Richard Dastardly

There were 17 or 19 or something around that of those built - they had the hispanos removed & possibly two MGs too, and were all used on anti-shipping; would be interesting to see if you could hit a tank with it, I guess. Alll that extra mass ( armour too ) in different places would play havoc with the FM, I'd imagine... I'd think we get whichever versions are flyable & accessable :p

Was that an especially good fighter, then?

Seen a fair bit of that in a documentary on YT I think - supposedly about the Mi-24 but in the end mostly about the Afghanistan conflict. Won't be hard to find with a quick search, but it was pretty depressing viewing.

I never let it go all the way to idle anyway, not least because I don't want a sudden burst of torque when I'm approaching stalling & decide I'm approaching it a bit fast... Steep approaches in this one I'm not a fan of either - I naturally fly curved approaches anyway out of habit, & that will remove any visibility issues. I've had a few hard landings trying to pull it out of a steep approach.

Yeah, I've read Chickenhawk a couple of times - I'm aware of short-throw joystick issues & all, but I'm still a tiny bit suspicious about how reactive the Huey is, it's not *that* light a helicopter ( land a Gazelle next to one... ). There've been a couple of remarks that the Mi-8 is a bit responsive, even. They are what they are, though. You can throw the Mi-8 around quite ridiculously, just don't expect it to react quickly - you have to think a few seconds ahead, is all. It's a truck vs the Huey's Jeep vs the Gazelle's trials bike. Heh I should probably get round to setting an avatar one day...

If you need to slow down in a hurry you can just sideslip it too, very easy to slow it down too much doing that though! never had any issues on touchdown, that wide gear makes it a breeze if you don't drop a wing ( even if you do, honestly ).

I hopped on a server which had a mission that was exported by someone who'd somehow got the game mode flight model for the Mi-8 - it was absurdly stable, in fact rapidly got annoyingly stable. The Mi-8 *is* nice & stable, and pretty sedate compared to the light helicopters as you might imagine though. It's just heavy, and you notice it, and has a lot of torque & your feet definitely notice that. I'm a little suspicious of the Huey honestly, is it really that twitchy IRL?

I have a pro ( if not terribly expensive ) studio USB breakout box which has no filters or any other effects, it's not that. I noticed the new rotor sounds were also lowering the volume of internal Mi-8 sounds when one flew over me the other day.

Most of the gotcha about power is the slow spoolup of these engines - even if you notice your descent rate increasing as you drop out of ETL there's not much you can do about it except autorotate if you didn't keep the RPM up. Knowing when and how to "catch" the craft without ballooning or overshooting & having to spiral when you're trying to land in a hurry ( say you're inserting into a hot LZ ) is an acquired skill that also needs constant reinforcement ( in my case, at least ). It's one of the reasons I love the thing, though.

Yes, there seems to be some sort of compression going on.

Well it's not like the Spit is known for it's stellar ground handling either... -- Those "plates" would be trim tabs, that may be where some confusion came from.

I'd debate the Huey is easier to fly, too. Mi-8 is also my favourite helicopter, & can't wait for the Mi-24. I'd buy a modern cockpit Mi-17 upgrade too, honestly.

Should be fun when the Mossie arrives, with it being notoriously tail-heavy & twitchy... I have not noticed anything particularily unstable about the 109 or the 190s ( especially the Anton, that thing feels super stable if a bit liable to drop a wing at times ). All ww2 planes we have are lacking the seat feel from what are very aerobatic aircraft IRL, so they are going to be fairly hard.

If it's self-developed this far then it's actually looking quite promising ;) but iirc it's a project that's awaiting the release of some other resource, like artwork or data or simply developers allocated to another project. I don't know how ED's in-house developers are arranged at the moment so it's a bit hard to predict where devs are going to be released from - would the P-47 team go to the Mi-24 or the Mosquito? *shrug*

I just invert the collective, which makes flying a Harrier after a helicopter interesting at times...

I'm curious now - do rotor pitch angles match the real thing at all for a range of speeds if you're fliying straight & level?

Yeah, more or less. The Seafire III had a bigger engine, but still less power than a Spit IX I think - but a Spit IX is basically a V with a bigger engine anyway. The Seafire apparently handled a little differently but yeah, probably not going to be a full mod there...

Yeah, I've read that elsewhere as well - I'm actually surprised when I see video of those rockets hitting ships given how inaccurate they seem, so I've always taken successful anti-tank with a pinch of salt. Having said that there's a lot of soft vehicle targets in theatre too which near-misses with rockets & 20mm cannonfire are going to be far more effective against. CAS aircraft in queues were at least demoralising the opposition - something else we should have picked up from the Germans earlier. Ironic how much German attack doctrine came from a couple of British staff officers who'd studied the end of WW1 & kept up with new tech....

Pity the Griffon Seafires were too late for any WW2 theatre - would have soothed the urge of those of us who desperately want a XIV. Landplane would be Spit V or VIII - first one would also cover BoB, but it's basically a slower version of the one we have & the VIII isn't really that different.

Yeah - it's there, just needs a glance, and you may have misjudged your approach for many reasons. In fact if you're looking down & forwards it's probably in peripheral vision from the left seat. Having said that though, again it's not providing particularily useful info until you're in danger of VRS & if you're still moving forwards & not doing something daft, then that's not really a risk.

I guess you don't *have* to map the throttle - most of the time it's going to be in one place. I have mine mapped to the left warthog throttle for lack of anything else useful to put there, occasionally I'll drop it to idle if I'm sitting around waiting for someone but mostly it's just shoved forwards.

I wouldn't ignore the VSI completely if you're below transition speed, but yes, in general I think this is the best idea. Don't think of stopping & landing, just landing & stopping simultaneously. If you're going to overshoot don't do anything drastic, just orbit & slow down that way. Technically kicking the tail out to get the fuselage side on should also help a little ( just like sideslipping in a FW ) but I've not noticed any appreciable difference in deceleration in the Mi8 doing that.

A lot of CAS & interdiction was developed after the trench breakout in WW1, shame we always forget lessons so quickly ( convoys! ). I've also read a book or two covering ( usually in part ) the development of combined arms ops - it's both amazing in the WW2 way how fast things develop and how you want to smack your head against something because of all the delays caused by intransigence & ownership issues... I think a lot of using the Spit for bombing ( in Normandy at least ) was that there wasn't much else for them to do ( relatively ) rather than them being particularily suited for it - especially the older IX when the Griffon engined versions turned up for high-alt work.

That'd be on the wishlist for the ETO too, particularily an anti-shipping one if our Mossie is limited to bombs & no rockets.

I don't know the details of the sound engine but it does sound like it's dropping other sounds too low at times - the rotor sound seems ok, it's just at too much expense of everything else.