reported On Vortex Ring State from active Mi-8 instructor

[cw4ogden]

On 10/23/2021 at 11:37 AM, Snappy said:

Ok, @Ramsay& @Art-J,

thank you both for your helpful and quick replies! Guess we just have to wait until ED gets around to addressing this, if ever.

kind regards,

 Snappy 

I started the thread with hopes it wouldn’t get implemented in the mi-24 module the way it is in the mi-8.

and this thread is only half the argument, the other half was on the Russian language forums, and honestly, about 1/3rd of those guys were some flaming dicks.  I gave the hell up rather than keep trying to revive the dead horse.  
 

I’ll provide an example of how painful it was: argue argue argue with Russian “expert” only to have same Russian expert ask me privately in P.M. what is ETL?  We don’t have this concept in Russia.  Lol

Quite honestly, after picking apart their subject matter expert’s rudimentary understanding of VRS, I was somewhat surprised to not get a job offer .

The error i found in my testing, yes it was a mistake, but it was honestly just an easy way to bow out of a three month long argument that ate hours everyday and added unneeded stress to my life.  
 

The problem is the Russian testers don’t see it as a bug.  It’s no surprise seeing a perfectly good mi-8 succumb to VRS in some random real life video, it’s sad for sure.  But when you see crash after crash with pilots not even attempting the corrective actions, you gotta wonder if their training program and lack of institutional knowledge of the topic is somehow to blame?
 

The other reason I conceded the debate is: it’s damn close to being right.  It’s not off by much.  A slight tweak would nail it.  But given my error, I couldn’t confidently continue to claim the subtle thing I was describing was a bug, or possibly an actual characteristic of the hip.
 

And by the time I found my error, I just needed an excuse to bow out.  It Would have been way less humiliating to vanish into the anonymity of the internet.  Was very tempting to leave the thread dangling in hopes my pages and pages and pages of arguing wouldn’t be thrown out the window because of a flaw in my setup conditions.  

 

I got many P.M. from other pilots not wanting to join the debate; saying, “I agree with everything you’re saying, I fly XYZ helicopter doing logging in real life and no way you get into VRS under dcs mi-8 conditions.”
 

bottom line:  I don’t know if mi-8 is a VRS death trap, because I’ve never flown one.  But all the anecdotal evidence points to it being over modeled.  
 

Someone still needs to find the smoking gun and show it to ED.  I tried, and was rewarded with a virtual lynching for it.

[sLYFa]

I've empirically demonstrated the issue in the russian bug thread by comparing VRS onset in DCS against RW data. But none of that mattered since devs apparently dont read that forum anymore. Those who do are mostly people who are so up their a**es for having real world experience that they dont bother trying to comprehend any post that goes beyond basic handling or I/O issues. I had a guy responding to me by writing two A4 pages of where and how to start learning aerodynamics, obviously not spending even a second on trying to comprehend my posts. It was beyond ridiculous and surely not a language problem (I am a native russian speaker). The sad thruth is that the Mi-8 FM will not change unless ED decides to go for a paid upgrade similar to BS3.

[Snappy]

That’s too bad.

sorry to hear that it’s been such a frustrating experience for you both. I’m not too happy with the way ED basically abandons their old modules , at least to a large extent..

Snappy

[BaD CrC]

There is no doubt the Mi-8 is particularly prone to VRS compared to the other choppers in DCS (although I am getting reports that the 24 is also a good candidate but I don't have enough flight time on her yet to say it from my own experience). Steep approaches in tight LZ with the 8 are always a nerve wracking time for me, more than doing it with the underpowered UH-1H. But does it mean that there is a problem with the Mi-8 or the other choppers do not correctly model VRS and Settling with Power? Can t say. Some of our IRL pilots in the squad (not Mi-8 pilots though, so pinch of salt) suspects the VRS for the Mi-8 has been slightly over modeled because their own experience with AH-64, UH-60 or OH-58 suggests it is much harder to get into VRS with those choppers. But yeah, an UH-60 is not an Mi-8.

So at the end of the day, VRS is avoidable and recoverable with the DCS Mi-8 after a bit of practice, but the principle is simple (hover and high decent rate is bad). It doesn't bother me that much about whether it is realistic or not as it spices things up when flying this module and it is also a nice tool to introduce the concept of VRS and settling with power to the new guys.