Good summary of the trim system. I really like the way it works in BS; you are correct that it requires practice. Trim experience, however, can vary quite a bit on different controllers. On my Saitek HOTAS the 1.01 style trim works very well as long as you remember to center both the cyclic and rudder. On other sticks, results vary.

On my Logitech G940 FFB stick operating in non-FFB mode, letting go of the cyclic and rudder only works about 70% of the time without sticking. This is due to the stick's lack of precise centering in non-FFB mode--which is much worse than the spring-loaded Saitek. Although you mention in the article that this is often due to operator error, it can also be due to hardware. I addressed this issue on the G940 by introducing some deadzone on both the cyclic and rudder pedals, and this has pretty much solved the problem. I'm not crazy about having to use deadzone, but it works quite well.

FFB trim is supposed to be the most realistic way of trimming, but from what I hear, the old MS FFB stick is the only one that works really well. I have an old MS FFB Pro, but unfortunately, its a Gameport stick and doesn't work on W7. Unfortunately, the G940 is not yet really suited to use with BS in FFB mode since there is too much play in the stick, and too much cyclic "bump" when engaging the trim. Also, rudder trim happens instantly in FFB mode, so you literally have no time to center the rudders before having your yaw adversely affected--especially, if the pedals are shifted by any significant amount prior to the trim. IMHO, when operating in FFB mode, ED really needs to provide the ability to turn off rudder trim or at least hold rudder position independent of the cyclic until the user manually recenters the pedals. In any case, there are definitely things that ED can do to better support the G940, but until they do, I find that the older 1.01 manual trim method works best.

Part 4 has been published.

Autopilot - Part 1 is here:
http://simhq.com/_air13/air_429a.html

Very nice! Any chance for a slight expansion on the Flight Director Override?

The conclusion of the series, Part 5 has been published.

Autopilot - Part 2 is here:
http://simhq.com/_air13/air_430a.html

Thanks to Erik for a terrific series!

Rotor collision tendency is actually made worse by turns in one direction and made better by turns in the other. I'm pretty sure that for the same rotor load there are times when turning makes the rotor collision not happen when it would in straight and level flight. It may be overzealous to make your flight plan to prefer the safer turn direction but it is non-trivial to train rapid combat maneuvers to prefer a given direction. Dodging an incoming missile is usually not a gentle maneuver and picking one way to turn can mean the difference between a narrow escape and clapping the blades together in a flurry of doom.

The "“ДИР УПР" button (Flight Director) is a pretty curious beast that I don't fully understand myself. I know that it is with a very large grain of salt that we use the same term "flight director" (roughly translated from Russian) for both the function in the Ka-50 and the function of the same name in a civilian airliner like a Boeing 737 for example. The B737's flight director and most others in the western aviation world is simply a visual guide of what to do with the aircraft to get it to go where you want it to go. The Ka-50 has some HUD visual aids for navigation and airmanship when in FD mode, but the similarity ends there. Unlike the flight director in a B737, the Ka-50's FD mode gets its mitts into the control loop and has a pretty good say into what the control surfaces do or don't do.

With FD off your Heading, Bank, Pitch buttons actually activate two different functions: both the filter-stabilization and the ability to hold a value. With FD on the filter/stab function still works but the hold function is overridden (similar to having Trimmer button depressed) for the purposes of the FD.

So FD is flying with stabs on, holds off, and the autopilot generates visual HUD cues instead of control inputs.

What I'm trying to look up is if the Autopilot's 20% authority is ever disabled by pilot control input. You think the autopilot wants to go left and the pilot wants to go right then -20% and +100% means the result of their fight would be +80% input to the right. However I have a suspicion that if the autopilot detects that the pilot really wants 100% input, it gives up its 20% so it doesn't limit the pilot from going to 100% when he needs to.

Great job on these!

Btw, I'm the resident shaman in our squadron that routinely shakes a bag of chicken bones at the autopilots he mentioned, purging them from my cockpit!

However, many is the time that I arrive a bit worn to an objective area from flying everything by hand while Einstein is fresh as a daisy and refreshed from look-ma-no-hands-I'm-drinking-coffee autopilot use.

Just a fantastic bunch of articles. Have learned a thing or two which I'm going to utilize in my own flying. Many thanks for the education!

I would love to see more of this type of writing on DCS Black Shark. It would be fantastic to see similar articles on traffic patterns around airport landings, FARP traffic patterns (What does the crossed T mean?) and of course weapons employment with this beast.

Wonderful articles...

Believe it or not, there's really not much else to expand on! Like Frederf pointed out, from a controls perspective, flying with Flight Director on means that pilot inputs are augmented for stability and that's all! No other autopilot control feeback goes to the rotors at all in any mode. Although one could say that Flight Direct "basically turns the autopilot off", the modes still function as described, the autopilot keeps track of desired conditions and deviations, it just shows the appropriate corrective actions in the HUD and HSI rather than actually affect the control inputs.

One way to keep this in mind to remember that with the autopilot Flight Director on, the pilot has to do all the work while the autopilot "directs".

You can download the high-quality Black Shark manual free from www.digitalcombatsimulator.com (look under Files) which has a section that details these steering cues, which is why I chose to omit it from my article (pages and pages of pics and descriptions!).

If have specific questions, you can always PM me or check out the forums at www.digitalcombatsimulator.com.

Absolutely fantastic series of articles here, Erik. It amazes me that so many have written so much on the Black Shark's controls and I always manage to find a few new ideas to try with every article I read.



This EXACTLY sums up why FD so confused me at first - I too was thinking of that projected ideal flight path.




These two statements are by far the most perfect and succinct explanations I've come across of what the heck the FD is ... thanks guys!

Great articles, thanks a lot Erik! Finally I understood why some peope were going on about "pressing the trim button every time they move the controls". At least I think I understood Just to be sure:
- Keeping the trim button pressed has the same effect then having FD enabled
- Therefore, if I don't have the trim button pressed while moving the controls (assuming FD is not enabled of course) I basically fight the autopilot inputs.

Correct?