What would cause a sudden loss of control?

[MrMember]

I was playing the mission "Dusk" in the Deployment campaign, sniping from just outside of the enemy's range like usual when I experienced a sudden loss of control, my aircraft bobbing and weaving like crazy and trying its best to spin me in circles. At the time I had auto hover and turn to target on so I turned both off and tried to regain control. I was never able to get back to anything resembling normal flight.

 

I had had a few SAMs launched at me but I didn't think I had gotten hit (mission debriefing later confirmed this), and it wasn't like I was hovering too close to the ground and accidentally clipped a power line or something. Nothing worked like it should. Turning auto hover back on caused my aircraft to list backwards uncontrollably, like it was trying to loop. I ended up quitting the mission because I couldn't line up a shot.

 

And I realized just now that I should have saved the flight recording but I didn't. Any ideas what would cause something like this to happen? I'm not the greatest pilot in the world, but I can at least tell when something isn't working like it should.

[Krebs20]

I'm searching now. I think the flight director has a habit of shutting off at the wrong time. Were you in a good trimmed hover before you engaged the hover hold?

[kylania]

I've had the same thing happen to me, rotor RPM was the issue I think or altitude.

[MeerCaT]

There are a couple of things I have accidentally done a few times (due to them being mapped to buttons on my joystick and throttle (collectve) controllers):

- emergency auto pilot off - turns of all Autopilot channels so you lose all computer aided damping and stabalisation aids

- free rotor turbine thingy-wotsit - in all honesty I forget what this is for, but on the collective there is a switch that controls something to do with the engine power that gets translated to the rotors. It has two modes: 'Normal' and 'Free'. Accidentally nudge this into 'Free' mode without noticing and you'll soon see an otherwise unexplainable loss in power that makes it more difficult to control the aircraft.

 

Combine any of these with a strong wind and you might get some pretty funky flight dynamics kicking in.

[MrMember]

There are a couple of things I have accidentally done a few times (due to them being mapped to buttons on my joystick and throttle (collectve) controllers):

- emergency auto pilot off - turns of all Autopilot channels so you lose all computer aided damping and stabalisation aids

- free rotor turbine thingy-wotsit - in all honesty I forget what this is for, but on the collective there is a switch that controls something to do with the engine power that gets translated to the rotors. It has two modes: 'Normal' and 'Free'. Accidentally nudge this into 'Free' mode without noticing and you'll soon see an otherwise unexplainable loss in power that makes it more difficult to control the aircraft.

 

Combine any of these with a strong wind and you might get some pretty funky flight dynamics kicking in.

 

I think it was probably the auto pilot, thanks! I just started up a random mission and hit Alt+A just see what would happen and it behaved pretty much exactly like it did in my initial post. I must have accidentally hit it at some point.

[sam777777]

I believe pulling certain Gs will cause the autopilots to disengage, this can be observed by checking the lights (if forced off they will flash). Turn them off and on again and the systems should come back, if this is not the case RTB.

[spikenet]

sounds like a known bug where autopilot channels disable themselves whist using autohover.

 

Aparently they fixed it in BS2 but I have had it happen a couple of times unlike BS1 where I had it happen a fair bit.

 

Just re-enable the autopilot channels and all will be fine..

[WildBillKelsoe]

I was playing the mission "Dusk" in the Deployment campaign, sniping from just outside of the enemy's range like usual when I experienced a sudden loss of control, my aircraft bobbing and weaving like crazy and trying its best to spin me in circles. At the time I had auto hover and turn to target on so I turned both off and tried to regain control. I was never able to get back to anything resembling normal flight.

 

I had had a few SAMs launched at me but I didn't think I had gotten hit (mission debriefing later confirmed this), and it wasn't like I was hovering too close to the ground and accidentally clipped a power line or something. Nothing worked like it should. Turning auto hover back on caused my aircraft to list backwards uncontrollably, like it was trying to loop. I ended up quitting the mission because I couldn't line up a shot.

 

And I realized just now that I should have saved the flight recording but I didn't. Any ideas what would cause something like this to happen? I'm not the greatest pilot in the world, but I can at least tell when something isn't working like it should.

 

I think you were attempting a hover at speeds in excess of 40 KIAs.. Or you could have experienced the occasional autopilot channel mood failure.. Either ways, you'll see them flashing as you're weaving and bobbing, so you turn them off and on again as fast as possible. if you sustained damage in the avtopiloot (lol), you'll have to gain forward momentum and trim as necessary while maintaining direction control with constant rudder adjustments.

[MrMember]

I think I've narrowed it down, I'm guessing it was a bug.

 

Still on the same mission (thanks to incompetent wingmen) I had it happen again, and was able to repeat it. While auto hovering with unguided rockets selected if I tried to lock something with the Shkval it would disable most of the autopilot functions. They weren't blinking, either, just completely off. At least this time I knew what to look for and was able to re-enable them with minimal trouble.

[Nate--IRL--]

If you could get that in a short track I'd be very interested to see it. I've been trying to capture it for a while now.

 

Nate