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How to move once in hover mode


apoll

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Hi. This is a very helpful forum so I thought I'd post a question. I'm in basic practice mode trying to get the mechanics and skills under my belt before doing anything too complicated. I'm practising at present transition from hover to moving forward back to hover. Scenario: I go into hover behind a ridge, simulating positions I'd take up in combat; I'm in hover okey..I go up to take a peak and turn on the combat systems and Shkval. The HUD immediately looses the nav data. Ok..no probs. I look up a target with the Shkval and I want to engage with Vikr missiles. I realise I'm too far away and need to move forward one kilometre. What is the best way to do this? I can take hover off and move forward a bit with the Shkval still lockade...but it is difficult to get back into hover mode, as I've lost any airspeed clues on the HUD. Or I can turn off the Shkval, getting back the nav data and clues I need to transition smoothly to slowly moving back to hover. Is there a way to keep my combat systems on, the Shkval locked AND still have airspeed data on the HUD? What's the best way to transition in this scenario? I image one would be doing this sort of thing an awful lot; hover, move slowly to new position, hover, look, lock enagge, move again, hover et cetera. Appreciate any tips.

 

Thanks you in advance.

 

apoll out :)

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Hello!

 

At the beginning I also used the hovermode quite often but I found a better working solution for me.

Instead of the pretty static hover mode I use a lot trim in hovering positions.

For example:

10km - Heli trimmed with about 100km forward speed( searching for targets)

Once targets locked an In range I slow down and trim the heli to fly constantly and stable sidewards. Once gaining speed left or ight I engage targets. This method has one main opporunity. You are not standing still, already in motion you can evade any missiles or bullets easier cause you don´t need to gain speed from your postion you just need to turn the chopper directly into the direction you already fly sidewards and accelerate even more. This also works very well in valleys between mountains.

 

I only use hover for ambush like tactics.

 

If you want to use hovermode for advancing to better positions you also can leave it on move to new position slow a bit down and hit trim shortly.

Or better mode is to swith hovmode of go to new posittion- slow down and engage again. Thers no need for switching from combat to nav mode for any of those.

 

But I personally like the trim only version more because it keeps you way more flexible in sudden situations.

 

Let´s hear what the others have to say :)

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]

 

 

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Is there a way to keep my combat systems on, the Shkval locked AND still have airspeed data on the HUD?

 

Please note that you never ever have airspeed on the HUD. The HUD displays groundspeed (measured by the same doppler radar at the bottom of the tailboom that gives you your altitude AGL).

 

My spontaneous reaction is that you are flying too much on your HUD - you should not need to use it for this purpose since it is the ground that you want to be stable relative to. If the ground is too far away to get a position cue you are likely too high, so this does sound like a training question. My proposal for training in this area would be to take off and fly without initiating your generators - this will cause the doppler to not be active and you then have to fly without it, relying on Mk1 Eyeball. (The added benefit to this is that you then also practice for possible emergency situations where battle damage has incapacitated your doppler.)

 

All of that said: no, there is no way to make the HUD's combat mode display the data of the NAV mode.

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]

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You probably put on too much collective, causing rotor rpm to drop below 80%, and because of that the AC generators could not power the doppler radar anymore (which supplies you ground speed indication on the top-left of the HUD). If that happens the systems shut down until there is enough power again, and then it will reboot (which takes its sweet time too!).

What I usually do is get in a hover from too far away, just like you, to do some recon, and once I've locked on the most important target I see I disengage auto-hover, fly forward at like 100-200 km/h, and then I just wait until I get within 7km's before I fire.

But you should probably practice getting in a hover more often, and watch outside of the window for more cues as to what your heli is doing. You can definitely use what EtherealN is saying as it will force you to watch more outside.


Edited by mikey

I've got 99 problems but my Ekran ain't one

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In combat your flying VFR most of the time. That means you dont use the instruments, but primarily rely on visual cues from the ground and the aircraft airframe to determine the helicopters attitude, airspeed and altitude. To determine your attitude for example, you look at the relation between the dashboard in the cockpit and the horison. With practise, its much easier to control the aircraft relying primarliy on VFR than having to constantly monitor the flight instruments for flying.

 

Theres a HUD declutter switch that removes most of the HUD symbology. Great for practising VFR flight!:)

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I have practiced to lock targets quickly with Shkval so I have no problem resetting targeting system for a while if I feel a need to see NAV info on the HUD. If I have some particularly hard to see target, I might save it as a datalink point before reset so I can bring Shkval looking at it automatically when I get in hover again.

 

Most of the times I don't use hover-hold as it takes some time so set in and slows my reaction time if I get shot at. When I hover at high altitude, it's not even important to stay exactly in one spot unless sniping with the cannon at extreme ranges as it shoots more accurately if the chopper isn't moving or rotating in any direction. Most of the time I just stop the chopper manually with the aid of HUD NAV mode and then trim for hover. When you do this a lot, it gets fairly easy and fast enough. If I need to make a short move I usually engage Flight Director and fly to the next position and get in hover and then disengage the FD.

 

Naturally the HUD NAV info and especially the velocity vector is needed only at high altitude where you can't use the ground as a reference. If you really only need speed info then ABRIS will show you a GPS speed when in NAV page. It should be noted that the GPS speed doesn't differentiate between forward, sideways or backwards motion. You might have to zoom in as close as possible to see where you are moving.

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So long as you trim to stop the craft from wanting to bolt backwards to your last hover point after moving, I don't bother to switch off back to nav view, you should be able to get used to it after a few tries. It all works just as before, you just don't have it displayed on the hud.

 

You probably already have collective and trim on your flightstick/hotas, but the other item that helps me when using hover-hold (along with it's alt-hold AP channel) is to put the Collective Brake on a hotas button, if you don't have it already.

 

 

So it's like I go from my original hover-hold position, find I'm not quite in range for some of the back targets, and then:-

 

- move the craft 1-2km forward to where I want it to go, watching collective to maintain approx. the same altitude

- once at new location, before letting go, stabilise my position quickly and then trim

- check collective and ascent/descent rate to get myself still

- now hit the collective brake to tell the auto-hover that this is now my preferred altitude since it probably shifted a bit

 

Then I'm back to business with targetting and shooting, without having to go into Nav mode or worry too much that my current hover settings are going to drift out too significantly.

 

Works for me anyway, I will sometimes do exactly that if I've actually gone in too close and just need to back out to stand-off range, but am otherwise happy with my current parameters and setup.

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When moving away from an auto-hover (a lot of us like to call it hover-hold as a reminder of how it really tends to work) position to a new auto-hover position a short distance away:

 

  • Press and hold the collective brake to suspend the ALT channel.
  • Press and hold the cyclic trim to suspend the BNK, PCH, and HDG channels.
  • Maneuver to the new position.
  • Release cyclic trim when happy with your 2-dimensional position and stationary.
  • Release collective brake when happy with your altitude and collective setting.

This is good for short hops and does require you to be able to get close to a hover "by eye." My memory is poor on this subject but I think even in "weapons ready" mode the HUD ground speed is still listed... isn't it? Either way the Shkval airspeed, the panel round airspeed gauge, and the motion of terrain out the window should be plenty for judging your speed.

 

If you want a more involved reposition allowing full NAV capability:

 

  • Save Shkval target to memory, reset Shkval, cycle DL targets, set saved target as Ingress Point.
  • Disable auto-hover.
  • Turn off ALT channel or suspend with collective brake.
  • Fly around freely to new position.
  • Establish new position in hover.
  • Uncage Shkval on/near target thanks to DL Ingress.

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Wow. I am simply amazed at the response; thank you to all who contributed. I need to read and giest. There are a lot of tips in all this...fundamental stuff. I really need to get myself some training on line at some point. Let me read and I'll come back with clarifications...

 

apoll pit

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