Newcomer to the gazelle , is everything working alright?

[gmetzo]

I know that in the past several problems have surfaced with the Gazelle but Polychop improved it a lot with the completion of the Kiowa and the rework of the Gazelle. 

My question is : Is everything working alright or are there major bugs and problems I should know about? 

Personally I found that the autohover is not very reliable. It deviates over time. Is this something other users are experiencing or is it just me? 

Additionally I am flying with FFB using a modified Microsoft Sidewinder. The force trim on the helis that have force trim such as the UH1 and the Mi8 works fine. You press and hold the trimmer , you put the stick where you want it ( for example forwards for forward flight ) and off you go. 

In the gazelle I found that if I do that something weird happens and I lose stick authority. So I am flying forwards at 200kph manual , everything fine. I can pitch and I can roll. But if I trim the stick forwards for forward flight at 200kph when I try to pitch or roll nothing happens. In game stick moves. But no movement is gained. I tested this with autopilot off because I was suspecting something was wrong with the autopilot. Nope. 

Last but not least I can' seem to find a control option for moving the TV camera. I am forced to use " < > ? : " to move it. 

These are the things I noticed after a 2 hour session with the thing. 

[Tonker]

In short, it works. As I'm sure you've seen, there was talk of further improvements - it's an old model after all - and additions, including autopilot modes, but as things stand we'll be waiting for those until a new Polychop team forms around the Osprey assuming the future follows the same pattern as we saw around the Kiowa.

Autohover is a bit of a fudge, but does work as advertised. Things to be aware of:

• You must be in an accurate, stable, hover for it to engage correctly*
• This includes vertical speed**

*If you don't already, try setting the Artificial Horizon to DOP mode (rotary between torque indicator and volt meter on the right of the main panel) to give you crosshairs to follow into the hover.

** So be very gentle with the collective when popping up to make an attack etc

It's possible to trim out to a hover so well that many of us don't bother with the autohover in the first place...might be less frustrating!

TV Camera slew works bound to keys and/or axis (I have mine bound to a thumbstick on my controls). Can't remember the binds off the top of my head and I'm away from DCS atm, but it's there somewhere  Are you definitely in the 'SA-342 Copilot' control list?

Can't comment on FFB, sorry.

Chuck's Guide is still the go-to source:

https://assets.chucksguides.com/pdf/DCS SA-342 Gazelle Guide.pdf

 

HTH

Edited January 16 by Tonker

[Kozo1]

This is a few months old now, but I don't see much on the Gazelle so I figured I'd reply as I've been flying it quite a lot lately. I don't have FFB, so can't say anything about that. Regarding the auto-hover: I found it gets wonky at higher elevation. Anything above 50-100 meters AGL and it starts to glitch out, eventually losing it all together (especially over 100m). I've found it pretty stable at low elevations as long as you are gently on the collective and if you have the Heading Align (ALV) mode on, make slow changes to where the camera/periscope is pointing (e.g. keep it zoomed in, so the slewing is not too fast). So it is somewhat reliable. I guess it reliably fails on me just when I need it the most (getting a little high to catch that last target over a building or tree)... But still, I keep going back to it!

[kotor633]