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