Hi all,

I know this is one omgwtfhardcore flight simulation, so I never expected this to be easy at all. My helo tries to kill me on a regular basis. Often just after i get it stable flying somewhere or (almost) hovering, the chopper wildly pitches up or down. WTF is up with that. I have the stabilisation systems engeaged, and been using the trim button.

I read parts of the manual, but havent found yet what is the rationale, the logic behind the flight behavior of this mad little machine. Can someone help me understand why this machine pitches so wildly? Why does the trim button not allow for hands-off flight or hovering? Why does it wants to point its nose somewhere else than me?

At what speed do you engage auto-hover? Sometimes if you engage it while still travelling fairly fast (don't know the exact speed) it will have trouble settling down and engage in the behaviour you described. I try to wait until I slow to under 20 and then engage auto-hover. There are other conditions that bring about this behaviour but I will let more advanced pilots comment on that.

It did it while trying to hover, but also when i was puttering along at a nice 200kph.

There's a little evil monkey sitting behind the pilots' seat, and just when i start to relax and enjoy the feeling of a nice flight over the countryside to bomb the neighbours, he jumps out, grabs the stick and yanks it someplace. F#^&@N monkey.

there are so many systems it's hard to tell what's going wrong, as you well know! I can't think of anything off the top of my head that would cause this. Have you used the RightControl+Enter command to get your control axes displayed? There could be something wonky with your stick, although I'm guessing something is even wonkier with your helicopter :-P

If you could save a track where it happens and upload it someone will probably be able to figure it out.

Glad you're having fun.

Once you have a good understanding of the flight control system, the helicopter will indeed stay where you want it to stay all day with no problems. If you are having trouble, it is most likely either because you're doing something wrong or you are having controller issues. In either case, it will be hard to point out exactly what's happening without more specific descriptions.

If you have not already done so, you should take a look through the "flying the helicopter" part of our User FAQ:
http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=33527

And browse the forum for other threads on the topic. There is a ton of info.

Seeing as your helicopter is pitching, my first guess would be that your trimmer is not actually working, i.e. it remains in its default position even as you re-trim. If this is the case, the first thing I would do is disconnect any controller devices on your PC besides the HOTAS or disable the Forcefeedback functionality in-game. See here:
http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=583711&postcount=42

Or that his joystick is spiking.

Its a microsoft force feedback2 so i dont think its spiking. i would have noticed the spikes in il2, wouldnt i? I have been trying some more, and slower, more deliberate input and use of the trim button has calmed the machine somewhat, but still not nearly enough to allow me to safely go heads down. I'll get there!

The sim is awesome. best 40 euro's i've spent all summer. when my trackir gets delivered next week it'll be even better thanks for all the encouragements and tips so far guys!

I didnt see there's a metric ton of older threads discussing the exact same issues on this very forum because of the stupid default thread cutoff. my bad. thanks for not flaming the everloving C%$#P out of me for that.

Also check that after both engines are up and running that you throttle up to auto (press PgUp twice).
Some systems can cut out in flight if the throttle is too low.

What you describe is what caused me to stop flying Blackshark. I had the erratic pitch and the uncontrolled yaw that wouldn't stop no matter how hard I countered it. I gave up hope... such a nice sim too.

It's probably because you are giving rudder input while trimming. The trim detects rudder input, and you should stay clear of those pedals while trimming. You press RCTRL + ENTER to check your current trimmed inputs.

The heading hold autopilot channel also takes some time getting used to I think, and it has improved a lot in the 1.1 patch.

Please, definitely do this! I couldn't quite understand what the trimmer was doing until I watched the control axes, and I always play with them on now.

And really do please get a track uploaded where you're having trouble that you can't work out. There are plenty of folks here who want to help but most problems simply can't be described in enough detail verbally due to the complexity of the aircraft's systems.

It'd be a shame to be turned away from such a good simulator when there is so much help available!

Regarding erratic pitch: It might help to decrease the pitch axis a bit under axis control.

After the 1.1 patch it's possible to maintain smooth flight when trimming (new feature is that you need to remove all cyclic input before you have control again after trim, therefore removing those awful spikes after trim).

I turned off force feedback on my stick and rarely use trim at all to get a fairly consistent flight path. I even managed to use the auto hover and stay in one place long enough to shoot up a convoy with vikhrs. definately not turning away from this awesome study sim.

I'd turn FF back on and turn off the new trim system, the old dynamic trim system worked fine with the MSFF2, just the same as in the real heli. Switch the controls view box on (Enter+R Ctrl), that way you can centre your rudder when you trim otherwise you'll just end up spinning in circles.

Auto hover is a complete mystery to me. I always seem to end up rotating away from my target so now I leave it off and just hover myself.

Use of the reset trim button causes what you describe, because the helo will naturally be in a "nose up" state when no trim is applied.

I agree with Sinner. The real heli doesn't have a re-set trim button, pressing it tends to end in a crash, for me anyhow.

I use the reset trim button now and then and I'll admit it's dangerous. You have to be ready to "catch" the nose of the helicopter as it comes up after resetting trim. It's possible to maintain control of the black shark throughout a trim reset, but damnit if I can do it without nosing up at least a bit.

Does anyone know why the cyclic's true neutral position causes the helicopter to pitch up? I imagine it's like this in real life too but I'd like to know why, you would assume a more natural neutral position would be roughly at hover. I'm sure it's partially a load out issue too, but I have yet to see a load out where the heli is balanced.

There is no "true neutral position" in reality. Neutral is simply whatever is the currently trimmed position. The reason the game's neutral/default trim results in a nose-up movement, is because they had to set something as the default trim setting at the start of a mission, so they decided to make it trimmed to stand still on the ground to avoid players accidentally rolling on the tarmac during start-up. However, the "ground trim" setting is somewhat aft of most flight and take-off cyclic positions. Therefore, when you cancel trim in flight, the nose pitches up as the cyclic is set back to the "ground trim" setting.

It's perfectly normal and realistic to trim the aircraft for take-off, as well as continually trim in flight.

In this video, you can hear a "click-click" just before the pilot takes off. That's him setting his trim for take-off from wherever it was set before:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG1E1lgTsLw

Out of interest, you may want to watch the rest of the video and see how often he trims. Oh and yes, we know the HUD symbology is a little different in that version.

This is also explained in the User FAQ:
http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=583711&postcount=42

I just got Black Shark I'm currently having the same problem and it is quite frustrating.
I am patched 1.0.1
here's what I do:
start Para_Belleum's tutorial1.miz
win-home for 'cheat' start
wait for all systems to be up (i think)
i do not turn on or off any other systems or flip any switches... should i?
punch in waypoint 1.

use collective to take off to about 50m.
at this point I can approach 0 IAS and get stable(ish) but when I hit auto-hover nose pitches up and heli goes out of control.

alternately if I attempt forward flight, get to about 100kmh, -10 pitch, press trim, release trim, neutral my real joystick, then nose pitches up again and continues to go up.

in both cases my controls look neutral in the ctrl-enter red panel.

I do have a G25 and a saitek cyborg command unit also plugged into the machine, along with my x45.

Hope someone has some pointers!

(whoops, looks like it was the FF on the G25. turning it off solved it):
http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=568722&postcount=15

With regards to initial posts.
I loaded up the sim and just tried to fly in instant (so was already in the air). I use the CH FS/PT/PP blah blah. Had to unassign all axis and reassign the exact ones to the exact device before the sim listened. Check none of your axis are double assigned.