Landing Skills

[Spider76]

Hi everybody,

i have a problem when trying to land because my landing skills are not so good:cry:.

when comes flight becomes landing i'am a flying brick trying to control my shark to

not getting into Vortex Ring or fighting my speed get down after that of course my

shark goes up etc and it all that go round in loop repeating my mistakes, get speed ok, get height ok, not in Vortex Ring checked, once do get landed, phew.. i landed jee..

the hole process is not fun to watch afterwards..or show my landing skills in MP game..:megalol:

 

have seen others do amazing landings so easily, so whats the catch in landing?

yep need help..:joystick:

[Dethmagnetic]

Practice, man, practice :smilewink:

 

Seriously though, when you are flight training and you are having trouble mastering a maneuver or a concept, it is usually because you haven't yet mastered the simpler maneuvers that make up the "building blocks" of the more complicated maneuver. If you are having trouble putting together a nice approach, the best thing to do is probably to work on the fundamentals - work on flying a constant heading at a constant altitude, flying parallel to a straight line, doing turns and rolling out on a specific heading without over/undershooting, rolling out from turns so that you are lined up with a landmark and don't need to correct your heading or horizontal position, etc. Once you've mastered those, start adding climbs and descents into the mix.

 

After that, the traffic pattern is easy, because all it is is flying a set of maneuvers you've already mastered. If you try to put together the more complicated maneuver without mastering the basics, every mistake you make gets multiplied, and you'll find yourself way behind the airplane.

 

You could also post a track and some of the more experienced people here could give you some feedback (I'm still learning to land the Ka-50 without staggering in like a drunken one-winged seagull).

[Lava]

Dethmagnetic said it first, practice! I find it pretty difficult to land properly! I still screw up a lot and I don't do it the 'right way'. Currently I creep in at low altitude and edge my way onto the pad slowly, never going fast or exceeding about -3m/s in vertical speed.

[Hunt3r.j2]

Hi everybody,

i have a problem when trying to land because my landing skills are not so good:cry:.

when comes flight becomes landing i'am a flying brick trying to control my shark to

not getting into Vortex Ring or fighting my speed get down after that of course my

shark goes up etc and it all that go round in loop repeating my mistakes, get speed ok, get height ok, not in Vortex Ring checked, once do get landed, phew.. i landed jee..

the hole process is not fun to watch afterwards..or show my landing skills in MP game..:megalol:

 

have seen others do amazing landings so easily, so whats the catch in landing?

yep need help..:joystick:

 

Land like you would a plane. Go in with speed, and then do a very light flare so your nose wheel doesn't end up hitting first, then start slowly reducing collective so you can drop.

[AlphaOneSix]

A rule of thumb I have seen several pilots use is for knots of ground speed to match feet of altitude, roughly. For example, during your approach, go for 100 knots at 100 feet, 90 knots at 90 feet, etc, until you're eventually at 0 knots and 0 feet. If, like me, you're using metric units, its roughly 6-to-1, that is, 6 kph per meter. For example, 60 kph at 10 meters.

 

If you want to land in accordance with the game's flight manual, the concept is the same, but the speed/altitude relationship is slightly different (in general, slower than I mentioned above). Check the section on "Landing in Clear Meteorological Conditions" for more info.

 

In general, it will always be much easier to make an approach with at least a little bit of forward speed, and much more difficult if you try to hover straight down.

[sinelnic]

It is so important that you understand what is happening to you heli due to flight characteristics besides your (like mine) poor handling of the beast.

If you already know this please ignore, but let me quickly summarize:

 

1- 100-200 Km/h +50 meters: the thing handles similar to a plane and there's little to explain.

2- 30-100 Km/h +50 m: The shark begins to handle more like a proper chopper because the wings lose relevance. It becomes much more responsive in pitch and roll. A little curvature in the cyclic axis can really help here.Also, you're decelerating, thus pointing the nose up in relation to the flight path. I won't go into the details here but that also generates roll and yaw tendencies different than those in normal flight.

3- less than 30 km/h +10 m: Below about 22 Km/h, you lose "effective translational lift", which is extra lift generated by the rotors when you're moving forward. This causes you to sink unexpectedly and is a normal cause of Vortex Ring situations if you realize it too late.

4- 0-10 km/h below 10 m: When about 3 m above the ground you get the "rotor-in-ground-effect", which generates extra lift and will in most cases stop your descent. What they don't usually tell you is that this "cushion" will make your chopper extremely extra super duper responsive in the cyclic axes, almost like trying to stand on a spherical soap. The chopper is inherently unstable and will not remain centered without constant control by a proper Pilot (i.e. Not-me). Then a piece of advise here is, don't delay the touchdown, once you're almost there, stomp it. The gear is sturdy!

 

Hope this helps a little!

Edited September 30, 2009 by sinelnic
Dang blackberry browser

[Waldo_II]

Start with rolling landings on runways. Approach, like Hunt3r said, with speed like a fixed-wing aircraft. Once you touch down, remove all remaining collective, turn the throttle down to "idle" and hit the wheel brakes until you stop.

 

Edit: Align yourself in the editor with the runway. Put a waypoint at the opposite end of the runway, and put the helicopter in a position so the line from the end of the runway runs on top of the pavement.

 

Next, do the same thing, but when you approach the runway, flare up to stop yourself instead of touching down and relying on the wheel brakes. Once you are on the ground, do as you did above with the throttle, collective, and wheel brakes.

 

After that, do it on an aircraft carrier. Go into the editor, put an Admiral Knutsenov (definitely misspelled there) in the water, and give it a waypoint and set it to move at 35kph. Then do the same rolling landings that you did above until you are comfortable landing on a moving aircraft carrier. (An alternate idea is to put yourself on the US team and use the Carl Vinson or whatever Nimitz class is they have in the game. The symbol looks somewhat like a carrier, an upside-down triangle with a control tower on one side)

 

Once you have mastered landing on a moving carrier, land on a non-moving carrier. Start with rolling landings with flaring at the end (As done in the second paragraph), and work yourway towards touchdown speeds of ten or less KPH groundspeed.

 

When you are done with that, practice a few times on land.

 

When you have finished that, find some ships in the game that have helicopter decks on them. At this point, have some fun. Shake things up a little. Start the mission at night, turn on the rain, and do some carrier landings in the dark. Hell, try landing on a submarine. At this point, the best way to improve is to create some challenging scenarios for yourself. Also, experiment with the mission editer. Find a nice-looking cloud level, find a good sunset time. Throw in a few oil rigs. Make some F-14s do some low-level fly-bys. Enjoy yourself.

 

The last thing I did to improve myself was autorotation landings. There are options in the editor for stuff like autopilot failures, engine failures, etc.

at autorotation landings. (Watch the whole way through, you'll enjoy it)

 

After that, you are pro. And DCS: A-10C will be out.

Edited September 30, 2009 by Waldo_II

[Soulreciever]

...What they don't usually tell you is that this "cushion" will make your chopper extremely extra super duper responsive in the cyclic axes, almost like trying to stand on a spherical soap...

 

Made my day :megalol:

 

And how do you guys compensate the lack of a bottom window?

I do use TIR, but i can not say where my Shark is placed in relation to the FARP at let´s say 30m.

I try to use Antennas or other things as a landmark, but it won´t work very good.

Mostly i fly in low level, bumping with my wheels over some heads of the landcrew and touch it down.

But thats not very aesthetic :)

[-Painter-]

And how do you guys compensate the lack of a bottom window?

I do use TIR, but i can not say where my Shark is placed in relation to the FARP at letґs say 30m.

I try to use Antennas or other things as a landmark, but it wonґt work very good.

Mostly i fly in low level, bumping with my wheels over some heads of the landcrew and touch it down.

But thats not very aesthetic :)

...I approach the FARP with a steady rate of descend towards the heli-pad. You can see the helipad from some distance easy and maintain your approach-path. While maintaining the path, I pull the stick lightly, reduce collective so that lets say 3m/sec (or is it 300m/minute?) are maintained but speed is reducing. In best case it is so coordinated, that altitude and speed is 0 right over the pad after the contant rate of descend and constant rate of reducing speed. When you are less than 10m over the helipad you can use the middle-line of the H for lineup your heli and when you see the | of the H crossing from left to right appearing in the left door-window, you are exactly in the middle of the H - touchdown.

 

That's it :)

 

Edit: When your rate of descend exceeds a defined rate (think it was something like > 3 or 4) while your speed goes down under ~50 km/h you will enter the vortex. That's why you have to descend very slowly when your airspeed is slow. That's all about the miracle of vortex.

Edited September 30, 2009 by -Painter-

[Spider76]

well what i today was is takeoff with no HUD and fly around (brightness to zero)

that got my oriental aspect view / 3D aerial dimension to fly a the shark into my back bone..

and just flying with analog gauges the shark ...

 

and understood to go or get down is to PgDn once or twice with speed ..landings to farps are smooth

(ok now need few hours more to fly without hud so can predict my input torwards landing etc ..)

 

good reference pdf to heli flying is the free "TP9982E Helicopter Flight Training Manual.pdf"

 

 

so if its good to learn to fly without hud to before with hud ..cos that what did fly my shark

with only speed + allitude readings on hud ..theres was my error ..its more than those

in flying ..or else we would have monkeys flying charter flights ...

[AlphaOneSix]

and understood to go or get down is to PgDn once or twice with speed

 

You should never adjust the throttle in flight, it should be set to AUTO at all times unless you have an engine failure.

[Migo]

Sometimes I raise the throttle when I made a mistake and entered a vortex ring, it's easier to get out of it fast as possible then.

[AlphaOneSix]

The fastest way to exit vortex ring state is to gain airspeed, not increase engine power. Increasing the throttle to emegency power has no effect on getting out of vortex ring state unless you are ignoring the part of the recovery procedure where it says to reduce collective, not increase it.

[Mule]

Start with rolling landings on runways. Approach, like Hunt3r said, with speed like a fixed-wing aircraft. Once you touch down, remove all remaining collective, turn the throttle down to "idle" and hit the wheel brakes until you stop.

 

Edit: Align yourself in the editor with the runway. Put a waypoint at the opposite end of the runway, and put the helicopter in a position so the line from the end of the runway runs on top of the pavement.

 

Next, do the same thing, but when you approach the runway, flare up to stop yourself instead of touching down and relying on the wheel brakes. Once you are on the ground, do as you did above with the throttle, collective, and wheel brakes.

 

After that, do it on an aircraft carrier. Go into the editor, put an Admiral Knutsenov (definitely misspelled there) in the water, and give it a waypoint and set it to move at 35kph. Then do the same rolling landings that you did above until you are comfortable landing on a moving aircraft carrier. (An alternate idea is to put yourself on the US team and use the Carl Vinson or whatever Nimitz class is they have in the game. The symbol looks somewhat like a carrier, an upside-down triangle with a control tower on one side)

 

Once you have mastered landing on a moving carrier, land on a non-moving carrier. Start with rolling landings with flaring at the end (As done in the second paragraph), and work yourway towards touchdown speeds of ten or less KPH groundspeed.

 

When you are done with that, practice a few times on land.

 

When you have finished that, find some ships in the game that have helicopter decks on them. At this point, have some fun. Shake things up a little. Start the mission at night, turn on the rain, and do some carrier landings in the dark. Hell, try landing on a submarine. At this point, the best way to improve is to create some challenging scenarios for yourself. Also, experiment with the mission editer. Find a nice-looking cloud level, find a good sunset time. Throw in a few oil rigs. Make some F-14s do some low-level fly-bys. Enjoy yourself.

 

The last thing I did to improve myself was autorotation landings. There are options in the editor for stuff like autopilot failures, engine failures, etc.

at autorotation landings. (Watch the whole way through, you'll enjoy it)

 

After that, you are pro. And DCS: A-10C will be out.

 

Nice reply and indeed i did set up some landings while the sun was setting and had a few jets flying around :)

[nemises]

my advice is to get low early.

 

The hardest thing to do safely in the KA50 (IMHO) is lose alititude at low speeds..

 

Get down to within 100 Mtrs of the ground whilst still flying at approach speed (100 KPH+), as at those speeds, it is "safe" to drop altitude at high rates (10+ m/s).

Start this SEVERAL kilometers out from our landing point

 

Once at low altitudeit is an easy excersize of lowering the collective and raising the nose to lose speed and decend SLOWLY as you approach.

 

If you try to drop out of the sky to land you wil VRS and die, so take it easy on the decent and do it early..

[Intruder_360]

 

Once you have mastered landing on a moving carrier, land on a non-moving carrier. Start with rolling landings with flaring at the end (As done in the second paragraph), and work yourway towards touchdown speeds of ten or less KPH groundspeed.

 

 

Or try

:music_whistling:

 

Regards Intruder