The joys of NOE mode...

[Hootman9104]

Flying around tonight I was making good use of a mode that probably most pilots ignore in the AH-64, "Nap of Earth" (NOE).

It can be enabled in the FMC controls in the MPD utility menu located at the bottom of the list of the SCAS "ON/OFF" buttons.

The guide describes it as follows:
"NOE/A. Activates FMC nap of earth/approach mode. In NOE/approach 
mode, the horizontal stabilator is commanded to 25° trailing edge down 
when airspeed is below 80 knots. This provides better over-the-nose 
visibility for low-altitude flying.

It's really helpful hovering around slow around the trees and during approaches, and trying to finagle the aircraft into hover mode.

If you haven't been using this neat ability or playing around with it, I encourage you to do so. I find it very useful.

For those of you with Voiceattack, I even programmed a little macro in VA to quickly enable and disable NOE quickly, just a matter of telling it to push 3 buttons on the MPD. I have each button programmed to a voice commands (Left MPD or Right MPD and the corresponding buttons (such as the M button, the WPN button, or just buttons called out by location, so to press the Left MPD Bottom 6 button, I say "Left MPD B6"). Then I just use my voice activated macro to press the three buttons to enable/disable NOE by saying "N O E on", and the button pushes are executed and I'm in NOE mode without even looking or fumbling around in the MPD menu.

I also added in the Voiceattack macro to have Microsoft Zira Desktop Voice to tell me it's enabled and a short beep.

Execute command, 'Left MPD M'; (and wait until it completes)
Execute command, 'Left MPD B6; (and wait until it completes)
Execute command, 'Left MPD L6; (and wait until it completes)
Play sound,'internal:Bedebeep'
Say, 'Nap of earth flight enabled'

Takes about 1 second to turn it on or off.

Enjoy!

[bradmick]

We don't use it in the real aircraft because it will perform its intended function during a critical phase of flight when you've forgotten you turned it on. This will lead to the pilot believing there's been a malfunction when there wasn't one and react accordingly (read poorly). It's super easy to just manually drive the nose down when you need the increased visibility over the nose and then reset the stab by just z-axis'ing (pushing) the stabilator button and returning it to auto. We actually actively discourge the use of the NOE/A mode because it's to easy (and better) to achieve the same effect manually.

Edited July 11, 2024 by bradmick

[Hootman9104]

16 hours ago, bradmick said:

We don't use it in the real aircraft because it will perform its intended function during a critical phase of flight when you've forgotten you turned it on. This will lead to the pilot believing there's been a malfunction when there wasn't one and react accordingly (read poorly). It's super easy to just manually drive the nose down when you need the increased visibility over the nose and then reset the stab by just z-axis'ing (pushing) the stabilator button and returning it to auto. We actually actively discourge the use of the NOE/A mode because it's to easy (and better) to achieve the same effect manually.

 

Makes sense. It certainly acts funky if you leave it on and drop speed to where it comes into play, you quickly become aware it's on with the nose drop. We had no such setting on the H-60. Manual stabilator slew switch down on the center console but that was never used.

I do find it easier getting into hover mode and slow rolling through the trees though.

Stabilators/Stabilizers can be a downer, literally. I was at Bragg when the H-60's had the issue with EMI back in the mid 1980's, nosediving in causing a few crashes. They restricted us to 80 knots for a couple of months until they modified and put in the now-standard stabilator slew pinky switch on the cyclic and eventually shielded the wiring. kudos to the Sikorsky folks for coming up with that fairly quick, I can only imagine the pressure they were under for a fix. Of course the Navy already HAD their 60's shielded due to their operating environment. And following their normal procedure, the Army denied there was an EMI problem for quite some time.

It was terrible flying around at 80 knots, the aircraft wallowed around, I was in the A Troop 1/17th Cav (Same unit as Casmo) and at the time we had H-60's, AH-1's, and H-58 (A models) in each Troop. During those two months the AH-1 guys were non-stop on the radio giving us a hard time about creeping along like a turtle, which I guess was fair given the years of comments going the other direction.

[TheGhostOfDefi]

On 7/11/2024 at 10:52 AM, bradmick said:

We don't use it in the real aircraft because it will perform its intended function during a critical phase of flight when you've forgotten you turned it on. This will lead to the pilot believing there's been a malfunction when there wasn't one and react accordingly (read poorly). It's super easy to just manually drive the nose down when you need the increased visibility over the nose and then reset the stab by just z-axis'ing (pushing) the stabilator button and returning it to auto. We actually actively discourge the use of the NOE/A mode because it's to easy (and better) to achieve the same effect manually.

 

Die you use the manual Stab instead or at all?

[corbu1]

I remember first time I had noe mode accidentally activated flying low and reducing speed below 80 kts….I was nearly running into the virtual DCS ground when the nose popped down….

[Raptor9]

8 hours ago, TheGhostOfDefi said:

Die you use the manual Stab instead or at all?

Yes. With the Manual stabilator controls you have the advantages of being able to adjust the stabilator to the angle you want, and the switch is already under your thumb when you are holding onto the the Flight grip on the collective, allowing immediate adjustment or reverting to Automatic mode.

On the other hand, NOE/A mode requires you to either take your hand off the collective or use the cursor controls to access the UTIL page on either MPD just to enable or disable NOE/A mode, and it is fixed to 25 degrees trailing edge down with no other angle selection or adjustment. NOE/A probably sounded like a good idea on paper, but it is essentially redundant compared to the Manual stabilator controls on the collective, not to mention it is restrictive and under some conditions can interfere with the pilot's desired inputs.

[bradmick]

10 hours ago, TheGhostOfDefi said:

Die you use the manual Stab instead or at all?

I personally use man stab all the time in reality. It’s super useful, especially when I configure my crewstation for comfort and drop my seat.

[SunDown]

Played around with the manual stab at slow speeds today. Pretty nice not to have to look over the nose all the time. Thanks for the topic.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Hootman9104]

On 7/12/2024 at 4:10 PM, Raptor9 said:

Yes. With the Manual stabilator controls you have the advantages of being able to adjust the stabilator to the angle you want, and the switch is already under your thumb when you are holding onto the the Flight grip on the collective, allowing immediate adjustment or reverting to Automatic mode.

On the other hand, NOE/A mode requires you to either take your hand off the collective or use the cursor controls to access the UTIL page on either MPD just to enable or disable NOE/A mode, and it is fixed to 25 degrees trailing edge down with no other angle selection or adjustment. NOE/A probably sounded like a good idea on paper, but it is essentially redundant compared to the Manual stabilator controls on the collective, not to mention it is restrictive and under some conditions can interfere with the pilot's desired inputs.

TBH I'm not sure I had noticed there was a manual slew on the H-64 like the H-60, but the 60 it's a manual switch on the stab control panel on the lower console (the pinky switch for emergencies).  I just didn't notice it on the collective nor would I have thought to look for it there. If it existed I think I assumed it would be a panel switch. 

Learn something new every day.

I'll look at setting that on my HOTAS and giving it a go. Not sure how I missed that doing all my programming of the HOTAS.

And yes SunDown, it can be handy, but listening to Raptor kinda sounds like it was a take it or leave it method based on each pilots given preference. I do find taking the stab out of auto operating slow on top of the trees to be beneficial in my case. And I can certainly understand people not wanting to fiddle with it. As noted with the issues with the 60's we had in the 80's, we got pretty scared for a while flying low level at speed. When the fix was the DynCorp teams coming around putting the pinky switches in to release us from the 80 knot restriction, we kind of looked at it and said "that's it?". I can't remember how long it took to actually do the mods with improved Stab Amps in the aft cabin and the shielded wiring, but it wasn't overnight, that much I recall.

[BIGNEWY]

A reminder to all please do not post from real world manuals here on our forum. 

thank you 

[Hootman9104]

15 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

A reminder to all please do not post from real world manuals here on our forum. 

thank you 

Oops...my bad