I think I'm still in love.

[BFBunny]

Not played for 8 months due to a computer malfunction selling all the bits in a 'I don't want to play games' move.

 

Just built a new PC and only have 1 game. DCS on it. Heck, it's winter here in the UK. The girls all have their clothes on and the sun is mostly rain.

 

Anyway. I managed to take off just fine in it remembering the bias to turn right and then spent 15 mins smashing it into the floor as I forgot how to land it.

Decided to put it back on the deck and try landing in stages, smaller to bigger till high in the scary air.

30 min later I'd done about 10 landings and broken one skid. I did a few more landings with the broken skid before I noticed my hour I'd allowed had finished. It flashed by in a few seconds.

Full concentration. Full immersion. Such fun just to fly this thing and I did not even leave the air port or fire the guns I had loaded!

So I thought I'd try a combat landing and smashed it into the deck!:doh:

 

As much as I love the huey I'm interested to know the right way to do a combat landing from altitude. I learnt the secret rule that if you got below 50% collective for too long you drop out of the sky like a stone!

 

How fast can this thing come in at I'll be changing the curve on the throttle to get more fine control over the mid collective range where it seems you need to be super gentle.

 

I also re-learnt pretty fast to look out of the windows to judge the ground rather than the instruments.

 

Also why does the knots meter go to 0 even when you're moving. Sorry, I understand you need an air cushion and the collective controls the blades attitude into the wind and to move you're rotors are basically acting as rotating wings to chop through the air.

 

Anyway, any other tips welcome.

[0xDEADBEEF]

I know it sounds very boring, but choppers are very much about procedures. Procedures teach you to clean out your control inputs, to smoothen your decsent. Slow is fast. If you can't do a smooth and nice touchdown, you wont be able to do a smooth combad landing.

 

Slowly decrease your airspeed, don't forget to put the stick a little forward before you come to a complete stop. Maintain a steady sinkrate of 500fpm. When to cockpit starts to shake be prepared to add more power with the collective. Once you hear the turbine power up be prepared to add some left-pedal which you will have to compensate a little with left cyclic. Dial these movements in until you don't make any move that you have to counter-correct.

 

No airspeed-indicator will show you speeds below 20kias, this is normal behaviour. I usually slowly start adding power when the speed drops below 30kias, the earlier you do this, the sooner the engines will deliver it when its demanded. If you do a full-speed approach you will take all the energy into the rotor, leaving your engine at low rpm. You will bleed the energy in your blades faster than your engine can rev-up which will be confirmed by a nice beeping audible-rpm warning.

 

The more you practice on smoothing out this process, the smoother your landings will become.

 

this is a very good resource about basic chopper maneuvers. Once you master those you can move on: http://www.copters.com/pilot/maneuvers.html

 

By the way I recommend trying blueflag online. It has a ridiculous amount of stuff to do for choppers. From SAR (picking up real downed pilots) over sling-loading sam sites to capturing enemy bases with troop transport. You wont be bored for a long time.

 

beef

[BFBunny]

Awesome. Will try that server sounds like great fun.

 

I managed to get the kinda get the hang of landings in the end again and actually end up where I wanted to be rather than where it wanted to land.

 

People want to fly with me, but I was a bit scared :helpsmilie: Typing and flying are a little hard at the moment.

 

Just need to tune my curves to help smooth out my ham fists.

 

Getting there. I only tend to crash when I ignore procedure.

 

Good times.

[javelina1]

Install this sound mod, you'll love your whirlybird even more!

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=159801&highlight=skullz

[WildBillKelsoe]

in Norman Bailey's book, he describes a scan pattern for checking instruments and outside view. I highly recommend you get his volume 1.

 

As far as landing, your best indicator is the vertical velocity indicator, and its best to keep all touchdowns below 100 feet per minute. With practice, this gets second nature.

[Flamin_Squirrel]

Smooth is indeed a good way to start.

 

For landings, begin with shallow approaches as if you were flying fixed wing. Gradually bleed off speed as you near your touchdown point.

 

The falling out of the sky thing is VRS (vortex ring state), which occurs if you descend into your own downwash. You can avoid it two ways:

 

1) Ensure it's blown away by air speed (this can be in a hover if the wind is strong enough.

2) If downwash is below you, ensure descent is slow enough that you don't catch up with the downwash.

 

The discussion on curves has proven contraversial. Some people swear by them, personally I prefer having none at all. It makes the helo twitchy in the hover, but helos ARE twitchy in the hover :thumbup:

[Rogue Trooper]

I think there should be no reason to add curves on the collective as the average throw of most throttle sticks is accurate enough for collective control. A real collective throw would be better and hopefully in the near future I will know the difference... but generally a standard Hotas should be fine. What Hotas do you have OP?

 

When you say combat landing do you mean straight down in confined space or a clear run in and run out of a Hot LZ?

[WildBillKelsoe]

http://www.amazon.com/Helicopter-Pilots-Manual-Vol-Principles-ebook/dp/B00N01TTJY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1455690969&sr=8-1&keywords=norman+bailey+helicopter+volume+1

[Ashilta]

Anyway. I managed to take off just fine in it remembering the bias to turn right...

 

...

 

As much as I love the huey I'm interested to know the right way to do a combat landing from altitude. I learnt the secret rule that if you got below 50% collective for too long you drop out of the sky like a stone!

 

How fast can this thing come in at I'll be changing the curve on the throttle to get more fine control over the mid collective range where it seems you need to be super gentle.

 

Also why does the knots meter go to 0 even when you're moving. Sorry, I understand you need an air cushion and the collective controls the blades attitude into the wind and to move you're rotors are basically acting as rotating wings to chop through the air

 

Ahoy,

 

I've snipped a few bits from your post just to focus on what I want to talk about much much of the content is there. Firstly, I'm pleased that you've re-kindled your love of DCS and that we've another rotorhead in the community with the forethought to ask for help; Helicopters are complicated beasts!

 

Firstly, let's talk about 'the bias to turn right,' It's actually a consequence of your rotor spinning, in that one of Newton's laws says that 'every action must have an equal and opposite reaction.' As a result, whatever force you put into turning the rotor is equalled by an torque reaction that forces your airframe to spin in the other direction. Ergo, in your anti-clockwise spinning Huey, the airframe will yaw clockwise. Newton also teaches us that 'an object remains at rest or in uniform motion until a resulting force acts upon it.' In this case, the resultant force is your tail rotor, which thrusts to counteract the yaw of the helicopter. The anti-torque (not rudder) pedals in your helicopter change the pitch of the blades (they are essentially another collective) in the tail rotor, increasing or decreasing the thrust produced by them. This is how we stop the beast from spinning.

 

As Deadbeef alluded to, slow is fast, but also earlier is better. Much of flying a Helicopter well is about anticipating what's about to happen and reacting to it before it happens. Your 50% collective rule is a myth; it is perfectly acceptable for you to drop the level all the way down mid flight - it's called autorotation. What you're probably not doing, however, is pulling back on the cyclic to cause the blades to 'collect' air as you move forwards and downwards. In your normal attitude, you'll be slicing through the air and pushing it behind you, however if the blades are flat (reduced pitch from the collective being down) then you'll actually not collect any air, hence the plummeting you described. You'll also find that you'll overspeed the rotors which introduces you to a whole new world of pain...

 

How fast can this thing come in? Never exceed Vne (Velocity never exceed; max speed of the aircraft) but with the appropriate skills you can stop within 50m from this speed. You'll get there one day, but this is ambitious.

 

Your airspeed indicator works by determining how much pressure is being forced into a tube on the front of your aircraft. Once the pressure gets below a certain point, the pressure can't be measured, ergo no airspeed indication.

 

You mentioned your 'air cushion', but I'm not 100% sure what you think it means. The closest thing is what we call 'ground effect', which is essentially caused by the build up of air underneath your rotor causing a higher pressure environment. As you're resting on that pressure, you need less thrust to hover the helicopter. In ground effect, the air that your rotor forces downwards is disappointed across the ground more quickly than at high altitude, and so getting into vortex ring state becomes nigh on impossible.

 

Whilst we're talking about VRS, As Flamin_Squirrel pointed out, VRS is caused by you catching up with the air you've forced downwards. You need three things to get into Vortex Ring State: Slow forward airspeed, a high rate of descent and a lot of 'power' (high blade angle). Eliminate any one of these things and you should never get into VRS. However if you see the incipient stages of VRS (high power, high rate of descend, slow forward airspeed, helicopters threatening to kill you), drop the collective, but the beast on its nose and when you've built some forward airspeed back, slowly bring the collective back in.

 

Finally, a note on nomenclature: The lever to the left of your seat is called the 'collective' because it collectively changes the angle of your rotor blades. The stick between your legs is called the 'cyclic', because as the blade rotates, the pitch of your blades is changed one after the other (cyclically!) to introduce changes in attitude.

 

Hope this helps...

[Flamin_Squirrel]

Good point, I should have added high power.

 

This is, incidently, why approaches should be made fairly shallow (at least at first). A steep approach has you setup for 2 of the 3 VRS precursors (high descent rate, low forward airspeed). All that's left is to add power when you near the ground and you get the third; the crash follows shortly after!

[WildBillKelsoe]

A very good practice with UH-1H is to establish a reference point in relation to the instrument panel in front of you. The process is repeatable so you just need to get the initial altitude right, and the speed right and the distance right. Helper gates are really your friends.