Landing Question

[Topcat357]

Hi everyone. I am a newbie at flying the Blackshark. I have just started getting serious about learning the sim. I have watched all the Producers Notes and spent time checking out the forums here and at SimHQ.

 

I am having trouble landing in a small area. The first mission in the Deployment campaign has me flying around (terribly long and boring flight...only to crash at the end lol). I am supposed to land the a FARP on a landing pad. I have done reasonably well landing in larger areas and with a rolling landing. My problem is this:

 

I can bring the aircraft to a hover in the general area of the landing pad, but am having trouble with minor adjustments to get myself directly over the pad. I am using all the autopilots and the auto hover to hold my position. I use the trim to trim into the hover. Any movements I make with the autopilots/hover on will try to return me to the original hover point.

 

Is there a good way to make small adjustments to my position and still use the Autopilots to keep myself steady in the air over the landing spot?

[Martillo1]

Do not try to land with AH on, it will switch off all AP channels below 10m IIRC.

[joey45]

don't use AutoHover.

 

The way I do it is not to come to a hover to land by fly in and do a flare landing. If you get what I mean.

[159th_Viper]

Hi everyone. I am a newbie at flying the Blackshark. I have just started getting serious about learning the sim. I have watched all the Producers Notes and spent time checking out the forums here and at SimHQ.

 

I am having trouble landing in a small area. The first mission in the Deployment campaign has me flying around (terribly long and boring flight...only to crash at the end lol). I am supposed to land the a FARP on a landing pad. I have done reasonably well landing in larger areas and with a rolling landing. My problem is this:

 

I can bring the aircraft to a hover in the general area of the landing pad, but am having trouble with minor adjustments to get myself directly over the pad. I am using all the autopilots and the auto hover to hold my position. I use the trim to trim into the hover. Any movements I make with the autopilots/hover on will try to return me to the original hover point.

 

Is there a good way to make small adjustments to my position and still use the Autopilots to keep myself steady in the air over the landing spot?

 

Which Flightstick/HOTAS are you using? I can imagine that a less-than-sensitive setup can lead to aggresive input which will make one struggle with Fine Control. In such instances you might want to adjust the Axis sensitivity settings.

 

Apart from the above, Practice, Practice and more Practice will get you there.......For Advice, if any, Pertinent to your Specific Circumstances, you'll be best advised to Post a Track of your Landing. We can then have a look and Advise you better :)

[Topcat357]

Thank you for the replies. I am using x52 pro. I had not thought of adjusting the sensitivity..good idea! I have had to do that in the Rise of Flight sim, and it made a world of difference.

 

@Martillo Ty...I didnt realize it shut off the AP...would explain why I can get very close to landing from a hover..then go out of control. (my last time trying to finish the Deployment familiarization flight..i ran outta gas while in hover over the landing pad..i got a bit frusterated with that lol)

 

@joey - my problem seem to be mostly with landing in a small area. I can usually do the flare approach if given a runway or large open area. Precision seems to be out of my reach,so far lol....practice practice, i know

[Frederf]

Auto-hover automatically disengages all AP channels if you descend lower than 4m radar altitude. This is a bad thing.

 

Pretend that the FARP pad is a realllly short runway. Don't fly over the pad and then try to drop onto it. Fly onto it in a gentle slant so you can see where you're going. Try flying through these "checkpoints":

 

1. Distance 2km, Altitude 300m, Speed 200 kmph

2. Distance 500m, Altitude 50m, Speed 100 kmph

3. Distance 50m, Altitude 10m, Speed 50 kmph

4. Distance 25m, Altitude 3m, Speed 25 kmph

 

Smoothly reduce your altitude and speed at the same time. Start fast and high, end slow and low. Also keep your eyes on the horizon near the end and let any small inputs have an effect before making another one. This keeps the maneuver smooth and stable.

[EtherealN]

Another trick (that I used a lot in the beginning) if you feel proficient in flying with a bit of sideslip is to open your cockpit door (Ctrl-C) and fly slightly sideways onto the pad. This allows you to look down a lot more and get a better picture of where you are. Then start doing it but while flying forwards towards the touchdown.

 

...and then you'll suddenly (that is, after a lot of practice) find yourself managing to land with normal external reference points only. :)

[Topcat357]

Ty both...some really good information there!

[Celo63]

To expand on what Frederf has already said...

 

1) When getting very close to the pad, try not to look down at the pad itself but rather look out more towards the horizon and occasinally glance at the pad to see where it is, or use peripheral vision to keep track of it. By keeping your vision further out you have much better reference to make fine balance adjustments as you come in.

 

Focusing on the pad itself greatly reduces your overall awareness of what the aircraft is doing (tunnel vision) and will exaggerate any tendency to overcontrol. Takes some practice to get used to looking out, but once you do it makes tight landings much easier.

 

2) Keep the aircraft as steady as possible for the final few metres of approach, so you will be cruising in slowly with the cyclic pretty much centred. To slow down or make fine adjustments left and right, use small nudges on the cyclic in the direction required, then back to centre. Don't make a corrective input and hold it there.

 

Always use - nudge then centre, nudge then centre, nudge then centre. By doing this you avoid overcontrolling and you automatically allow time for each input to take effect. By keeping the cyclic mostly centred the aircraft wants to remain stable. The small nudges are all you need to coax it where you want it without overcontrolling.

 

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I would definitely recommend adjusting sensitivity on a stock X52 as it can be pretty hard to make fine control inputs on a stock stick. I use a modified X45 with longer cyclic (about 4.5 inch extension) which makes it perfect for fine control.

 

So, experiment and practice and I'm sure you'll be floating nicely onto the pad in no time.

[isoul]

Personally I found that my X52 was quite sensitive for me to fly smoothly! I reduced sensitivity using DCS options menu.

[fangav]

Also call the tower to get the wind and always land into it, I remember this making a big difference when I was learning.

[vrv]

I usually just slam down in the parking area and destroy my landing gear or collide with either the fuel truck or other aircraft on the pad. I'm a pilot I don't need to worry about that stuff. That's the crew chiefs job.

[EtherealN]

That's the kind of attitude that can get the crew chief to accidently forget to check that your blades are securely attached. :P

[vrv]

Hopefully he at least makes sure that the ejection seat is working properly :P

[airtom]

Hi. Sure you can land with Autohover on, but there's little trick. Engage Autohover, but(!) disengage ALT HOLD. If you don't do that, about 3-4m above ground there will be big jump down of aircraft (as described in posts before). With ALT HOLD you can go up or down, but it reacts differently than if you control your altitude just with collective. So simply turn on Autohover, turn off ALT HOLD and with collective adjust sinkrate of 1m/s. You will land smoothly ;)

 

Personally, I land without Autohover, but you try both and choose what's better for you.

 

I hope this will help.

 

Oh, and one more important note, when in hover mode, trim your joy just a little forward (not to sides!). This need some practising to know where is the best position, so your aicraft is not sliding to any direction.

If you're in windy condition, point your nose against wind and find correct triming option.

 

And even best method is to hover first (alt hold off), trim heli to be steady and then turn autohover off and land smoothly... ;)

 

Quite a lot of options how to land, right ;)

Edited January 4, 2010 by airtom

[liotczik]

I seriously fly sim helicopters since 2004.

 

When I was learning to land on helipads, I've been advised to first learn how to perform rolling landings on standard runway (Ka-50's gear with wheels is perfect for this). Only after you've mastered this maneuver, you may try rolling landings with less and less forward velocity. Your ultimate goal should be to be able to reduce forward speed to zero at the exact moment when wheels touch the runway, because it's easier to coordinate helicopter even in a slow forward flight, than in a hover (also, the landing spot is always before you, instead under, which makes things easier to look after and keep under control). Then try to land on a specific point on runway. With some practice (to be honest, with a great amount of hours of practice...) and a proper management of speed/altitude you should be able to land anywhere, where you could fit your helo into.

 

Learning to hover (without any 'helpers') is another thing, you should learn, and learn it well. It's really hard, especially on a desktop simulator, but once you get it, it'll always be with you. The only similar experience is a2a refueling. The key to landings and hovering (and refueling too, to some degree) is that, you should make a habit of moving stick by a very tiny amount at a time, while making a lot of moves (even a couple of moves per second). Avoid at all cost huge and long controls deflections! To make things a little bit easier, try to turn ON AP channels (at least pitch, bank and yaw) AND turn ON Flight Director. Learning to land and hover with hover autopilot will get you nowhere, for various reasons.

 

Try not to overcontrol. For example, when you want helo to move sideways, tilt it a little, just enough to get it moving, then center controls and keep it moving with small "pushing" inputs. But when you want to stop the movement, use no more than half of the stick deflection, that you have used to begin the move in the first place. That way it's really easier to stop at the desired point, instead of moving in opposite way.

 

Learning to control Ka-50 without any of the "blue buttons" (aside from being totally unrealistic) will be a lot, alot harder, but you'll learn a couple of things about it's dynamics (and generally about helicopter's dynamics), learn how to manage in a case of failure/battle damage and learn how to be a better sim-pilot (in terms of skills). That being said, co-axials are still easier to control than tail-rotored ;)

 

I'll second to that, you have to look dead ahead and maintain control over a helo before anything else, because looking down in search for a helipad will get you crashed, until you'll proficient at what you're doing. TrackIR helps here a lot, a quick glance is all that is needed to keep reference on helipad. Both for landing and hovering, pick a distant characteristic feature of the landscape and remember it's spatial orientation regarding landing spot and your helicopter (exatly you helicopter's cockpit canopy frame - it's RL practice and at least for fixed-wings it's called 'projection of engine's cowling over a horizon'). Try to hold that feature at a constant point "over" the canopy frame and maneuver with as little rudder and collective use as possible. Also always hover and land with your nose pointed into the wind, the helo will stabilise itself thanks to weathervane effect. You'll get also a litle bit of additional lift, to make engines work less and further stabilise helo. In fact it's easier to learn those maneuvers with a small wind, than without wind at all.

 

That's a couple of short instant-advices from me, just to help you tame the Black Beast :) But if you want to learn something about helicopters in general as well, I have some helo related training resources for you:

http://www.dynamicflight.com/flight_maneuvers/

http://www.copters.com/pilot/maneuvers.html

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/docs/poh/

http://www.hovercontrol.com/

 

Read and practice, there is no other way ;)

 

Also, you may want to at least try X-Plane demo with freeware MD-500 (by Brett Sumpter, Alex Gifford and by Ben Russell) or FS9 with freeware Bell 412 (by Jordan Moore). Good sims, fantastic birds and a lot of fun on its own, if you're really into helicopters. Also don't forget, that real pilots learn to fly in something cheap and easy, before they are allowed to try heavy and expensive military machines ;) Ka-50 is rather heavy for its size and, thanks to ED's outstanding work, you can really feel that mass under your controls. While in some cases this inertia is helpful, in others can make pilot's life harder.

Edited January 4, 2010 by liotczik
one more important thing...

[talisman]

good grief - an excellent reply! Well explained.

[Endoplasmic Reticulum]

good grief - an excellent reply! Well explained.

 

That's what I was thinking after reading his instructions, too. Easy to understand and to execute afterwards.

[norm]

on thing really funny is my first successful helipad landing was with a rotor blade missing! :huh:

[Endoplasmic Reticulum]

on thing really funny is my first successful helipad landing was with a rotor blade missing! :huh:

 

You are a gifted pilot. Made for emergencies ;).

[talisman]

on thing really funny is my first successful helipad landing was with a rotor blade missing! :huh:

 

 

Its amazing what you can achieve when your distracted....