Jack McCoy

Point well taken, Coax. Slalom is far from normal flight, where your airplane is going in one direction and your mind is on the next gate, below the nose of the plane. He's a champoin flyer and if I fly slalom, I'll do just like him - not like my Cessna and glider instructors have told me. However, in the loop (ok, Immelman) his "natural head movement" is a good illustration of the efforts put in by DCS. Thanks. I guess if I bought the Black Shark Reno Air Races expansion pack (does not exist - don't ask me where you can get it in Canada :) ), I'd be happy with the horizon shift. But as I'm using TrackIR, I turn it off anyway.

A few reasons I can see: Shorter calls; no need to use callsigns. Less radio frequencies to be assigned. Less chance of mixup in radio frequencies. Reliability. Any real Army chopper pilots care to comment?

The default is, in sim mode at least, RShift-P. The only place I found it documented is the key list pdf; search for pilot.

I don't agree. "natural head movement" (LCTRL-F1) tends to direct you line-of-sight towards where you're going. In a medium bank turn to the right, you'll see more out of the right window. When pulling G's, either at the base of a loop or in a steep bank turn, your head moves up (airframe relative), towards the inside of the turn. Don't use it if you're using TrackIR. To disable this mode, hit F1 (no modifier). The head returning to the horizontal aspect you describe is governed by LWIN-F1, "head shift movement" which changes the point of view according to accelerations of the craft, personally, this would be nice if we could adjust the stiffness of the modelled torso/neck. I don't feel strapped in the seat, but rather sitting on a balloon - too sluggish. FreeFalcon had the same feature with better, "stiffer" values. I feel it is done nicely in FSX, not as stiff, but understandable given the civilian-type seat belts - the fore-aft acceleration effect is great. As a footnote, it is a bad real life habit to tilt your head towards the vertical in a turn that is the least bit tight (30-deg. bank or more). But a lot of us do it to some extent. :pilotfly:

Didn't you have to go pick it up in Sumas Washington? Did you include your gas bill in your "cost" calculation? From Chilliwack, Edmonton or Montreal, that's a factor. I'm glad you got the game - see you in the "friendly" skies!

I agree; do not play with the throttle. I'm hoping our friend slowhand meant the collective. 1) I would advise to head into the wind, towards the landing pad. 2) Slow down to 50-70 km/h and trim. 3) Disable the Altitude channel on the autopilt. 4) Establish a constant descent using collective: 200-300 fpm. When you have more experience, you can go down faster, provided you have forward airspeed. 5) Adjust collective to land on the pad. If the pad seems to "move up" relative to your helicopter, you're coming in too steep - add collective. If it moves down, relax collective. See the following article about landing visual cues. It applies to all flight. http://books.google.com/books?id=V3SZXFWuCIgC&pg=PT93&lpg=PT93&dq=estimating+landing+point+reference+descent+angle&source=bl&ots=HkNFKjcKoA&sig=svI-RocDvPwrY0R4RmANJvWE_Kk&hl=en&ei=FPMBSorTMZ6DlAevu6TtBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPT94,M1 6) A couple of seconds before touchdown, pull the cyclic back to reduce speed to 0-5km/h. Forward speed will help you line up the nose wheel. Always manoeuver with a gentle touch. Also, on a PC based simulation, joystick potentiometer spiking can cause instability. Lord knows my old Thrusmaster Cougar is spiky in the X axis! Of course, it is possible to land completely vertically, but it adds difficulty. The landing area is not as visible, wind drift becomes a factor, your prop wash, being almost directly below you limits your (safe) vertical speed.

Alright, thank you. I guess there's a light outside the helicopter to signal the ground crew the position of my switch. Or they use hand gestures. Or else, how do they coordinate connection/disconnection of this wire? (just thinking outloud) The doc does not mention it. Since they programmed this feature, it should be mentionned. "НОП" (Ground crew intercom) – used to communicate with ground crew through the wired telephone. When rearming or refueling at an airfield or FARP, you will need to select this setting to communicate with the ground crew unless the cockpit door is open and the rotors are not turning. Then, "intercom source selector" the has two functions: 1) selects the intercom source - duh! 2) makes the ground crew connect/disconnect I don't think it's very realistic, as I can flip the switch to VHF and take off a millisecond later without having the guy complain. Well, I'm guessing he's not complaining, since I can't hear him anymore! If a tree falls in the forest... does it make a noise? Who cares? So I guess I should not care if the ground crew is complaining, but I can't hear it... :)

Why is it when I'm done with rearm/refuel that the ground crew always says "What are you doing?" when I start rolling or taking off? I could switch the radio back to the tower and not hear the complaints... :smilewink: I could understand the tower complaning that I did not ask for clearance.

Velocity Vector / Turn on Target Velocity Vector... I think the small diagonal line you're seing is the Velocity Vector. From the DCS Black Shark Flight Manual (pdf): "Velocity Vector. When airspeed is below 50 kph, a velocity vector line is drawn from the center of the Aircraft Datum. This line points in the direction that the aircraft is traveling and the length of the line represents the aircraft‟s relative speed. The line will be longest when the aircraft is traveling at 50 kph in any direction and shortest when the aircraft is at or near a hover. The Velocity Vector line is a useful tool when used in conjunction with the Hover Point Deviation Marker to hold a battle position. " --- About your YAW problems... Incidently, I was experimenting with the Shkval's ability to slave to Target Points (OT) displayed on the PVI-800 Navigation Control Panel. I had Auto Turn on Target, and my helo's current coordinates* dialed in as a Target Point on the PVI. At one point, I hit the Designate Target/Uncage Shkval button, and the Shkval tried to center itself on these coordinates (where I was) and initiated (because of the Auto Turn) a continuus yaw. Maybe you're experiencing something similar? Auto Hover was On. By the way (a bit off topic), I see nothing wrong in using this function, but is has to be understood that you need to be trimmed in hover before activating it. -- *current coordinates: because I had used the "Fly-Over" Fix method instead of the laser-designation method.

I bought 3 DVD copies from GameStop: http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=74016 These days, account for 25% exchange rate, and 15-20$ max Charge On Delivery (COD). So 3 copies amounted to 3 x 65$CAN all included. Buy it today and don't waste another minute on the ground!

Autopilot channels turning off below 4m I would think the Emergency Autopilot Disengage is used when the helicopter's flight caracteristics are affected by damage, in which case, the pilot's brain might adapt better than the autopilot which is programmed for a non-damaged helicopter. As far as your autopilot channels turning off, it must be related to the Auto Hover function: when the Auto Hover is engaged AND the radar altitude is less than 4 meters, the autopilot channels will disengage and the (blue) lights will blink for a while, then turn off. This is by design - not a bug. My advice: use Vertical Descent with caution as it will stop you at 4m (documented), but what if you collective is a bit on the low side and you go down to 3.99m? You then lose your damping channels at a very critical stage of flight, with no audio warning.

Yes, I would also like to be able to revert to the recorded head movement.

The trk file does not work for me either.

Bad range info? Thinking about it, yes the range is important to correct for parallax, given the Shkval is lower than the pilot's eye. Indeed when I lased the tower (pic 1), the Target Marker shifted. (further offset, though!) I also noticed this: A FARP is 180m across (http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=575170&postcount=9). So I estimate the tower to be around 800m away (pic 2). But the rangefinder returns a mere 100m (0.1km). A wrong range value would definitely screw up the calculation for the position of the Target Marker in the HUD.

Notice how the Shkval center and Target Marker in the HUD don't designate the same point. Is this the intended behavior? This is the NumPad5-centered view to avoid any suggestion that my "head" was a bit to the side and low. :)

After killing my first pilot, I created a new pilot with the same name as the dead, undeleted pilot. This created some problems as it made the two combobox entries of the same name point to the same pilot record (I don't remember which, but I think the original - now dead - pilot.) There should be additional validation in the application or a different index-key should link the pilot name and his record. Warning: Although I managed to recover, I'm not willing to test further as I like my logbook as it is. So "don't try this at home" if you care about your logbook data.

No dialog to un-Pause in multiplayer. Try to hit the Pause key on your keyboard. I think it got me stuck for a few seconds as there is no dialog box instructing you to do so in multiplayer. However, there is a pause icon flashing in the top right hand corner. I originally (wrongly) thought it was something specific to multiplayer, such as waiting for other players - mission time paused. :joystick: