your thoughts?

[leroy1964]

I have done several missions choosing not to use any autopilot options at all and have flown well, landed etc. Well not more than one hour ago, I decided to use alt hold and route and no sooner had I engaged these options my chooper flight became a nightmare. As I disengaged these options things went from bad to worse:cry: the BS adopted a slight drop to the left and stayed there. No matter what I tried my BS was handling like my joystick was not calibrated, even on landing the "old bouncing and trying to kiss the ground on the left side" came back, even as i shut down i had to hold rudder to the right and hold the stick to the right to stop this from happening.:joystick: I have to ask, what did I do wrong, auto pilot even after disengaging shouldn't have an impact on the BS or any A/C for that matter, or am I wrong?:huh:

 

Sadly I lost several A/C to enemy fire thanks to me realizing to late, that I was of course and to far away to enagae the threat. I lost 2 choppers that I was suppossed to be guarding.:doh: I am thinking I might just stick to manual and "visual". To make matters worse, (and you know I don't complain about DCS BS that much, hell I love it) my wingman suddenly became void of any commands, only replying with "negative" overall my worst mission ever.:cry:

 

p.s. that lean and sideways movements is a real pain, corrects to some point as speed increases but, yeah, well, you get my point I am sure. So should I just leave "anything autopilot alone" and revert back to manual as I had previously done?:helpsmilie:

 

 

Back to the manual and the classroom, flight 101. LOL :book:

 

Cheers all:thumbup:

[My Fing ID]

The AP takes time to get used to. You could always just turn on all the channels and the FD channel (flight directer). This way you get the stability of having AP without ever having to fight the damn thing. I remember my first real manual flight. I was strafing a convoy and took one right in the AP. Quick lesson to learn lol. Still managed to fly back and land, even got a few trucks on the pass back home.

[sweinhart3]

Did your autopilot stabilization channels disengage?

[Frederf]

Try flying around with the 3 non-ALT channels engaged but with the FD mode on. The 3 AP channels are two-part having a stabilization routine you want on 100% of the time and a hold routine that actually exercises control to do stuff. FD mode disables all of the holds on the channels so all that's left is the stabilization routine.

 

This arrangement of no-holds lets you get a feel for how the Ka-50 flies without them but still has the benefit of the stabilizers which you'll have on anyway except in the most extreme, extreme cases.

 

Also, TRIM! I didn't see any mention of the trim function in your post! Trim is a big, big deal. Bring up the RCtrl+Enter display to see where your virtual controls are and see how the trim works.

[JLZ]

leroy1964, that happens to me too. Beside that, sometimes while hovering ~80m AGL, AP disengage like I have descended too low. Also, sometimes helicopter starts hard rotation if I forgot to reset trim before engaging hover.

 

I noticed that my chopper stays in (slight) permanent drop if I:

had trimmed to one side, with opposite rudder, do correction trim while still in hover, disengage hover and trim again. So, what I do? Press 'Reset trim', few times if needed.

 

That RCtrl+Enter is very helpful. I thought my joystick was faulty but with virtual control visible I saw that game sometimes don't register centered joystick after trim so it keeps attenuating commands.

[isoul]

AP is a tricky thing to get used to!

 

Try FD, as Frederf suggested, to get used of the flying behavior of the Shark. Use Trim all the time as you would in the a real Ka-50. After you get used to fly with FD and Trimming you can disengage the FD.

 

AP channels and ALT and HDG Hold channels is a lot of help once you have mastered them. Personally I use ALT Hold too most of the time. In combat, and when the situation demands faster and more free movement of the Shark in all 3 dimensions, I use FD to negate the Hold function of the AP channels.

 

I hoped this helped.

[Frederf]

I'm not positive but I think the trim button nor the FD mode suspends the ALT channel hold. I believe the suspension of that hold is controlled by the collective brake switch only. The heading, bank, and yaw channels are all angular INU-related but the ALT channel is a totally separate system and just happens to but its blue button in the group with the others.

 

I turn the ALT channel on before take off and leave it on but I have the collective brake set on my joystick and I squeeze it any time I move the collective axis or just want the ALT hold suspended for better maneuverability like dodging a SAM.

 

AP disengage should only happen in four circumstances:

• Auto-hover below 4m radio alt
  
• Engaging auto-hover before doppler system has prepared
  
• AP emergency disconnect cyclic switch
  
• Battle damage or otherwise powering the system off
  

 

Personally I don't like the new (since patch 1.01) method of "you have to center your joystick before you get control again." I suggest you try the old 1.00 method of trimming from the options (center trim method, uncheck) to see if you like that better. You can also make the centered windows for rudder/cyclic bigger via LUA edit if you want.

 

The real Ka-50 doesn't have a reset trim button so try not to depend on using it. If any practice you do requires pressing reset trim button, then something's wrong.

 

As for auto-hover or entering any other new flight regime... fly the helicopter until it's happy with stick and rudder and then trim. The AP has a very small input authority so it needs to be "in the ballpark" with trim. For example, entering hover from a fast cruise, you need to apply rudder input as you slow down. The auto-hover routine is more of an "hover hold" so get it in a happy manual first and then engage it. The "velocity line" that shows up when you get slow should be 10 kmph length or less in any direction and trimmed before engaging auto-hover.

[leroy1964]

Thanks for all the replies.

 

I'm not positive but I think the trim button nor the FD mode suspends the ALT channel hold. I believe the suspension of that hold is controlled by the collective brake switch only. The heading, bank, and yaw channels are all angular INU-related but the ALT channel is a totally separate system and just happens to but its blue button in the group with the others.

 

I turn the ALT channel on before take off and leave it on but I have the collective brake set on my joystick and I squeeze it any time I move the collective axis or just want the ALT hold suspended for better maneuverability like dodging a SAM.

 

 

AP disengage should only happen in four circumstances:

• Auto-hover below 4m radio alt
  
• Engaging auto-hover before doppler system has prepared
  
• AP emergency disconnect cyclic switch
  
• Battle damage or otherwise powering the system off
  

Personally I don't like the new (since patch 1.01) method of "you have to center your joystick before you get control again." I suggest you try the old 1.00 method of trimming from the options (center trim method, uncheck) to see if you like that better. You can also make the centered windows for rudder/cyclic bigger via LUA edit if you want.

 

The real Ka-50 doesn't have a reset trim button so try not to depend on using it. If any practice you do requires pressing reset trim button, then something's wrong.

 

As for auto-hover or entering any other new flight regime... fly the helicopter until it's happy with stick and rudder and then trim. The AP has a very small input authority so it needs to be "in the ballpark" with trim. For example, entering hover from a fast cruise, you need to apply rudder input as you slow down. The auto-hover routine is more of an "hover hold" so get it in a happy manual first and then engage it. The "velocity line" that shows up when you get slow should be 10 kmph length or less in any direction and trimmed before engaging auto-hover.

 

Thanks guys for all the feedback, all the advice will be very helpful.:thumbup:

 

Cheers