Transitioning to and from Hover for Dummies?

[The_Chugster]

24 minutes ago, UncleStains said:

I recall learning this and thinking it was impossible and I had made a huge mistake getting involved in cartoon helicopters. Here's what I did....think about it as a series of steps. As you practice the steps get smaller and it becomes a smooth curve. Practice with cruise symbology up so it's easier to reference pitch angle. I'd also recommend taking no weapons and full fuel. That's enough weight to steady twitchy movements without getting close to your out of ground effect hover limits.

To slow down, first pitch back to about +5 degrees. This makes your nose go up and you start gaining altitude. Counter that by lowering the collective. Hold that +5 degree attitude with the cyclic and use the collective to get your vertical speed back to zero. Once you're stable there, pitch back a little more to +7.5 degrees. Counter your now-increasing altitude with another reduction in collective.

Now it gets tricky. As your airspeed approaches the translational lift limit your vertical speed will start going negative. Now start pulling the collective back up to counter this sinking. Keep managing vertical speed with the collective while you use the cyclic to nose down back to +5 degrees. This +5 degrees is the Apache's hover attitude (it happens to be exactly the same as the Apache's attitude when sitting on the ground). Eventually you'll be sitting at zero airspeed and zero vertical speed.

Now while all of this is happening, you need to balance your collective movements with pedal movements. Pull the collective, left pedal....lower the collective...right pedal. Eventually it becomes automatic and you'll find yourself moving your feet in anticipation of those collective movements.

It's not easy, but with practice it's definitely possible. As virtual pilots, we don't get the feedback of feeling the horizontal and vertical acceleration. This means you really have to stay ahead and anticipate what each control movement is going to do to your attitude/altitude/heading/speed and make the necessary adjustments to the other controls to compensate. 

Cheers, some actual directions I can follow.

I know I just need to practice but its not always easy, the choppers are the Dark Souls of DCS

[The_Chugster]

36 minutes ago, cw4ogden said:

Here: is the most dumbed down primer I can offer you in lieu of you doing your own homework:
As you transition from forward flight to a hover initially you need to dump the collective because the upflow from tilting your rotor disk into a decelerative attitude will make you climb if you don't Anticipate it and correct for it.  

As you transition from above ETL(effective translational lift) to below ETL that upflow transitions from an upflow driving your rotor system to an induced flow, i.e. down thru your rotor system which causes you to now need lots of collective as you transition to a hover, the most inefficient and most power demanding state of flight for a helo.

So initially as you slow down, drop the collective.  At around 30-35 knots start to bring it back in slowly to compensate for the inefficiency of hovering flight.  
There's a lot more going on aerodynamically, but based on your post this is the most immediate thing to wrap your head around.  Decelerating is causing you to NOT need power followed by a huge power demand as you drop below ETL.  The slower you make the deceleration process, the easier it is to control power.  

A VMC approach to a hover is one of the hardest basic tasks there is in helo flying.  

Seems to me like you want to go from novice to competent helo pilot, but you don't want to do the bookwork.  There are reasons the aircraft is doing what it is doing, that until you understand, you can only react to.  You need to be ahead of the aircraft, not behind it.  And until you know why it's doing what it's doing, you can only react.  Familiarize yourself with some basic rotary wing flight principles, specifically the numerous sources out there specifically on the topic of "transitioning to and from hovering flight".  You are complaining you can't easily do something that's very hard.  If you're just here for everyone to pull out their violin and play the helicopter flying is hard song, we get it.  


 

 

Insulting me isnt really the best way to go is it? Not a friendly, community based approach is it?

Look we all have different levels of what we want to get out of these sims, first and foremost they are meant to be FUN, if I want to learn ALL the ins and outs of flying a helicopter I will go do it in the real world. Sims are supposed to let you do things you CANT in the real world.

And I WASNT looking for a shortcut, I was just looking for some easy to follow starting tips to reduce my frustration whilst I try to learn, which UncleStains and yourself provided, although the former didn't include unnecessary attutude

[cw4ogden]

1 minute ago, The_Chugster said:

Insulting me isnt really the best way to go is it? Not a friendly, community based approach is it?

Look we all have different levels of what we want to get out of these sims, first and foremost they are meant to be FUN, if I want to learn ALL the ins and outs of flying a helicopter I will go do it in the real world. Sims are supposed to let you do things you CANT in the real world.

And I WASNT looking for a shortcut, I was just looking for some easy to follow starting tips to reduce my frustration whilst I try to learn, which UncleStains and yourself provided, although the former didn't include unnecessary attutude

Fair enough.  My apologies, you are exactly right, I let my emotions regarding some non DCS <profanity> taint my response to you.  I'm sorry for that. 

There aren't a lot of shortcuts and you seemed to be wanting one, but I get your point.  Glad UncleStains suggestions and to a lesser extent mine helped.  My perception was you seemed to be asking for a magic solution to a complex task that people spend years mastering.  But that's no excuse either so again, sorry for the tone of my other reply.  

[admiki]

45 minutes ago, The_Chugster said:

 

Look we all have different levels of what we want to get out of these sims, first and foremost they are meant to be FUN, if I want to learn ALL the ins and outs of flying a helicopter I will go do it in the real world. Sims are supposed to let you do things you CANT in the real world.

You have 100k to throw at it? Good for you.

You are correct, this is a SIM and it should be fun. But that does not mean you can just jump in and be an expert. That's what makes it a SIM.

To get to the fun level, you have to put in some work. You said it yourself, it's frustrating. It is frustrating for you because you have no idea why it is doing whatever it is doing. If you don't want to put work in, it's fine, but then you can expect to get a snarky response from time to time. Believe it or not, you are not the first person that asks this exact kind of questions.

[UncleStains]

5 hours ago, The_Chugster said:

Cheers, some actual directions I can follow.

I know I just need to practice but its not always easy, the choppers are the Dark Souls of DCS

Yeah, it's all just practice and building muscle memory. Focus on getting from 120 kts to 40 kts while maintaining constant altitude. Once you have that mastered, start getting slower.

As you progress, try to stay in aerodynamic trim (ball centered) above 40 knots then switch to nose-to-tail trim (flight path vector in front of aircraft nose) as you come to a stop. Do all this practice over an airport so you can easily gauge your heading and ground track. Next, find some hills or buildings and practice stopping in a hover while masked behind them.

Once your airspeed is down to around 10 kts, start watching your ground speed. When ground speed is 5 or less and your nose is +5 degrees, switch on attitude hold. Then stabilize your vertical speed and switch on altitude hold.

One more tip, the ground/hover attitude of +5 degrees also happens to be the 40 kts attitude. 

[Floyd1212]

Here's a video I just made that might help.  I've got the Controls Indicator shown on screen so you can see my inputs.  (Apologies for the low volume on my mic.)