steam the pre order is available and it says the module is released on 31st of may.

thinking in the cold war was very different. survivability of attack helicopters was seen as low. export customers put better RWR on their helicopters to increase this. marginally. soviet thinking was that a RWR would be used as an excuse to not enter the forward edge of the battle area. why RWR is lacking in soviet era aircraft. yes a RWR is an advantage. the SPO-10. but one that gives too much information is actually seen as a disadvantage. achieve the operational objective. or die trying. don't come back and say it was too hot. quantity over quality. which did beat the Germans. they want operational tempo. successive blows without delay. rather than superior firepower or tactical superiority.. stagger and wear the opponent out. if it has low survivability, increase the production rate. use the command economy we didn't have in the west (the uk had problems with workers striking during the war..) the Germans lost because they could only manage one operation per summer. a low operational tempo. the Russians won because they eventually started carrying out operations all year. and all the Germans could do is react. they lost the initiative. the Russians call it the operational art of war. everybody starts the next war in the same way they won the last one.

When I was a lad in the 80's the army air corp reckoned that attack helicopter pilots would have a life expectancy of 40 minutes. If the cold war ever went hot in Germany. that includes apache and hind. That's because of all the manpads, radar controlled SPAAG and SAM systems. and yet they kept on making lynx helicopters. (armed with TOW) with the increase in smart weapons I bet the number is lower now. for a near peer total war. this is the reason helicopters gave up speed for defence and switched to hiding as much as possible. to give them an extra 10 minutes

The soviets didn't want you to know what worked and what didn't work in Afghanistan because they were addicted to maskirovka. the confusion is all there on purpose. pathologically addicted to secrecy. to the point of paranoia. why nobody knows how much ammo a mi-24p officially carried. you need to actually look at an export version rather than trust "official" sources. (which is what ED has done) lots of wrong numbers float around in official soviet sources. on purpose. to the soviets it made sense.

thanks for that alpha. interesting. so you are getting two bonuses from the swap. the more efficient puller and the synergy between the blades rotation and the main rotor. I always wondered why the original mi-8 had a pusher. because they worked out pullers are more efficient a long time ago. hence why every war bird worth the name has a puller. even though it comes with the real downside of you having to shoot through the blades. looking at the mi-28 that seems to have a pusher too... if its clockwise rotating. I wonder why? i mean you usually have a reason for using the less efficient pusher config. like sea planes. they used pushers because it keeps the blades away from the sea and waves, on take-off and landing. they mounted the engine high and pointing backwards. but they didn't need the speed. it just seems like free efficiency wasted so there has to be a reason? less stress on the tail rotor head? pushing it into the tail boom rather than pulling away from it?

I thought the mi-8 was always a clockwise rotating main rotor. they just reversed the side of the tail rotor because it became a more efficient puller instead of a pusher type fan. why the tail rotor on the mi-17 and mi-24 is the opposite side. to the older mi-8's torque is the same direction. you just have more authority with the puller.

try it with a moving ship. if the ship is doing 20 knts you will never lose translational lift. the ship should be travelling into the wind.

they will probably do that when its finished. this is just the first iteration. instant action missions have been done according to the patch notes. 3rd party campaigns will need the 3rd party to fix. some have been done.

the huey battalions of the 1st air cav would often shutdown and wait in temporary LZ instead of returning to their bases. after dropping off the infantry. these temporary locations did not have force protection or refuelling services. because not flying home saved the fuel for the return. And gave a quicker response time when the infantry wanted picking up. they would reload the gunships from CH-47. the crews were expected to provide their own protection. and they could be there for hours. waiting on the infantry. mason describes this in chickenhawk. they didn't exactly like doing it but they were never attacked. this was in the hot highlands of Vietnam. 30 huey sitting in a random field. they avoided using the same locations twice. and they didn't do it everywhere in every mission. were the soviets less tactically flexible than the US? anecdotal evidence says they were not.

quick work around till its fixed is to drag your task bar so it vertical up the right side of the screen. the only thing you touch with the mouse on the right side of the cockpit is the door handle. you are much less likely to hit the taskbar. and lose focus.

this cockpit is a new cockpit built to the correct dimensions. with VR in mind. it was the old cockpit that was not. try 2 things. 1 IPD settings of the VR headset. if the dimensions around you feel off this is often an IPD issue in VR. you cannot adjust your inter pupillary distance in real life. so if it is off in VR it just makes the world look weird because dimensions are wrong. (no experience of it) set it to your actual IPD. or adjust it. till it looks right. 2 start position of the virtual head. the f-16 update, that introduced the f16, messed up the start position of my head in the huey. every time i start a mission my head is floating about 6 inches in front of the virtual body. I need to move the head position back to the right place to get the correct view of the cockpit. i lean forward 6 inches, press the view reset and sit back. head is in the correct position and everything looks right.

Having a pilot say it broken. and pilotmi8 saying its fine. means we have a stalemate. so don't ask pilots. what does the VRS charts for the airframe say? ask the engineers for the win.

There are two types of body on the Huey. Short body and long body (bell 204 and bell 205) In US service the short bodies were gunships and the long bodies were troop carriers. The H is a long body which was used as both a slick and a gunship by Australian forces in Vietnam, using American armament systems used on the short bodies. To have a slick and a gunship in US service you would need 2 different helicopters. Because the short bodies are short, you need to put the guns next to the rockets. They don't have the row of seats behind the cockpit. And have sliding doors with only a single window. as they are much smaller.

If you are used to western helicopters then you may be wondering why the mi-8 has no torque gauge. and what do you use instead? This would be the Engine Pressure ratio gauge. (EPR) Also translated as the engine power indicator in the ka-50 (same gauge) Its a bit smarter than just a torque gauge as it uses outside temperature and outside pressure to tell you how much strain the engines are under based on local conditions (how much air each engine is compressing for combustion). it shows you power limits for cruise, max cruise and takeoff power. So balance the EPR with the PTIT (Power Turbine Inlet Temperature), like you would balance the torque against the EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature), in western helicopters. The EPR also shows you how much power each engine is providing. The two engines provide power through a power coupler. and for best practise its best if each engine provides equal power. As the system takes a while to balance using the throttle governors on each engine. you need to make slow changes in demands for power, which means move the collective slowly. Slower than you would in a single engine helicopter If you make quick demands. The system will provide the power by using one engine. So you can end up with one engine not doing much while the other is at takeoff power. The EPR will show you when you are in this state. And the situation is best to be avoided. Try to avoid completely unloading the main rotor disk with zero collective. Learn to brake using some load. Because then the governors do not throttle back the engines, Which can take some time to recover from when you need power again. ie. Slowing to land. Overpitching and rotor droop. Settling under power, with the warning "generator failure" ringing in your ears. In proper VRS the engines actually speed up slightly. as the vertical rings provide less purchase for the rotors. hence less drag. Begin braking long before you need to come to a stop. And slowly increase collective as you slow. To maintain engine balance. And to prevent over pitching and settling under power. If you maintain a low descent rate with good collective control then you will never enter VRS.