CptTangerine

So, I went off and did a lot of the Oilfield campaign in the Mi-8, which I love. Having done lots of sling-loading practice in that, I went back to the Huey and the Worlds Apart Spring Mission 2. I managed the main sling-load task and the four take-the-stuff-across-the-river tasks and landed at the checkpoint. I then waited while the boss went off for a cup of coffee ... and waited ... and waited. Now I like realism in my flight sims as much as the next man, but simulating the experience of being left in a helicopter while the boss takes his time sipping his drink is not one that I'm keen on. I think, in the end, I waited about 15 minutes without anything changing. The Hummer came back and there were no announcements or anything to move the mission on. Has anyone else experienced this bug? In the end I just quit the mission, ended it, and it took me onto Mission 3 but I'm curious. As an aside, I can't understand how anyone can think that the Huey is easier to fly than the Mi-8. Coming back to the Huey, it's much, much more sensitive and squirrelly and needs so much more effort to fly smoothly. I like the Huey but I think that the Mi-8, ugly as it is, has my heart.

I had to use a pretty strong spring as a centring spring, it's pulling at an angle so it needs to do a lot of work however, having fiddled about with various spring strengths I did get it to work quite well. I don't really do dead-zones and I didn't set any up for the pedals post-mod. It's very good for helicopters and they centred reasonably well. I have now gone for some MFG Crosswinds as the CH Pros I have taken them apart, fiddled with them, repaired them, and put them back together so many times that they were starting to feel a bit gritty. I just couldn't be arsed to take them apart again. I would say go for it, but all of the springs will probably need to be stronger than you think.

More humans in general, doing more human things. It would be nice to have a couple of guys stretchering a downed soldier if you are doing that kind of mission, for example. I am a big +1 for the back filling up with actual crew as you pick them up.

So far, I'm having a decent success rate on the Mi-8 ... well, I'm 2 for 2 in the Oilfield Campaign. Not much of a winning streak, I know, but I'll take it. It's tense.

I flew the second mission and used the ARK-9 to get home. Worked perfectly. No idea what was going on in the first mission.

Bought it! Did anyone have any issues with the ARK-9 navigation in the first Oilfield mission? I set the ARK-9 to 312KHz as seemed to be detailed on the map but, although I could hear the Morse code beeping away, the direction indicator remained locked in the 12 O'clock position. I have seen a few tutorials on YouTube and they all make using the ARK-9 look very straightforward. Any thoughts on what I might be doing wrong? Cheers! CptT

I guess it would be a bit of a cheat. I considered that and then counter-thought, how much of a big thing would that be? Unless you view the radio as a mini-game, I don't think it would change things that much. There are probably folks out there who would love spending hours just rummaging through all the frequencies to see what was on them (although I'm assuming that there are easier ways to see). My original thinking on this was, if you are going down and hit the radio button for a mayday call, you'd be screwed if real-life was like DCS. It would be like the local ATC going [shrug] "Not my part of ship" and leaving you to expire in your crashed craft. I really like Shadow KT's suggestion of having the ATC advise you that you're on the wrong channel and give you the correct one. The current system very much works on the basis that if you can't get it right, you'll just have to suffer, wheras real-life operations are very much geared to trying to keep people safe in the air. In fact, that's a bit of a theme with DCS. Go on a navigation-based mission and head off-course, your navigator/wingman will happily follow you until you run out of fuel. I'd like to think that in real-life your wingy/navigator might go "Er ... Bob, you might want to come right 50 degrees, we're about to invade Iran."

Brilliant! Thanks.

Hi Just as the subject really, I would like to buy the campaign but it states that you need V1.5. Does this simply mean that I need a minimum of 1.5 or have things since then, in 2.5 broken the campaign? Cheers! CptT

Hi I don't know if this has been mentioned before and I wouldn't have a clue how to go about searching for it, but... For realistic comms, it seems to me that the main comms menu screen isn't necessary. If I tune to a frequency, the comms options are already limited to the unit that frequency is assigned to. For example, if I'm tuned to ATC at Batumi, I don't need all of the options for wingmen etc., or even for other ATCs, I just need the Batumi ATC options. It would be useful if the game could recognise that the frequency was for Batumi and only give me the relevant radio options for it. Likewise, the same for wingmen, ground units, etc. In my opinion, this would make the radio easier and more natural to use. Just a thought. CptT

Thanks all, that's some really useful information. I have a couple of sling-load missions that I made for myself. Not very advance, but good enough to practise with. I'll try to apply some of that info and see if my success rate improves. Cheers! CptT

Cheers. I thought that this was going to be one of those oh-everyone-knows-that questions. I guess not. I'll just have to fiddle about with it and see what I can do.

Hi I have Googled around for this but I can't find it, could anyone tell me the max descent rate for slung loads? I have practised quite a bit but I crash the load as often as not, if I knew what descent-rate to look for, I might have a better rate of success. This issue has led me to avoid Mission 2 of the Worlds Apart campaign. I would quite like to get past it so that I can enjoy the rest. Cheers! CptT

I take it that it is just the INS that is crashing? Mine crashes every time I do something else on an MPCD while it's aligning. I will have it aligning on the left MPCD and sometime I forget about the bug and switch the right MPCD to EW. I can guarantee that it will crash the INS. In terms of taking off the parking brake, it's not necessary to fire up the engines. You don't need to take it off until you're ready to move off. I have not found a way of getting the INS to reset so that I can continue the start-up once it bugs.

Ah. Fair enough. I'm trialling using look and click in VR as much as possible and just occasionally I click on something I didn't mean to. I mean, I do that with the mouse as well, but usually I can see what it is. Cheers!

Hi I had an odd one this evening while playing Mission 2 of Broken Cauldron (which is really good). I got the Harrier refuelled and down to the patrol area. I was tasked with destroying a target and got myself all ready to do so, unfortunately when I went to the Stores Page to select a weapon, there were no weapon names under the OSBs to select. Clicking the OSBs did nothing. I could get the weapons to highlight on the Stores Page by pressing the button for their pylon but I still got the hash symbol on the HUD and nothing would fire, not even the gun. The only way I could get around this in any way at all was by selecting A-A mode and shooting boresight with the gun. The gun alone didn't have the oomph to complete the mission. I have a sneaking suspicion that I clicked on something either while doing a pretty chaotic A-A refuel (it was a mess), or when I was inputting the coordinates for the target. I can't really understand why there would be a "screw up my weapons" button but stranger things have been known. I imagine that I probably put it into some weird mode. If anyone has any thoughts what I might have done and how to undo if I do it again, I would be very grateful if you would share them. I was definitely in A-G mode, Master Arm was set to Fire and, as mentioned above I could get the weapons to highlight on the Stores page by clicking on the pylon select button, just not to acknowledge on the HUD. I replayed the mission and everything was cool. Had a lot of fun but it was baffling as to what went wrong the first time. Cheers! CptT

There might be. I haven't done much with it yet. I just fired up a cold start, went "Yay! It works ... why I am I being moaned at?" I did a very sloppy take-off and then decided to shelve it until I was looking to do that kind of mission. It might be something in the mission design. I was trying it out on Redkite's training mission (or as I like to think of it "The Harrier Activity Blanket").

Hi I am really grateful that you have released this mod. I have really missed doing cold starts from the carrier. The only thing that I have noticed is that, as soon as I move I am told Colt1-1 hold position over and over again. Is there something that I need to do to stop this? Cheers! CptT

Did you manage to get home again after this? I've just played it for the first time and the engine shut down about a minute after take-off. I'm not sure if this is because I pushed the weight limit by agreeing to take the guys on leave, or whether there is some other, altitude-related issue, or just some other issue. CptT

Yep. VWJ that seems like the likely culprit. I think I just flicked every switch on the basis that it was probably needed. It hasn't happened since. The next time I fired up the helo I flicked every switch on my Warthog in case it was something that had been bound to one of those but the laryngophone issue seems far more likely. Cheers! CptT

Hi I have just come back to the Mi-8 after a long time away and I'm trying to do the first campaign mission. I am not getting any response from ground when I'm calling in on the radio. I'm using complex radio. Every time I press the button for either ICS or radio I get Interphone showing up at the top of the menu. I am reasonably sure that I am doing everything else right but I'm assuming that the fact that the menu has Interphone at the top indicates that it is trying to transmit through internal only. I have the switch set to radio, it's set to R-683 in the rotary selector, and it's set to Manual next to the frequency selector. I'm stumped. Any help, much appreciated. Cheers! CptT

Hi I've just installed this mod and I really like the ability to look under the NVG goggles at the instruments in VR. The only issue is that the NVG part of the screen is a vertical oval shape rather than round which makes it a little harder on the eyes. I'm using an Index. Any thoughts on how to make the goggle view round? Cheers! CptT

Just tried setting up a Take-off from Ramp practice mission. Got the waiting bug. I did manage a Take-off from Runway hot start. I don't think I'd mind so much if it wasn't for the fact that I didn't used to have this problem. I used to play Redkite's tutorial scenario all the time with no issues.

The X45 is too spiky for the Gazelle. I had one and loved it but it uses potentiometers and they just aren't fine-tuned enough for something like the Gazelle. I now have a very expensive joystick and it's still not the easiest helo to fly but I haven't crashed it since I've had the new stick (just picked the Gazelle module up again today after a long absence). I can't say that you have to have a very expensive stick, but you do need one that doesn't have too many spikes in the output. You can just about get away with it in the Huey because it's quite a wallowing bird but the gazelle is very skittish and one spike from the stick will put you on your side, particularly on take-off.

I went back and had a look at the mission planner, I'm certain that I did the circuit correctly although I'm not at all sure that I landed on the correct set of FARP pads. Can anyone tell me if this matters? I know that in the UN Pilot campaign for the Huey it was specified which pad I was to land on but there is nothing to indicate where I should land in this mission. Still puzzled.