Thanks for the correction on auto-hover vs hover hold, Luke. I meant one even though I said the other; I know I need to be as "neutral" as possible before engaging it for it to work properly... but then if I can establish a proper hover myself, then why the need for it? Lol!

Donk, I guess I got spoiled by the American Hellfire missile and dealing with the Vikhr seems to be a step backwards. I have roughly learned how to trim as well ---- establish desired flight attitude, trim, fine tune, trim. Change something? Trim. A butterfly flaps its wings in Tibet? Trim. Blink? Trim. Any other questions? Trim. Realize how the aircraft sucks? Trim. And then trim again. And again.

I do love the gun for the simple awesomeness of the sound it makes, and the fact that one burst can take out most vehicles. And from such a distance away too. Anyone know the max range of the gun? And can it take out armor? I would bet not, so my beloved A10C still wins!! HAHA!!

Einstein, are you saying FD off will make me a better pilot? I do know FD "puts me in control" and dampens the autopilot forces so that I am more in charge of the helicopter and that is how I like to fly it. I've always flown my aircraft from A to B, even in Falcon with its fancy-schmancy pointy-nose I-can-take-you-anywhere autopilot. I'm not a button pusher, I'm a pilot who knows how to fight in his aircraft. So I like to "pilot" my aircraft as much as possible. But seeing as how this beast SUXS so much with FD on, I will try a few flights with FD off. It's a good thing I just have to pay for this game once, rather than paying on a "per helicopter" basis. Now on to reading your shamelessly plugged threads...

Oh, and GrayGhost, thanks for pointing out the obvious. Yeah, I suck. That's a given. Next time please post something that will actually help, either by telling me how to improve, or at least supporting me in my rant. I suck, you're great and smart. And no, I did not engage AP at anytime there so did not "freeze" my rudder in one position. I know and I'm 100% sure because I have the CTRL+Enter "red box with my control inputs displayed" and a stuck rudder was the first thing I checked.

+1 for the Trimming and AP articles. These are brilliant, Einstein (Hmm, appropriate name, evidently), and finally got my brain around how to trim and fly this a/c. Thank you for producing these.

Thanks to a better understanding and implementation of the AP and trim, I flew the 1st deployment mission (bs2) last night and had an absolute blast! Even though it is a simple FAM flight, I was pleasantly surprised at how satisfying and immersive this sim can be.

I've got a long way to go on combat systems, but at least I'm no longer fighting the thing and ending up as a smoking crater.

T

Flying with the FD off will help you LEARN to become a better pilot. The discussion on whether or not to fly with FD off or on gets almost as vicious as the discussion on whether to hold the trimmer button down constantly during maneuvers or the "click to trim" method - I'll let you figure out what works best for you.

BTW, the FD doesn't dampen AP forces - it completely eliminates autopilot control feedback. All that's left are the stabilization filters. Flying without these is highly discouraged as the aircraft becomes quite unstable and even dangerous to land. All's discussed in the shameless plugs above.

@Kozmo514, thanks for the compliments! I wrote them after struggling with the flight model and autopilot dynamics myself, so it's encouraging to hear when it helps other pilots come through the same learning curves.

Indeed. The Deployment campaign has been great fun (so far) for me.

I'm gonna re-read Einstein's articles again tonight..

Yes ice the vikhrs do seem a step backwards but when you think about it they work almost the same as a laser hellfire that the army air corp use out in Afghanistan today, they have to paint the target and the hellfire rides the beam to the target spot. Also the two missiles and two targets method at the same time is used by british apaches, in the book apache by Ed Macy he goes into some detail how he first managed to do this and the sim is pretty close to how he describes it, plus it's well cool when it works right lol

Thanks for the clarification Einstein. I will be trying your suggestion then. Still reading up on the articles, great read!

Donk, I will have to try that sometime. I can ripple IAMs and Mavericks in DCS A10, would be fun to ripple Vikhrs too. How many seconds after you launch the first one before you launch the second?

New goal now is to make this b*tch of an aircraft MY b*tch!

To be honest ice it's not that hard to do, but you need to have the two targets within close proximity so you can slew over to the next quickly, I normally wait a few seconds but it would depend on range, the trick is to get the laser on target but don't lock the target to the cursor.

Well, Vikhrs and laser Hellfires are both dependent on lasers, but they're not the same. Hellfire have seekers like LGBs that find the refelected laser energy and home in on it. Vikhrs actually ride a beam from the helo to the target, the laser is just the point the beam is sending it to if that makes sense. Put another way, the Hellfire follows its nose, the Vikhr is commanded from its tail. It's more like a laser-guided TOW.

As for flying, there's no doubt the thing's a handful. When it comes to flying and fighting, well, the Russians agree with you! The Ka-50 was bought in small numbers only because it was determined to be too much for the average pilot. Instead they're going with a mix of dual-seat Ka-52s and Mi-28s, where the pilot can fly and the gunner can use the weapons and other systems.

I admit it took me a long time to realize the reason the helo didn't fly like I thought it should were the stabilization channels in pitch, roll, and yaw. I couldn't understand why when I tried to turn from N to W the thing kept wanting to fly N! It was like ridiing an unruly horse! Now I just disable the yaw when I'm making turns so the thing will accept which way I actually want to go. I don't turn FD on except once in a blue moon.



The Jedi Master

Big deal. All you need is practice



Interesting - this is usually the symptom of a stuck rudder, so ... what else could have been happening? (I don't recall if the display shows you where the rudder has been trimmed to - generally I'll try to correct a spin with opposite rudder right away and it works. If you completely lost control, it would be interesting to find out why)

The Hellfire does not fly straight at the target, unlike Vikhr and TOW, which follow a straight line from launch platform to the target. The Hellfire will take an upward arc at first then dive down onto the target.