To the people are new as me! Controlling the ka50...Some tips from a noob!

Hi all,

So, for weeks I've been wondering why when I engage auto hover, en route auto pilot etc etc my chopper goes a bit crazy and refuses to stay still, which understandably makes targeting very difficult.

If you, like me, find that despite your trimming and frustrating attempts at making it sit still dont work, try these steps which will hopefully make the helicopter more manageable.

Step one: Before you try to enter a hover, press CTRL + ENTER, you will see your current trimmed inputs, center all of these so that they are in the middle (excluding of course, throttle/collective!)

Step two: Bring the helicopter under control, it will be easier to bring to a standstill now that you've recentred the trim (but bear in mind you will need to keep control of the stick), you should find the ka50 not resisting you as much, and it should also settle into an easy hover.

Step three: Initiate auto hover; you should now have a spinning/accelerating/crashing free ka-50 ready to practice whatever it is you're doing!

I realise this stuff is extremely simple to most of you, but I've entirely overlooked it as the reason for my heli moving all over the place, I wrongly presumed that the auto hover would compensate for my trim settings, and centring (in fact I believe there is a button to simply reset trim?) has made my flying significant easier. Simply resetting the trim has also made landing/rocket runs much easier!

If there is somebody here new enough to not know this stuff, I hope it helps!

Conure

The technical explanation is that auto-hover is meant to keep you in hover after you bring the heli to a (trimmed out, hands free) hover.

The autopilot only has a 20% authority (ie. literally 20% stick throw from where you left the stick last) so it can only compensate so much for your trim settings. You always get the best performance by being well trimmed out before handing things off to any autopilot.

Although I occasionally do reset the trim I only do it as a last resort when things have gone completely doolally.

My advice to you would be:

Step One: Make sure your flying at a roughly constant altitude and flight director is not engaged and your using at least 3 autopilot channels (altitude hold isn't required).

Step Two: Press and hold the trim button (best to have this in a comfortable and easily accesable place on your joystick), balance the helecopter, use small smooth inputs and don't try and decelerate too quickly. Once you have it in a controlled deceleration and level (horizontally) let go of the trim button and centre the stick. The deceleration will continue and you can go hands off.

Step Three: Make small none trimmed or trimmed inputs as required to knaw out your speed to below 10 indicated speed on the hud. Use trimmed inputs if your decelerating to quickly, slow the deceleration down so the closer you get to 0 the slower your decelerating.

Step Four: When your below 10 engage autohover and let go of the stick. The helecopter will balance itself out now.

When wanting to leave auto hover remember that your last trimmed command was to slow down, so getting out of a completely stationary auto hover will have you going backwards within in a few seconds. So cancel the auto hover, disengage the altitude hold (enabled with auto hover) and put some forward stick in. Now use step two to get your trimming right for forward flight. Keep the trimmer in as long as you require until you have it all ballanced correctly.

The biggest trick to learn is the trimmer and to keep it pushed in as long as you need to get it balanced. Once you have learnt to do that it all becomes a lot easier.

Also remember that below 10 ft/M the auto hover function does not work and cause you to get into dificulties.

My advice to you would be:

 

Listen to this guy, this method works. As for an in flight trim reset, I don't think it's to be done. Correct me if I'm wrong.

That works really well, great. It's funny, the trim as a concept is so simple, but takes ages to get any good at!

Listen to this guy, this method works. As for an in flight trim reset, I don't think it's to be done. Correct me if I'm wrong.

There is, I have it bound to my HOTAS as a shift state, can't remember what is it is off hand.

The trim reset is not an RL thing; it is provided for you because you do not have an FFB stick basically.

Your going to tell me the on visor trim display doesn't appear when you press ctrl+enter on the sharks qwerty now aren't you! :D

I am, I am! :D

There is, I have it bound to my HOTAS as a shift state, can't remember what is it is off hand.

Could be a misunderstanding, I was trying to convey that while in flight trim reset 'can' be done, however it prolly shan't be done. Still not sure though.

Could be a misunderstanding, I was trying to convey that while in flight trim reset 'can' be done, however it prolly shan't be done. Still not sure though.

In the real aircraft, there is no trim reset.

Trim reset in the sim exists because PC controllers work very differently from real aircraft controls. So if you feel you've trimmed all the wrong way, you can revert to the initial trim position. The initial trim position basically keeps the DCS Ka-50 on the ground without moving forward/backward or anywhere else (strong winds my still try to push the aircraft around while at the ground with the inital trim).

So, when you're traveling at 220kph and have the aircraft more or less trimmed for level flight, trim reset would cause the heli to pitch up hard and probably bank to the right a little. Sure, you *can* reset the trim while in flight. But you shouldn't do it.

When I started flying the shark, I used trim reset a lot, because I was out of control. Once I started to get used to it, the usage of trim reset decreased over time. By now, I only use trim reset after successfull landings to check how far my ground-trim is away from initial trim. The closer they are, the better I get. It's a good way to check how far you've come at controlling the shark.

You can easily check on the position of the in-game flight controls with RightControl+Enter - with trim reset, they should be pretty much centered while in flight they can be located all over the place.