Legerdemain

The Firing Range mission is also a cold and dark start.

Mm. I take it my strategy of monster-size rocket bursts and kind of sweeping them over the target area is less than optimal? :P

Here's what happens: 1. Autohover on: helicopter hovers. 2. FD on/off: helicopter no longer attempts to return to hover, but autohover symbology remains on. 3. Use trimmer: hover position reset to current position. Hover resumes. Makes sense to me. :D

Being in a similar place as you, OP, (except without a pilot's license [you lucky dog] :P), I feel like I'm well-placed to say a few things. 1. Cold start procedure isn't all that bad. A little longer than the one in Falcon 4. I watched the video once, wrote myself a checklist, and haven't had any problems. :P Unless you have earlier realistc helo sim experience, though, be prepared for a few hours of flight before you're comfortable (maybe even if you do--the flight model here is rather more detailed than any of the previous ones I've seen). The Ka-50 is a nimble little number, and that means that until you get a feel for the controls you'll be madly chasing the nose around the sky. 3. As for out of the box, well, things all work, and the stability is incredible. The way ground units react to being attacked by air units is kinda off, though, and (although this isn't really a problem likely to be fixed in a patch) I really *really* wish there was a dynamic campaign engine.

I'll third the Cyborg Evo as a great little joystick. Plenty of buttons if you map the shift keys to shift, and mine has been going strong for a few years now.

Sound driver reinstall fixed it for me. Now time to work on flying the thing. And following that, learning what all the switches do (what a change from Falcon 4 and the F16, where it was all on MFDs and if I didn't know what it meant I could probably puzzle it out from the label... :P)

The crash log says it's sdl_mixer.dll causing the problems, so I'm going to give reinstalling audio drivers a whirl. There's no -nosound switch for the launcher, is there?

I'm having the same problem, but with a new install. No reboot between install and not working, only logging off and logging back on.