starbird

I did the same. Printed it as a booklet, so the pages are half letter size. Went to kinkos and had them cut the pages and spiral bind them. Their largest spiral was just big enough for all of the pages. I like the spiral better than the wire that was used on the blackshark manual, The last few pages keep falling out of my BS manual. :/

That would be great if you don't mind. After some scrounging, I found that the LES motors were a bit anemic. The portion of launch that the system could handle was relatively small. It wasn't quite useless, but it couldn't handle every emergency. Would be interesting to see if the documents describe the envelope. I would think the astronauts knew about the shortcomings of their equipment. Most were aerospace engineers themselves.

It looks like an early test for some sort of STS escape system, but nothing like that has ever been used (as far as I can recall). The current system uses a drogue line out of the hatch. If a bailout is called for, a certain autopilot mode is enabled to keep a steady altitude, and the astros would jump out of the hatch on the drouge line, which just makes sure that they don't come in contact with the orbiter while jumping. The Gemini capsules was equipped with ejection seats, but no one is sure that an ejection would be survivable once the titan lifted off. There were I believe 2 instances where they were almost used. One was Gemini 6A, where the clock and engines started, but the rocket never left the pad. If the rocket moved from the ignition, it would have tipped over. Fortunately no one ejected and the rocket really didn't leave the pad. Orbiter Columbia was equipped with 2 ejection seats for its first missions. They were going to be a part of every orbiter, but the pilots didn't like the idea of armed ejection seats on orbit, and if there were more than 2 crew they would've been left behind. I don't remember when the seats were taken out. Thats the tower escape system zipline (don't remember the actual name). There is a M113 at the bottom that the crew would pile into and drive to a safe location. The uses are limited, but its mostly there in case of a hydrogen leak or some other emergency where they need to leave the pad quickly (rather than take the elevator), but have enough time to do it. I've never heard of this. Do you have any references? The LES on manned rockets is a totally isolated system, there is no need for communication. It can be activated manually, but otherwise its fully automatic. With the testing that these systems go through I find it hard to believe that the apollo LES would under perform. The apollo system never needed to be used, but the whole point is to save the crew in case of a rocket blowing up. If it wouldn't work, there are better places to put the weight if a system doesn't work. I know of 2 instances where the LES has been needed and used successfully (100% success rate). The first was on the unmanned MA-1, where the rocket didn't perform its pitch maneuver and was destructed from ground. The abort system noticed that the rocket was failing after the abort system activated and successfully propelled the capsule away. Its some pretty impressive video, unfortunately it doesn't seem to be online anywhere. I have it on a spacecraftfilms dvd (liftoff!). The second was a soyuz that erupted after ignition. I believe Max Faget got a medal from the Russians after he asked for one when talking to one of the Cosmonauts. He designed the Mercury LES along with the capsule itself and life support system IIRC, which has been copied by everyone for use in capsule rockets. Sorry for the long post, but aerospace is my thing.

Don't have that stick, so I'll just give some general advise. Turn your dead zone and curves back down to 0. Go into the joystick control panel and move your stick. You shouldn't see any spiking or drifting. Move your stick around center. If there is any slop, then you can add a few percent of deadzone so that the slop won't register any movement (this is so that you can release the stick and it won't try to override any automatics). I'm thinking 2-3%, depending on how bad the stick is (these numbers might be off, but it should be very small). Now, go back in the sim and try it out. You should need VERY little control input. On my setup (ch gear, modified with 12bit controllers), I find that I usually move the stick maybe 1/16" inch when in hover or slow speeds gets me where I want to go. With 0 or near zero deadband, you won't need to move the stick very much. With a huge deadband, you have to move the stick through that deadband before any responce occurs, probably ending up overcorrecting.

Have you turned on AA mode? Its possible that the missile is going thru, or even around the heli without detonating. AA mode sets the fuese to ignite just before impact. Trying to kill a tank with AA mode engaged is useless, as the missiles detonate before they reach the tank. It looks like a hit, but its not.

I wouldn't dismiss the experience that smaller freeflight and r/c gives to designers and engineers. A number of full scale craft started out as chuck gliders and r/c to see if an idea could actually work. The m1-f1 lifting body started out as a r/c glider. The documentary for spaceship 1 has footage of foam models being thrown off the hangars roof to see which configuration would glide best. The same idea was used to see where the CG should be on the mercury space capsule so it would fly stable blunt end forward. Of course, there is a limit to what you can test for, and there was a lot more testing done before hardware was flown. I can't say whether DCS handles like the real thing, but it seems reasonable. My limited flight time in a c172 says that if anything, its even more stable than the sim makes it to be.

its not a button, its a light. On the upper left panel. It will light up when autohover mode is activated. Just above it is a light for 'r-alt', when you have the altitude autopilot engaged and in radar altitude mode, and to the right of that is the route mode indicator. Its in the manual, but I don't have it with me at the moment.

The manual shows that the forward tank feeds the left engine and rear feeds the right. So if one engine is shutdown, you'll run only one of the tanks dry. Opening the crossfeed will let one engine consume both tanks fuel. Its not normally open in the Ka according to the checklists. the APU runs off of the rear tank. I think I read something about a maximum fuel imbalance for flight, but I can't find it now. There are some nice schematics and other stuff in the printed manual. I don't think these diagrams were in the pdf.

Gunship 2000 must've come out for Amiga in the mid 90s. i played it quite a bit. It included a flyable blackhawk and little recon heli (forget its name). The original gunship came out sometime in the 80s. I played that a lot on the c64. I bought falcon 1 the day I got my first amiga. Can't wait for the ah64, whichever version, and a Mi24 in DCS. :)

They are 2 separate commands. alt-T engages autohover. Engaging it turns on the hover light on the upper left panel. The actual button is on the cyclic. The button you have circled turns on the alt hold autopilot, that will try to keep the heli at the assigned altitude.

Its real enough that pilots are trained to avoid getting into them. I've read a number of stories of helis getting into and out of them. I can't say how realistic it is in black shark, but everything I've seen about them talks about violent shaking and a high descent rate. The only way out is to get some forward velocity and fly out of it. The way to avoid them is by not descending too fast in a hover. I'm guessing this is what the descent autopilot was designed for, and why it descends at such a slow rate. The printed manual says to avoid descending in a hover greater than 5 m/s.

The TO function will also wipe out the route currently in the ABRIS. If you want to change waypoints, you can go to the FPL page and use the right wheel to highlight the waypoint, and then hit the WPT button. That will make the selected waypoint active. Neither the PVi or ABRIS talk to each other, so if you want to go to a different waypoint, you'll have to punch it into the PVI also. Assuming the waypoint is in the PVI, or you want to program it.