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Thanks to all the community for the amazing attendance and feedback. We are really happy to hear all the good things from you guys and to see Helo World busy all the time with new pilots everyday. We are also making sure to take into account all the feedback to iron out as many bugs or bring requested improvements. If you are not yet on our Discord server, you are really missing out on news, updates and chat with our BlackSharkDen pilots. For those of you who flew on Helo World today, you most likely saw the weather was not great. It happens on Helo World. Weather is scripted so, on some rare occasions, you'll end up with either rain or night time. This will for sure sharpen even more your RW pilot's skills. Latest changelog: HELO WORLD Update #1 Bugfixes and Improvements With the feedback you guys have been providing, and spending some time creeping on everyone in the server, I have identified a few bugs and areas for improvement. Nothing major today, but the following changes will take effect on the next server restart: -Activity messages posted to ⁠activity-ctaf had a lot of bugs related to player names, duplicate messages, and errors. It was disabled briefly while being worked on. These should all be resolved now and it should start posting again. -ARMOR DEPOT REQUESTED marker and ring will now disappear if the FLOT moves back to the starting position -AMMUNITION REQUIRED will change to REARMING... when an ammunition resupply has been completed, but the vehicle is still low on ammo -Building FARP SUPPLIES in a FARP area will now relocate the vehicles to the center of the zone. Attempting to build a FARP SUPPLY crate outside of a valid FARP zone will result in the equipment being lost -Fixed an issue that prevented the FARP ACTIVATED label to update -Fixed an issue that prevented FARPs from loading their saved state on mission start KNOWN ISSUES Labels of sectors are disappearing for no apparent reason. This issue may be isolated to single-threaded users only. HELO WORLD UPDATE #2 More fixes and improvements Continuing to further refine the server, here's a few more fixes and improvements that have been done and will appear on the next restart: -Fixed CSAR beacon sounds -Fixed armor groups needing ammo not updating the label to "REARMING..." after receiving an ammo truck -Changed "REARMING..." label to have white text instead of yellow -Removed weapons.shells. from CTAF messages for KIA -Added [ ] brackets back into CTAF messages for player names -Added labels to mark pilot created FARP/CTLD FOBs on the map -Updated kneeboard page 1 to include the KA-50 channel # adjustment -Troops in Contact will now automatically clean itself up 10 seconds after completion

BECAUSE RUNWAYS ARE FOR BEAUTY QUEENS! BLACKSHARKDEN squadron is proud to offer to the DCS community a new public server exclusively dedicated to rotary wings operations: HELO WORLD Our developers have been capitalizing on our 9 years of operations to build what we believe will be the best DCS helicopter experience that no other public servers we tested so far can meet (yes, that's bold but we really think we can do it). The HELO WORLD public server is offering you the BLACKSHARKDEN experience less the milsim aspects or the need to become a member. It does stick though to its three founding principles: a FIXED WING FREE environment, NO Players Vs Players and encouraging COOPERATIVE missions. We value the roles of ALL the DCS helicopters and give them meaningful tasks that will influence the outcome of the battle. Exclusive and improved scripts unlock all the potential for rotary wings operations in DCS. In this server, you will be able to perform the following tasks: Close air support (Troops in contact) Sector control (capture areas while fighting against vastly improved AI) FARP activation (Mi-8, UH-1H and UH-60L are heroes too. Provide the required logistics to support the ongoing battle) Oil Rig assault Maritime security and VBSS (Visit, Board, Search, Seizure) Anti submarine warfare (on selected helicopter types only) Counter Insurgency Operations (COIN) (work in progress) At BLACKSHARKDEN, we also made sure to address some of the other servers pain points: a clear and responsive documentation about how to use the different server's functionalities, a dedicated space on our Discord server for support and meeting our pilots, a pretty solid pro hosted server in Canada giving great response times whether you are in US or EU, a real time heatmap access to see who is flying and where without the need to connect to the server. The HELO WORLD Public server can be found on the DCS server list at "Helo World by [BSD] BlackSharkDen" and runs on the Syria Map. Auto kick and auto ban are enabled for team killing (make sure you understand the server rules available on our Discord Server). All DCS helicopters are available plus the UH-60L Mod (not mandatory to join the server). Although we took away some of the milsim aspects we are applying to our missions at BLACKSHARKDEN, it doesn't mean that HELO WORLD is suitable for complete beginners in RW operations. There are some good challenges. As such, we cannot encourage you enough to join our BSD Discord Server and get all the info and links you will need to fully enjoy this public server. MAKE SURE TO JOIN OUR DISCORD SERVER TO GET THE INFO AND SUPPORT TO FLY ON THIS SERVER!

DCS helicopter pilots have learnt to be extremely patient unlike the Fixed Wing fan boys because, until 2021, we had to learn how to live with barely 4 helicopters for years while the others were getting showered with new modules and updates on a monthly basis.

New FM is coming for the Gaz by the way. Lima is done at least. Looks very promising.

Nicely done @DD_Friar. Not a lot of tips beside practice, practice and practice. It's a lot of muscle memory. There are so many things happening in a chopper when you are starting to hover low above ground that it would take too long in a single post. Yes, altitude and temperature strongly influence power availability and it is modeled in DCS, although the gaz is a nice light helicopter with some power to share. You would probably feel the pain a lot more in a huey or a Mi-8. You did good job to adjust your curves. Cyclic needs it. Collective can remain linear. If you have a rudder, the chopper community usually removes all the self centering springs to allow it to stay in place when released as it is intended to be IRL, but that's a bit of a nogo for people also flying fixed wings.

Our dedicated hosting only got 2x450Gb RAID0. On a DCS scale, that's not much. Maps flown are 70% Syria, 15% Persian Gulf, 14% Caucasus (mostly trainings) and the remaining 1% (probably generous)...a bit of Falklands. Normandy and The Channel, Nevada and Marianas have been 0%. Not sure how Normandy 2.0 will do but I am not seeing a lot of missions so far on this. Not to mention that Sinai is coming (for which I expect to see a lot of activity if it is as good as Syria for helicopters) and Northern Europe (not too sure about this one). So yes, arbitration is required and being able to remove all those unused maps is very welcome.

What s the module name for Normandy 2.0? Nevermind. Found it (just the same than old Normandy).

You guys would have more luck to interact with PC if you were asking those questions on their Discord server.

Looks awesome. Brilliant idea eight ball. It s gonna be awesome for CA and choppers.

Ah mais oui, c'est vrai! Mole m en avait parle. Francais expatrie aux US ici. Passes nous faire coucou sur Discord et on se mettra en route pour une petite mission ensemble!

Yes!

C'est cool. On vole avec des squads espagnoles, italiennes, francaises ou hollandaises des fois. Il suffit d'un flight lead qui parle Anglais, pas besoin d'avoir tout le flight qui sait parler en Anglais. On fera un petit event inter squadrons du coup. C'est suffisamment rare d'avoir des squads helicos exclusivement. (enfin 95%).

Regarding cargos, at the moment Smallard, the only solution is either slingloading them (if you are in a helicopter) or you need to use scripts to simulate picking up crates (despawning them), loading crates (adding weight to your aircraft), then unloading them (spawning the create and remove the added weight in your aircraft). OK, that's not super realistic/immersive at the moment. ED has been focusing a lot until recently on fighter jets so the whole questions of cargo wasn't super high on the list. But with the arrival of the CH-47 and the C-130, there will have hopefully some stronger push for some more realistic cargo operations. We can dream of the crew animation technology they developed for the carrier to be applied to a load master and other logistic personnel on the ground.

Salut Razorback, Vous avez des pilotes qui parlent Anglais dans votre groupe?

No worry. As you might have noticed, flying choppers is a bit harder than flying fixed wing. Taking off is more than full throttle, roll, pull the stick. When "ready to take off" or hot, you should always be full throttle. Choppers engines normally know only 3 states: OFF, IDLE and FULL. If you are starting to see your gauges indicating less than full when you are flying, either you took a bullet in your engine and it's leaking oil, or you are icing, or you are overtorquing. Generally speaking, things are not looking good for the near future unless you do something quick. Setting your engine(s) to idle can only be good on the ground (obviously) when you are waiting and want to save some fuel (but then you'll loose the electrical generation and some of the radios too). For your hardware throttle, when you are spawning in your hot chopper, the in game throttle will always be set to FULL but the game will read your hardware throttle only if one of its axis is moved, even a small variation. This what might happen if your collective and throttles are both on your hardware throttle. The hardware throttles are set to IDLE, you are pulling on the collective and suddenly the game read your throttles positions and set the in game throttles to IDLE just when you want to take off (not good). Second possibility, your hardware throttles are FULL as well as your in-game ones. But you are pulling too quick and hard on your collective. This create an overtorque on the engines that forces them to drop. ("RPM LOW") In general, remember that whatever control you are changing/touching on a chopper will affect all the other ones at the same time. At least the AH-64 is a bit automated so the Fadec will kinda help. For example, pulling the collective will require more throttle, more rudder (left/right depending on the main rotor direction) and a touch on the cyclic to tune the speed if you want to maintain the altitude.

Are you talking about the throttle or the collective? Helicopters throttles are always set to 100% (actually slightly above 100%) when hot. Anything less than that usually means you are in trouble.

Friendlies. KW spots, Apache shoot. The two hellfires the KW is carrying are really for self defense or last resort, like an immediate threat to the KW itself or to immediate nearby ground forces, with no AH around to deal with it.

Looks like the F model. Don't care much. It is a CH-47 in DCS made by ED. Can't be more awesome than that.

Thanks ED! So many choppers in 2021/22/23! I can't complain anymore about too many FW in DCS!

Next BlackSharkDen's meeting @admiki ?

You can hide the units you want in the ME and they won't appear on the F10 view if this works for you. Your flight group will be sent back to good old dead reckoning navigation.

I am starting lately to have to zoom in on a pic to figure out if it is real or DCS. First glance, I can't tell anymore. This is how good you guys did.

That's a very old bug with helicopters on decks. I thought ED addressed that more or less. Our last mission from ship went alright but we took the habit to have them set as hot start with departures from deck to get a chance to lift off before falling into the water.

I know you are always doing a great job man, and with little time in your hands!

Hi Flappie! Don't forget the choppers! AH64 and Mi24 could use a true to DCS in cockpit map more than any FW!