I did say almost lol, I only meant it in the way that the laser has to paint the target, I'm aware of the the flight profile of the hellfire and that it's a nose seeker. I wasn't sure if ice was spoiled by the radar guided variant in eech or longbow lol

The best reason i can give is that you are in a sophisticated attack aircraft (albeit not the most modern). There are a lot of switches and head down operations to be done and being able to engage autohover effortlessly enables you to quickly get heads down to attack.

There is a slight misconception that you need to be almost in the hover to get a good autohover. That is incorrect, you need to be trimmed close to the hover to get a stable autohover as the autopilot used a percentage of control to achieve its target. So if you are trimmed outside of this, the autopilot does not have the amount of control input needed to put itself into a stable autohover.

You can easily fly at well over 100 klm/h and hit the autohover and come perfectly to a hover. (provided you are already trimmed for hover flight). So its not the speed, its purely the trim which will dictate a good autohover or not.

I am not recommending this. But quite a few people i flew with (even i did it for a while) would after take off, trim for the hover and then fly the chopper in forward flight out of trim (aircraft trimmed for the hover). Ok it made forward flight strange as there was always an offset cyclic, but made coming to a hover very easy, safe and effective to enable quick deployment of weapons.




For me, to reliably hit a target would max 3.5 klms. I have not stringently tested this, but find i think i find more accuracy when shooting at long range with gun set to low rounds per minute. Though i could be wrong. Anyone confirm this?

Basically, any distance over 3 klms and the bullet spread widens quickly. Can get kills at 4 klms but you will need to set off a few rounds to counter for adverse dispersal.



Horses for courses. You may want to try this (its what i do). Fly with the autopliot channels engaged except YAW. this will give you stability in pitch and roll but leave yaw to yourself.

If you are using autohover and turn to taget, then you will need yaw engaged. So i just disengage yaw when in forward flight and re-engage when i wish to autohover or use turn to target. I find i get better precision out of flying that way. But that is me.




Well the only tips (if you could call them that) are to keep control inputs as minimalistic as possible. This bird needs a light touch. But just practice and keep at it, it does get better, once the old grey matter figures out what you want and sends it to your fingers / toes (took a while for me)


[EDIT]
Just remember that the trimmer has a different function with autohover engaged.

For me, to reliably hit a target would max 3.5 klms. I have not stringently tested this, but find i think i find more accuracy when shooting at long range with gun set to low rounds per minute. Though i could be wrong. Anyone confirm this?


Yeah that's what I tend to do, I guess the recoil of the gun is lower when less rounds are fired which in turn makes for a tighter grouping of rounds, I tend to use the low setting 90% of the time and only use the high setting at snap shots.

What I do struggle with though is taking enemy choppers out, has anybody got any tips? Because the apaches keep killing me with hellfires

well to be honest, when it comes to an enemy helo (actually for me the same applies to any flying threat), if i think they have detected me first the only thing i will do is go defensive and bug out.

For me its better to avoid than try to duke it out.

"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!"

Actual Ka-50 pilots say that in Ka-50, weapon systems are so easy to use that there is no problem. If you crash in this sim it is only because of poor flying skills.

With longer range on their missles, more power in their warheads, and the ability to lock you up in seconds, I find fighting Apaches a real suicide run. I've managed to sneak up on them before and take them out with a combination of a pair of ripple Vikhrs and cannon fire without them getting a shot off first, but usually my first indication there's an Apache in the area is a Hellfire coming at me!

The worst part is getting locked on to it is tough, getting a Vikhr launched is tough, and then keeping it in front of you so it tracks is tough...and then 1 Vikhr will usually fail to do much damage.



The Jedi Master

Yes, and yet they still prefer the two-man approach. The Ka-50 is fine as long as the battlefield isn't task-saturating you ... it isn't a front-line heli.

In addition, real pilots get loads of training to make things fairly natural for them, so in most cases piloting is 'free' and they can concentrate on employing weapons and tactics ... but it isn't always like this, and this is why the 2-man heli is the front-line heli, and the Ka-50 is on its way to extinction.

Okay Grayghost, tell ED we need that two seat heli for DCS. Apache and Hind.

No need, they are well aware

Thanks for the input, bogusheadbox. I have tried trimming for hover and flying "in-control" the whole time, I think I prefer that since I like the idea of quickly being able to hover and engage targets if necessary.

As for the gun, I prefer a low RoF when firing at armor, and a high RoF when firing at soft targets. One or two good hits and a truck is burning anyway. Need to do some range testing though. I once kept firing at targets and could not understand why my rounds always fell short.... then realized I forgot to turn on the laser rangefinder, lol!

Is the Ka-50 significantly faster than an Apache? If so, I was wondering how easy it would be for it to simply extend away then come back and camp somewhere to ambush the Apaches.

Also, how "quick" can you expert pilots set up for an attack? I know for planned targets, you coast to a hover, park the aircraft, go heads down, then start sending some Vikhrs downrange, but what is the plan of action if, for instance, en-route to target area, you come across a moving convoy of enemy vehicles? Can you take shots "on the run" or do you have to still "set up shop" somewhere before giving the enemy some punishment?