EXPLANATION Why does the APACHE correctly roll to the left !

[Floyd1212]

There have been discussions in other threads about how unstable the aircraft is when side-slipping at high speed, especially when combined with aggressive pedal inputs.  Any chance you were doing something crazy trying to avoid an incoming missile?  That's when it seems to happen to me at least.

[key_stroked]

Is this going to get fixed soon? Still happening.

[CHPL]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb key_stroked:

Is this going to get fixed soon? Still happening.

If we rely on the judgment of RL Apache pilots, it is not normal behavior, at least not to this extent.
It is, therefore, to be hoped that this will be changed and adjusted. 

Currently, however, the last update has changed a lot more to the negative, which is expected during the test phase in which the Apache is. 
Only ED can answer when changes to the flight model will be made, and they are very cautious in this regard. 

Ultimately, it is also a question of priority and resources. 
Most Apache pilots are focused on weapon systems, and the flight model is secondary. Missile evasion? Which missiles? I know this from our group, where the Apache frowns on enemy air defense. 
If it were a BO-105 flying like this, the thread would be overflowing. 

[BIGNEWY]

1 hour ago, CHPL said:

If we rely on the judgment of RL Apache pilots, it is not normal behavior, at least not to this extent.
It is, therefore, to be hoped that this will be changed and adjusted. 

Currently, however, the last update has changed a lot more to the negative, which is expected during the test phase in which the Apache is. 
Only ED can answer when changes to the flight model will be made, and they are very cautious in this regard. 

Ultimately, it is also a question of priority and resources. 
Most Apache pilots are focused on weapon systems, and the flight model is secondary. Missile evasion? Which missiles? I know this from our group, where the Apache frowns on enemy air defense. 
If it were a BO-105 flying like this, the thread would be overflowing. 

There were no changes made to the AH-64D flight model. 

As soon as the team are ready they will make the changes and it will be in the change log 

thanks

[Raptor9]

2 hours ago, CHPL said:

Ultimately, it is also a question of priority and resources. 
Most Apache pilots are focused on weapon systems, and the flight model is secondary.

This is not true at all. The flight model and FMC logic has been perhaps the highest priority in terms of the "feedback->adjustment->feedback" cycle even prior to the initial release of the module. However, it is the most difficult aspect to simulate accurately.

It is relatively quite simple to quantify the logic of say the TSD page, which is fairly complex with a lot of depth, compared to modeling the flight characteristics of the AH-64D. When you couple all the aspects of the powertrain, moments of inertia, FMC logic, and SCAS response, some of which are quite ambiguous topics to quantify, this is the most difficult aspect of the DCS AH-64D. However, just because it isn't as finalized as some of the other aspects of the DCS AH-64D does not mean it is a lower priority to get right (quite the opposite in fact); it is simply the most difficult, the degree of which cannot be understated.

[admiki]

1 hour ago, Raptor9 said:

This is not true at all. The flight model and FMC logic has been perhaps the highest priority in terms of the "feedback->adjustment->feedback" cycle even prior to the initial release of the module. However, it is the most difficult aspect to simulate accurately.

He did not mean it is low priority to you guys, he means to player base.

And he does have a point. At Black Shark Den, maybe the largest pure RW DCS community, I have not met a new pilot that told me he does not know to shot HF. Yet 80/85% could not hold a hover worth of ****.

[CHPL]

@Raptor9 @BIGNEWY
Thanks for the fast reply, guys.   
It is one of the unsolved mysteries why a module changes behavior after an update, even if it has received no changes. 

I can only speak from my own experience that it initially felt better, and unfortunately, this changed again after the last major update.
It is not only the complexity of the modules but also the variety of hardware combinations that sometimes have a positive and sometimes a negative effect.
I can only repeat that. This is not a criticism of ED but only an attempt to see the own perception confirmed or refuted.
So much the better, and thank you again when an explicit statement comes from you. However, this does not change the personal impression that everyone gets about his particular system.

@admiki Hey miki
Thanks for covering my back 
I hope you are doing well.

[NeedzWD40]

8 hours ago, admiki said:

Yet 80/85% could not hold a hover worth of ****.

Do they just fly around at altitude in forward flight all the time or what?

[admiki]

8 hours ago, NeedzWD40 said:

Do they just fly around at altitude in forward flight all the time or what?

They manage to hover after a while. Point is, to most of people that fly Apache or Hind (or any fixed wing) is more important to learn how to kill something than the nuances of flying the thing itself. Only after they are satisfied how good they are in shooting at something do they venture into learning the systems and how to fly it.

[CHPL]

@NeedzWD40
 

I can only repeat this over and over again. Flying a helicopter in DCS is much more complicated than in real life, at least for those who don't use VR. Many pilots have difficulties in DCS.
So, in any case, it is an achievement to hover or take off or land, and it looks good.

For at least 99% of us, it's about the fun and the good feeling you get in DCS, whether it's because you can successfully control a machine or you've sent 200 virtual opponents to hell in 15 minutes. Others are happy about every successful air rescue. How weird is that?
When it comes to proper control of the aircraft, however, hardly anyone in DCS would come close to meeting the requirements for a private pilot license. But except for those who want a PHPL or professional license, hardly anyone is interested in this aspect.
For the 1%, some things are, therefore, quite frustrating, which others do not notice at all. And I can only repeat this again and again. ED does a fantastic job. The UH-1, the Mi8, and the Mi-24 feel damn realistic. However, the Apache is still in development, and as the guys at ED have made clear, that takes time, and the flight model is just damn hard to implement on the PC.

Why, and this also seems to be the case with the Gazelle, the development goes from unrealistic hard to realistic and not from unrealistic easy to realistic, I don't understand. There may be technical reasons for this, but it may also be due to the demands of the developers, who rightly do not regard their work as a game.

Not to be excluded entirely, as I have never flown an Apache, is that the aircraft really has such poor flight characteristics below 50 knots. Obviously, the version that ED converted to DCS was underpowered, but that alone can't be it.

[CHPL]

Am 31.1.2023 um 16:05 schrieb Floyd1212:

There have been discussions in other threads about how unstable the aircraft is when side-slipping at high speed, especially when combined with aggressive pedal inputs.  Any chance you were doing something crazy trying to avoid an incoming missile?  That's when it seems to happen to me at least.

I have only now discovered the question in your post. 

Using pedals at high speeds (>50 knots) is relatively pointless due to the airflow on the fuselage and the weather-vane effect this creates. On the contrary, in the case of the right pedal in the APACHE, it costs a lot of power, while in the case of the left pedal, it can quickly lead to severe attitude degradation.
In the case of a pure lateral movement, there are max. lateral speeds that are not very high, up to which the tail rotor is strong enough to control attitude, beyond which you lose control. Often, however, the pilot is also the limit. For example, the COMANCHE could have very high lateral speeds, but only because of the fly-by-wire control and the computer stabilized the attitude.
 
With the APACHE, I see the problem more in an immediate drop in rotor speed during somewhat harder maneuvers of any kind. As a result, this usually leads me to crash, at least when I operate near the ground or from cover. In my opinion, and I am not a technician, this does not fit the mass of the rotor system, which should react very slowly.
But as I said, this is my experience as a pilot, and I can't prove it physically.   

[Raptor9]

53 minutes ago, CHPL said:

In my opinion, and I am not a technician, this does not fit the mass of the rotor system, which should react very slowly.
But as I said, this is my experience as a pilot, and I can't prove it physically.   

Not all helicopters are equal. Some helicopters have high-inertia rotor systems, like the UH-1H, in which the rotor tends to spool up or down slowly. Others have low-inertia rotor systems, like the AH-64, in which the rotor can spool up or down quite quickly. Some helicopters have analog or limited engine fuel controllers where aggressive collective movements cannot be compensated quickly enough by the engine to maintain a constant rotor RPM, while other helicopters have sophisticated digital engine controllers that adjust the engine throttle in advance of detected collective inputs to ensure the response does not lag.

Due to its low-inertia rotor system, the AH-64's rotor RPMs can rapidly spool up and spool down during aggressive maneuvers that are not compensated for by collective adjustment, even with its digital engine controllers compensating for most rotor transients. Even with its advanced engine controllers, it is still possible to create a rotor overspeed and underspeed and then overspeed again within a few moments, if you know how to move the controls in such a way to get ahead of the engine responses. And these effects are not always due to the precision or accuracy of the engine controls, some of these are purely due to aerodynamic effects on the rotor system itself. Effects such as rotor coning, conservation of angular momentum, mushing, upflows, etc.

Having said that, the engine response to moderate to extreme collective or pedal applications in the AH-64D is a work-in-progress (sounding like a broken record), but the real AH-64 does have a low-inertia rotor system that can result in rapid transients of rotor RPMs during combat maneuvers if not compensated for by the pilot. Real aviators receive specific training in how to perform aggressive maneuvers without causing overspeed/underspeed events of the main rotor or causing an overtorque of the transmission. Such training isn't isolated to AH-64 aircrews either. Other combat aircrews in the UH-60, CH-47 and OH-58 (before it was retired) are trained in combat maneuvering flight so that they understand how their unique aircraft characteristics will behave when performing aggressive maneuvers in a combat situation.