Jalava

Trim Tutorial Quick Tutorial on Flying the KA-50 with AP There has been a lot of talk on how to trim properly, here is how I do it. This tutorial is written using force feedback joystick, but principles are same technically. Normal mode for flying the KA-50 is to keep the Pitch, Bank and HDG Hold autopilot channels on all the time. When stabilizing into route altitude the ALT Hold autopilot is usually also activated. Depending on flight profile and mission purpose you want to do this in BARO (constant sea level altitude) or Radio (constant ground altitude) mode. When flying the KA-50 in autopilot mode, there are three distinct modes of autopilotage: - Autopilot Channel Hold (Normal mode) - Route - Route Descent (still bit unsure how this works, gotta read more, not explained here) Understanding how the autopilot channel hold works is critical to flying KA-50 properly, so here is how the beast works: - Point nose, then click trim. Or press trim, point, release trim. Simple :) Actually when you are in heli without touching anything and stick centered in middle of trim zone, autopilot attempts to hold current pitch, bank and heading. When you make changes to any of these attitudes (Note: not altitude, the way your heli points), autopilot tries to fight back and correct back to the original attitude automatically. To change attitude, - either change direction and shortly press trim (normal method). After releasing trim autopilot now assumes new attitude of helicopter and attempts to keep that. - Or you can first press trim, then change direction and release trim. This is faster way to change attitude but also more unstable and may cause oscillation and overshooting. One thing to remember is that when changing the heading using rudder, you must first yaw to the correct hdg and then correct the counter-yaw effect by keeping the direction and releasing rudder slowly. I recommend keeping trim pressed down while yawing. Trimming while having rudder down in over 20% will trim some continuous yaw in and autopilot is going to have hard time keeping the heading when in route and you might experience some sideways slipping while flying routes. This may feel too rigid for most helipilots, but as KA-50 is mainly for support operations, most of the attacks are performed many kilometers away from ingress point by slowing down at initial point and then searching for targets and attacking while holding constant speed into wanted attack direction. This may be towards target zone, if doing overfly & turn. Or you might want a slow strafe across the targeting area while spewing missiles and rockets. Simple example: SPD 0, HDG 000, Pitch 0, Bank 0, Alt 250R (radio), ALT HLD activated with collective brake set at 250R, all AP channels on. For simplicity lets presume that pitch 0 will hover KA-50 perfectly. Now in this state chopper hovers in current location automatically and you don't need to touch anything. Accelerating to 200KM/H: - From here, push yoke forwards and wait for 200KM/H speed to come. When arriving at 200KM/H click trim and release pressure slightly on yoke. Do it slowly and AP will correct your pitch into attitude that will hold 200KM/H regardless of changing winds etc. - If done slowly enough and correctly, altitude will stay in 250 meters with no change in collective. However you might need to give slight addition to collective because 20% range in servo might not be enough to keep the height. Giving bit extra won't cause initial climb because AP will counter-correct this until BS starts sinking. Turning: - When turning, push rudder and wait for correct heading. When arriving correct heading push trim down and then release pressure on rudder slowly to stop yaw at correct heading, when rudder is completely up, release trim. - You should now be pointing at your new direction with little or now counter-yaw - Banking slightly while doing the turn will lessen counter-yaw effect and is faster. Changing altitude: - Let's say we want to ascent to 1000M Baro. - Increase collective slightly and disengage ALT HLD - You should now be entering in controlled climb. - When arriving at correct altitude, activate ALT HLD and activate Collective Break at correct altitude. - Also remember to release collective to slow down to the altitude or you will overshoot. Flying route: - First remember to set first WPT correctly in ABRIS. This has no effect on route, but you can follow your vertical profile in ABRIS this way. By default, WPT is set to start airfield and is not update on route automatically if not set to point at first WPT. To do this, go NAV->FPL->rotate knob to select first WPT and press WPT. Return to NAV. - First turn to correct heading by hand and start accelating. - Enter Route mode by pressing R. - Autopilot will now handle bank and hdg channels according to route. You still need to handle pitch for speed and collective to manage vertical profile. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but this i how I keep my 50 in air stable :)

I approach with ALT HLD off everything else on, no FD, because I want to control my descent profile by hand and it doesn't make any sense keeping ALT HLD on as you are going to zero any way :) However, what is the proper approach method, i keep entering hover way too high every time and when I force by descent too much it's a vortex ring party way too easily :)

I can strongly recommend Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 for yoke, if you can find one.. or some other force feedback yoke because of how trim works in KA-50 Only problem I had was flipping the force axis. Now flying is so easy because the trim works as intended. Btw, KA-50 is my first game where trim actually trims the center point correctly by modifying the forces to keep stick centered in new position.

I rarely fly FD on, almost always all channels on with no hover. I've found it pretty simple to fly with FD off and all channels on, however I'm using force feedback joystick so trimming to wanted attitude that AP will hold for me is almost trivial: Just point to wanted bank&pitch, press trim and it stabilizes itself to that bank angle and pitch automatically. For height, i just keep F pressed down when I need level change, otherwise I trim my collective so that alt hold can hold my level. Flying this way, you don't even need autohover in combat because it's pretty easy to put KA-50 to fly slowly forwards in constant speed and level while skanning targets in shkval. Trimming the rudder is harder as it's not force feedback controlled, so pressing trim will offset the centerpoint and I need to do trim in small sections to prevent overtrimming. Trimming is the key here too :)

pre-plan and fly with constantly slowly climbing profile (+3m/s or so) in high rpm limit right from the start to the peaks. That way you'll keep your constant speed of 250 or so and when the peak comes, slow down to about 200 just before the peak and over you go. And oh, it's about 3650m or so, remember to keep anti-ice on, though that cuts some power even more i recall, but you prevent complete loss.

Yep, it's about mouse. I took a look into NewInputStart after craft with: 26B7480 7C3AC1D1 0001:00006480 C:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\Ka-50\bin\stable\NewInput.dll ??4ForceFeedback@@QAEAAV0@ABV0@@Z()+3240Here is the last lines: 2008.12.14 23:13:12:828 Joyctick: try to createConstantForceEffect 2008.12.14 23:13:12:828 Joyctick: try to createPeriodicEffect 2008.12.14 23:13:12:843 Joyctick: try to setBufferSize: 1024 2008.12.14 23:13:12:843 Joystick created[Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback 2 {C07C5BD0-A87F-11db-8001-444553540000}]. 2008.12.14 23:13:12:843 Try to create device. Device type is: 65553. Device name is: SideWinder™ MouseThat was the last line, normally it goes through keyboard etc after this. I noticed that removing intellipoint software lessens the amount of crashes though, but does not remove them completely. What is nasty, is that while in campaign, if you crash, mission is failure and may cause complete failure of campaign

Yeah, Sidewinder mouse here also, out of 4 crashes so far, 3 has been because of dinput8.dll. I also have MsFFB joystick though. I think I've gotten less problems after flipping the force axis though. Not sure. DCS-20081212-213101.crash.txt DCS-20081211-232406.crash.txt