[ALL HELICOPTERS] "Nighthowler" -- Dynamic Night-Time Landing Trainer

[cfrag]

Version - 20230107 

Download: please click here

"Nighthowler" returns you to Senaki and Batumi to train helicopter landings - at night time. Low light means high adrenaline, and a few other challenges. Your callsign still is 'Lawnmower' - you'll have to earn that "Nighthowler" rating from Central.

So you graduated from "Lawnmower" school, and perhaps also aced in "Sea Flea's" Naval Ops. Now you are ready for another challenge in your helicopter: going back to Lawnmower School - at night. So, grab your night vision goggles, and step onto the flight line, pilot. It's late at night, the moon is out, and we are good to go. Start your helicopter (all DCS controllable helicopters supported), and see if you can survive the night: become a Nighthowler.

As before, you request landings from Central (via communications-->other). And as before, Central directs you to a starting location, and then assigns you a randomly generated (out of thousands of possibilities) LZ based on the difficulty you requested. If you've gone through "Lawnmower" school (recommended), you pretty much know what to expect.

Except - now it's dark. Pitch dark.

How to play
You begin each landing challenge over the lit 'T'-formation of vehicles, a short distance off the runway at Batumi or Senaki. Once you arrive over the 'T', the clock starts, and central gives you bearing and distance to your LZ, and a time limit to land in the LZ. Then you are on your own.

There's no way that your eyes (nor NVG) are good enough to spot the LZ, so thankfully, every LZ has a transmitter for your ADF to home in on: 450kHz or 252MHz are the frequencies that need to tune your comms to.
So you better brush up on your ADF skills, pilot - else you'll never make that time limit. When you get close to the LZ, you can request central to have the ground forces launch a flare so you can get a better fix on the location.

Each LZ is lit by vehicles (three on easy and normal difficulty, one on challenging), so there's sufficient light for you to make it down in one piece. Theoretically. Night flying is supremely scary, and correctly gauging your height is difficult - on a good day.

Once down, you'll receive a performance score based on accuracy, LZ and helicopter's difficulty and time taken to land. If you touch down outside the LZ, you score a zero. While you can blow the time limit on easy and normal difficulties, running over time in challenging wipes your score for that landing.

After five or more landings, central will also tell you what they think of your skills. Earning the "Nighthowler" rating is not easy. At all.

You have two areas to practice your night landing skills in, and you can freely switch between them:

• Senaki-Kolkhi
  Start here if you aren't an experienced night flyer. The LZ are less difficult to spot, and distances are mercifully short.
   
• Batumi
  When you think you have gotten good, find out if you are good enough. Batumi by night is a sight for sore eyes - and you'll get to see a lot of it. Easy landings are still as easy as, well, night landings in Senaki. The challenging ones will test your mettle. If you can regularly beat the time limit on challenging landings in Batumi, you'll probably have a shot at the "Nighthowler" rating from Central.  
  Also, for fun, you can try to land on the oil rig off the coast. Its localizer is at 121.5 MHZ (the international 'distress' frequency), which the Huey can't ADF to - but most others can.

Choosing a Difficulty (affects LZ size and time limit)
Whenever you request a landing exercise from central, you also tell them what difficulty level you want:

• Easy
  your landing zone will be mostly unobstructed, is huge, and can be approached fr om any direction. Breaking the generous time lim it has no penalties.
   
• Normal
  your landing zone may be partially obstructed. Landing Zone size is still generous. Time lim it is shorter but you have a higher score multiplier. Breaking the time limit has no penalties.
   
• Challenging
  your landing zone is virtually guaranteed to be obstructed from at least one side, and usually there are obstacles (trees, buildings, vehicles, power lines) close by and may extend into your LZ. Size of the LZ is what you would expect in real-life extraction missions. Time lim it is harsh, and breaking the limit will reduce the entire score to zero. On the other hand, there is a big score multiplier - if you can make.

Tips:
- set your ADF to 450kHZ/252 MHz early.
- when you start up, you helicopter is tuned to the local (Senaki or Batumi) "T"'s localizer (beep-beep-pause)
- your helicopter should have presets to the local "T" and LZ in pre-sets 1 and 2
- always, ALWAYS request flares when you close in
- If you are using NVG make sure you have an easy way to adjust gain
- This mission truly shines in VR. Or rather, um, darkens.

Helicopter difficulty (affects score):
Ka-50 (easiest)
UH-1
OH-85 Kiowa
SA-324
AH-64
Mi-24 Hind
Mi-8 (hardest)

TL;DR: What should I do?
Contact Central via the Communication->F10 Other menu, and request landing exercises. Complete at least 5 successful landings.

Available Nav Aids:
LZ (all): 450 KHz, 252 MHz
NDB Senaki "T" 1.1 MHz, 250 MHz
NDB Batumi "T" 0.95 MHz, 262  MHz
 

Credit/Acknowledgements:
Based on a request/idea from @Tess

Happy landings!

-ch

 

Edited June 6, 2024 by cfrag

[AdrianL]

On 1/8/2023 at 9:42 PM, cfrag said:

Happy landings!

Any chance this will be updated to add the Kiowa?

[cfrag]

13 minutes ago, AdrianL said:

Any chance this will be updated to add the Kiowa?

Very good chances, now that you asked

 

Edited June 6, 2024 by cfrag

[cfrag]

Version 20240606 - "Kiowa"

- 'nuff said

Enjoy,

-ch