SimHQ is fortunate to have Aerospace Engineer and Guest Writer Erik Pierce, write a week-long series on some of the technical aspects of DCS: Black Shark.

The Series Introduction and Erik's bio is here:
http://simhq.com/_air13/air_426a.html

DCS: Black Shark and Coaxial Rotor Aerodynamics is here:
http://simhq.com/_air13/air_427a.html

Tuesday - Trimming the Black Shark is here:
http://simhq.com/_air13/air_428a.html

Thursday - Autopilot, Part 1
http://simhq.com/_air13/air_429a.html

Friday - Autopilot, Part 2

Excellent intro and article. I am looking forward to the follow-ups.

Beautiful article. Very much looking forward to the rest. Thanks for writing it.

Good overview. I knew the Ka-50's net torque was caused by differential blade angles on the rotors but I never thought of it in terms of shuffling the lift (and related blade torque) around. Also the left bank tendency is not something I had thought much about.

You mention maneuvers in the vertical plane and how to avoid rotor collision but this leaves out the all important horizontal plane. It's a big deal to have it memorized that left/right turns are less/more dangerous while at the limits of the flight envelope. I would go so far as to even plan my mission route and formation tactics to favor the turn direction that lessens the chance of rotor collision.

I like the Ghostbusters reference.... that made it pretty damn clear that I don't want to cross the beams....er blades

Great stuff. Reinforced what I had suspected all along from engineering intuition.... Now, how do I use this to get the simming people I know to play the game? It seems that people either love or hate the Shark. It's this technology that makes me love it but all my simming buddies hate it for those same reasons. Sigh!

Oh, the "Black Shark For Dummies" was my article, Leo, and the one you want to show them if they're not into switchology or want to go deep into the sim.

Then if they want to do things properly and want to know what's actually going on (and why) they read these articles. These are the "real deal" of what's going on.

The super cool thing about the sim is that we fly together in the same server with the high difficulty settings and work well as a team.

He transfers lift from a horizontal plane into a vertical by pulling back on the cyclic while simultaneously changing the pitch of the blades by use of the pedals to offset the difference in torque and transitional lift until airspeed is sufficiently low, at which point he rapidly changes the dynamic of relative pitch until the the helicopter has turned about, facing the ground. At that point he returns the rotors to a more natural state, pulling back on the cyclic to regain horizontal lift with the helicopter facing the other way.

I do "the thing with the thing."



The truth is that both approaches are complimentary, and we've spent some time on Teamspeak talking through how to do stuff and why it happens, making the sim much more enjoyable for both of us. Lots of "oh, I get it!" back and forth. Plus Chief to ring in with switchology in the areas where both of us are a bit fuzzy.

Great article, thanks for your work.
I had just finished wading through chapter 4 of the BS manual in an effort to try and get to grips with some of the fundamentals, and why things are the way they are.... your article was a breath of fresh air and added another dimension to what I have to learn. It was also a good and easy read.. made perfect sense.

Keep up the good work.

Great article, Erik, thanks! Two things I noticed though:

- 2nd paragraph, 1st sentence: end should be "upper rotor generates more torque than the LOWER rotor."

- 2nd paragraph, 2nd sentence: "torque acts opposite to the direction [OF ROTATION] of the rotor blades."

wow, never knew thats what happened. Now I know and can avoid this....thanks!