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ryuzu

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Everything posted by ryuzu

  1. Ahh well there you go. At 20000ft, 420KIAS/550TAS is about M.88.... (standard atmos) r.
  2. Are you doing 420 IAS or 420 TAS? 420KIAS is about 550Kts TAS at 15000ft (assuming temp/pres are standard atmos). Only thing I can think of then is compressor stall at such high speeds... r.
  3. Sorry - in the game menu it's the Create Fast Mission option... r.
  4. Well, I'm far from an expert in anything Mission Related so see if someone else has better info. However, I think the Mission Generator isn't going to be able to produce a specific scenario like that - however, it does seem to include JTACs automatically but in this new version I'm still trying to figure out how to find the JTAC frequency and get in touch, so I generally just hunt for targets around the steerpoint. I'm entirely guessing now, but I think you can take the generated mission and edit it. Assuming that works I guess you can use the mission generator to get the unit mix on the map and customise from there. Good Luck! r.
  5. The Mission Generator can be set to produce however many units you like. I like to set one with just some medium enemy and friendly forces and do a CAS. It's quite replayable and performance is good this way. r.
  6. alt-C by default I think. Is that what you wanted? r.
  7. Looking at your images it seems the target is a little off to the right - at a guess I'd say it's a yaw trim problem - either your feet are applying a bit of pedal input or you've got it trimmed that way. I find I tend to get close with the auto-turn but then tweak with my feet to get fully lined up. Without proper force feedback/hydraulic pedals it's just something to put up with. I've never used it so I'm not sure what it shows, but there's a command that let's you see controller positions I think - perhaps check that to see if it shows yaw input (make sure you've reset the trim beforehand). r.
  8. There is a table that defines the differences between the types- I think it's in the FAA syllabus notes somewhere. It came down to the Flapping, Lead/Lag and Feathering (pitch changing) and whether each blade is hinged for those motions.... Fully Articulated - Each balde can Lead/Lag, Flap and Feather independent of the others. Semi-Rigid (Robinson/Bell Types) - Each blade can flap and feather about it's own hinges. Rigid - Each blade can Feather independently (Military types) The differences can come down to cost. Fully articulated use a hinge system and so are cheapest to produce since the blade material is "simple" as it doesn't have to absorb much of the aero forces - the hinge does the work. Whereas a Fully Rigid system - the blades have to absorb the forces of flapping and lead lag which therefore requires some very strong but flexible composite material (there's a vid around somewhere of a blade as it goes round - it's in slow-mo but the motion is scary/fascinating depending on your point of view!). The other trade off is performance. Fully articulated are generally considered less responsive than Semi Rigid which are in turn less responsive than fully rigid. Bear in mind with helicopters that "less responsive" to "more responsive" might only be half a second, but still.... Finally from the flight side, Fully rigid are often said to provide a "stiffer" ride to the cabin compared to a fully articulated system where the hinges are able to absorb more of the aero forces. Typically Semi-Rigids (a'la Robbies and some Bells) present a mast bumping problem - not ideal for military flying (or civilian for that matter). Fully articulated rotors can get ground resonance. Not sure about fully rigid in terms of their potential pitfalls although for the military storage is one since you can't take off a couple of blades to store the things on a ship for example - the whole head has to come off. Anyway, as you can see the whole problem is a big tradeoff of performance, cost, maintenance and ease of flying. The picture you showed looks like a Eurocopter Starflex system - that system is interesting in that it meets the definition of Fully Articulated (each blade can flap, feather and lead lag independently) but as you can see from the picture - there are no actual hinges. The starflex uses elastomeric bearings to allow blade movement in all axis and an elastomeric block for dampening, making it simple in maintenance and design, cheap to maintain (not a great deal to break on the rotor head) and offering performance closer to that of a rigid system. EDIT : Found the rotor blade vid I mentioned. Think it was a german helicopter manufacturer (which dates it!) - r.
  9. These days the blades are made such that they don't fail when you hit RBS conditions - bear in mind that when the blade stalls, it generates no more lift so in effect it's under less stress in that portion than normal operation. The "normal" pilot explanation also says that with RBS you don't get a roll to the retreating side necessarily - you'll in fact get a pitch up. The explanation is because of the (in FAA parlance) Gyroscopic precession which means that while the stall is on the retreating side, the max loss of lift point is 90 degrees later in the rotation plane. In effect the stall is felt on the disk as a loss of lift at the aft of the disk coupled with lift being produced at the front - a net pitch up of the disk. The generally accepted recovery procedure is to lower collective (reduce blade pitch from stall angle) and reduce forward cyclic (slowing the forward speed). Colloquially most people say that the helicopter will also roll but the reasons for that are unclear - could be something as simple as Center of Gravity position, the sudden loss of airspeed and associated reversal of inflow roll, or other things. There's an "instructor story" of a guy arriving in LA from San Francisco complaining that the aircraft (MD500 in the version I was told) had a fault since it kept porpoising all the way - which was subsequently found to be RBS because the guy was exceeding Vne. Sounds unlikely, but who knows! Either way, it is a recoverable event but as Alpha says above, the Vne can be lower for other reasons before RBS becomes a factor (type I fly for example, had a Vne reduction recently because the horizontal stabiliser can depart the aircraft given certain conditions at high speed). r.
  10. Well each helicopter will react differently to the onset of VRS so ideally an actual KA50 pilot would provide the input. However, for what it's worth, in my experience (with medium Western Twin Turbine helicopters) the initial indicator of possible VRS is the "rumble" felt while decelerating below Effective Translational Lift - it's felt through the seat of the pants as a rumble - not enough to upset the trajectory of the aircraft, but enough to feel through the seat. Once you start to get into VRS the loss of ETL rumble is joined by the vibrations associated with putting a lot of power into the transmission because you're trying to stop the developing descent rate. Once it has developed into VRS the controls feel sloppy (like a fixed wing at the incipient stall phase), the aircraft is still rumbling and pitching and yawing and you're going down. When you demonstrate/practice VRS, the entry to it is all fairly gentle, but a couple of times, I've had it be rather nasty with a lot of yaw and pitching - it can potentially be a rather violent thing once you get in. Often the yawing in a Western style helicopter is because the tail rotor becomes less effective due to being inside the Vortices from the main rotor - so that, coupled with a high main rotor torque demand can lead to quite violent yawing also - given the lack of tail rotor on the KA50 - it may well react differently at this point. To be fair, I think the way it is simulated atm in Blackshark is about right in terms of what you see out of the window - I don't really want to see it modelled significantly differently or make it harder/easier to get - it's about right I'd say (having never flown the KA50!). We are missing the seat of the pants feeling of it though but that's not the fault of the sim. As a side note, you get a similar but shorter lived rumble while accelerating through ETL also. r.
  11. As others here have said, you fly to avoid getting VRS and train for the recovery - consider it like stalling a fixed wing. However, it would be a misinterpretation to assume VRS only occurs in a hover - the only requirement is to have low air speed (usually trained as less than Effective Translational Lift - some use 17knots as the cutoff airspeed) but you may still have ground speed if you are downwind. The most likely time to get into VRS is when flying slowly downwind, perhaps setting up a hover, landing or attack run. The loss of ETL during the process will lead to an unexpected descent rate which, unchecked (perhaps because you're looking at a target) can develop into VRS as the airspeed decays. In the downwind scenario the pilot still thinks they have some airspeed since they still have ground speed. I've got it more often in the sim than in reality (in reality, like a fixed wing stall - I've only had it when I was looking to get it so far!) but in the sim wind awareness and kinesthetic senses (seat of your pants) are gone so you don't get that nagging feeling to look at the VSI... In reality, you feel a rumble as you pass through ETL when slowing down so that acts as a reminder to check your descent rate. r.
  12. Well the development history part of the manual talks about the KA-50Sh which is a night variant. Here is some info from http://www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng/ka-50.php: "Ka-50N (Nochnoy: Nocturnal): Also reported as Ka-50Sh. Night-capable attack version; essentially a single-seat Ka-52. Programme began 1993; originally based on TpSPO-V and Merkury LLLTV systems, which tested on Ka-50 development aircraft. Ka-50N first reported April 1997 as conversion of prototype 018 with Thomson-CSF Victor FLIR turret above the nose and Arbalet (crossbow) mast-mounted radar, plus second TV screen in cockpit; FLIR integrated with Uralskyi Optiko- Mekhanicheskyi Zavod (UOMZ) Samshit-50 (Laurel-50) electro-optic sighting system, incorporating French IR set. First flight variously reported as 4 March or 5 May 1997; programmed improvements included replacement of PA-4-3 paper moving map with digital equivalent; by August 1997, FLIR turret was repositioned below nose and Arbalet was removed; by mid-1998, had IT-23 CRT display replaced by TV-109, and HUD removed and replaced by Marconi helmet display. Proposed new cockpit shown in September 1998, having two Russkaya Avionika 203 x 152mm LCDs and central CRT for sensor imagery. Indigenous avionics intended for any local production orders; French systems as interim solution and standard for export. Republic of Korea Army evaluated both the Ka-50N and the baseline Ka-50. In 1999, pre-production aircraft 014 was exhibited with a UOMZ GOES sensor turret in place of Shkval." While it would be nice to have some night kit like this, I think the modelling required to produce this at the same level of fidelity as the rest of the simulation would be large - I imagine most would rather see the A10 or AH64 (personally I'd be happy with those getting delayed, well maybe not the 64, but the A10!). It also appears that while this version of the A/C has been demo'd it doesn't appear to have entered production.... No customers perhaps. r. ps. Samshit(!) is called Samsheet in the ED manual!
  13. 1. Nothing to add on what's been said! 2. There is at least one user made mission where you are tasked with destroying an insurgent camp by night. In that mission, a fixed wing drops flares to illuminate the area while you pick off targets. Quite a cool concept, particularly since the flares fade out and you have to wait for the next flare run. The printed manual also describes a technique for firing flare rockets to illuminate the area for yourself but I've not tried this out yet. 3. For tanks I use Vikhrs and keep the rockets and cannon for softer targets. Rockets aren't massively effective but lightly armoured stuff can be killed with the cannon. Can't think why you'd be inaccurate with it apart from obvious stuff like using the auto-tracking and laser ranging before firing. Closing the range will probably help though! r.
  14. If you don't want to wait for Amazon, I got mine from RC Simulations - £19.99 + delivery (or you can collect). r.
  15. I received mine today - 1 day after ordering. It came in a Jiffy bag and was also in a cellophane wrapper. It arrived in good condition, but if you're a collector concerned about packaging, then I imagine Amazon's boxes will offer best protection. Looks like a good book so far! r.
  16. If you're in the UK, RC Simulations (nr Bristol) have it for £19.99 + delivery at £3.50. They seem to have them in stock so I guess you could collect if you wanted. r.
  17. Well, yes, I think you are wrong. Not because you're incorrect about EGT, but because it is not a suitable instrument for a pilot to use for performance prediction. In a turbine helicopter EGT will show a range of 0 degrees C up to somewhere around 1000 degrees C. Going from ground to hover will require a temp. change of around 50 degrees C - the movement on the already small EGT guages is too small to be useful to the pilot and that is for a major change from ground to hover - cruise changes will be smaller still. Finally, the EGT indication will not advise you of over pitching or overloading the transmission system. To put it another way, if I see any significant movement on the turbine outlet temp gauge during any phase of flight, I'm expecting something bad to happen with that engine and thinking about a precautionary landing. In lieu of a TQ meter, Rotor pitch and the engine power indicators are the primary performance instruments. r.
  18. Well, the above approach (pull power to meet requirements) is fine until you get to somewhere moutainous - can you clear the mountain ahead? Only way to be sure is to see how much power is available to you. Conversely, you want to approach a target but you're upwind of it meaning you need to come to a hover (or at least slow flight) while going downwind and out of ground effect - will you be able to or are you going to risk of yaw control and/or vortex ring state? There are lots of very good reasons you try and know these things in the real world - in a sim, if you overstress the aircraft nothing happens. In the military if you overstress the aircraft, you probably get chewed out and possibly killed (in the Civilian world if you overstress the aircraft you possibly kill your pax and yourself and you potentially lose your job!). So it is important, but this is only a sim so pull away :) I guess the logical next question is how can you know how much power you have in hand and how much do you need in various scenarios? That will take more testing than I've done in the Sim to work out the BS performance - I imagine it's something KA50 pilots have various rules of thumb for. r.
  19. Well on the right hand wall console on the top there is an engine power indicator - it has marks for Takeoff, max continuous and cruise engine power settings. Rotor Pitch is more easily readable and the one I'd use - assuming the helicopter is functioning properly (i.e. the governors are working, the FCLs are set to auto etc) then a particular pitch setting is going to generate a fixed amount of lift in a given situation. So for a given mass and environment, the helicopter will hover with a given rotor pitch. Someone else mentioned EGT - that might work in pistons (although I doubt it with helicopters) since they're relatively low temperature but in a turbine helicopter with temperatures in the high hundreds of degrees, the change of temperature in the 10s for different power settings is too small to read on the gauge and too inaccurate for power setting purposes. r.
  20. Well, you're not in Kansas anymore.... I don't know about the accuracy of EDs flight model throughout the BS envelope, but I can tell you that helicopter aerodynamics are only similar to a fixed wing when the rotors aren't turning. Anyway on to the subject. 1) Regarding the yaw change during transition from hover to forward flight. There are lots of reasons for that to happen. The horizontal and vertical stabiliser will be designed to generate a stabilising pitching and yaw moment at some nominal cruise speed. As you start flying forward, the stabiliser starts to generate this moment and the yaw pedal requirement changes. In addition to that, translational lift and a couple of other effects of forward flight will adjust alter the efficiency of the rotor disks - since one disk is acting in the "shadow" of the other, this change is not the same for both. So, between those effects it seems reasonable that there will be a change in both the torque of the main rotors and the aerodynamic stabilisation of the aircraft and so a change of pedal (all controls in fact) will be required. Bear in mind the inherent instability of rotorcraft - when one control is changed all the others have to change as well. 2) Side slipping In a single rotor helicopter like say an Apache, the tail rotor and main rotor forces are coupled. The net effect of these two is that in a hover the helicopter will hover with one wheel or skid lower than the other - if you hover and use cyclic to keep the helicopter in a level roll attitude, you start to sideslip across the ground (I should point out here that in reality some helicopters build in an offset to the main rotor mast or control rigging to aid control - most don't). Now in a coaxial system like the KA 50 in principle there is no equivalent couple of forces. However in forward flight as we've been told, the lower disk is not generating as much torque as the upper one - I guess this is because the lower disk is working in the air already disturbed by the upper disk (at least to an extent depending on airspeed). Anyway, the effect is that the disks are generating unequal amounts of lift on opposing sides of the aircraft (in forward flight, the upper disk generates most lift on the port side and the lower disk generates most lift on the starboard side). However the disks don't generate the same amount of lift so there is an imbalance leading to a roll unless the pilot corrects. Just like the Apache, if the pilot flies exactly straight and level with the trim centered, the resulting couple will have the aircraft slip sideways. On the other hand, you can fly in trim but with a bit of bank to stop the drift or you can fly with a level roll attitude and slightly out of trim and that will stop the aircraft sideslipping too. So, while EDs flight model may not be perfect, the interacting forces and effects are such that the ideal straight and level in trim flight is not necessarily something we should expect (or even try to achieve) - it isn't in real helicopters and while the KA 50 is co-ax in design I don't see why it should be any different. r.
  21. For the brakes - I think the brake lever is on the cyclic (hand operated) and there's only one which would imply that there is no differential braking in the KA 50. r.
  22. Well I have a professional interest in helicopters so they take priority for me and it's been a long wait for decent a successor to LB2 (although I loved Hind even more in its day). I'm disappointed though that no one has so far mentioned that daddy of all helicopter combat sims - Combat Lynx! Only problem was I was too young and my fingers weren't long enough to control the thing on a Spectrum keyboard! r.
  23. Could be many things but the first two comments about external power and then this. Have you turned on the batteries (i.e. not relied on external power)? If you have the gauge should work - of course it may just be you didn't turn on the fuel gauge power. External power needs you to talk to the ground crew and that requires the batteries on to power the radio.... r.
  24. Well they didn't "break" it, they encrypted the data passed between the hardware/drivers and the software built into BS, and presumably TIR 1 & 2 don't support that. So the question is, why after all this time did they decide to encrypt that data? The answer is because other 3rd party software was using their interface without authorisation - so it's those other tools that mean you have a problem now with TIR 1 & 2 (in the same way as we bear the pain of Starforce because of pirates for example). Having said that, the lack of 6DOF in those old versions of TIR really don't do BS justice - but the cost for upgrading is never a nice one to bear. Best I can suggest is you talk with NP again about this specific issue and see what they say - they might have another plan. I would have thought though that you can still use the TIR in mouse emulation mode - with a TIR 1/2 you don't really get any more than that with BS anyway (I'd imagine - ditched my old TIR 1 about a year ago now). r.
  25. I don't "know" but at a guess that looks like it's trying to tell you there is a corrupt file or not enough disk space. How big are the files you've got there, could be the download didn't quite finish.... To get someone to read the text and give you an accurate answer you'll need to have the Russian symbols - I don't think that is Russian writing on the dialog.... r.
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