I'm getting fairly proficient with the weapons systems.. but goddamit, I can not fly this thing worth a damn.
I'm having a ton of trouble setting up in a nice stable hover, so that I can actually deploy the weapons. It seems like I try and get setup to scan for targets and shoot, but I'm constantly fighting the bird to stay put. I watch some videos on youtube, and some of the training missions and the bird is in a basically perfect hover.
Operating the systems is fairly easy. The first thing any pilot is drilled in for months is how to fly the aircraft. No weapons, no funny stuff - so focus strictly on flying for a little while. Forget weapons, forget targets - just free flight and fly around the airfield making the aircraft do what you want it to do.
Like Nate pointed out, you might just be running into AP interactions and you're fighting them - check up on that first. A video or track of your troubles would be useful.
Originally Posted By: El-Producto
I'm getting fairly proficient with the weapons systems.. but goddamit, I can not fly this thing worth a damn.
I'm having a ton of trouble setting up in a nice stable hover, so that I can actually deploy the weapons. It seems like I try and get setup to scan for targets and shoot, but I'm constantly fighting the bird to stay put. I watch some videos on youtube, and some of the training missions and the bird is in a basically perfect hover.
I'll second that using the avionics in this thing is far easier than flying it. After an hour you can learn all you need to know to attack and kill targets using the gun, rockets, and Vikhrs. It takes a lot longer than that to fly the thing with confidence. At 100 hrs I think I've just about got it down.
On the flipside, I can fly the A-10C with confidence after just a few hours, but using those systems is another matter. I've got a 50% success rate only with LGBs, and Mavericks are better but still boil down to "one per pass". A far cry from my rippling Vikhrs down a column of armor...
The Jedi Master
The anteater is wearing the bagel because he's a reindeer princess. -- my 4 yr old daughter
I find it dificult too to fly the shark, specialy while landing.
I'm in doubt about the proper way to trim. It seems to exist two aways.
1 -> change pitch and/or roll, press trim button and center cyclic. 2 -> press trim button and keep it pressed, change pitch and/or roll, release trim button, center cyclic.
As far as I'm concerned everybody should fly with the Flight Director on. I know this is heresy to the purists, but is it is so much more enjoyable to trim and fly with the FD ON..
@NATE, HOW DARE YOU EVEN SUGGEST THAT... ... <ahem>
@Jacobs, as Nate insinuated in his post, you're probably going to get a bunch of different answers from different perspectives.
<My $0.02USD>Whatever works for you, works for you. Deep, right? Personally, I fly with FLIGHT DIRECTOR OFF <harumph> and press and hold the Trimmer button before and during any attitude changes. I also press and hold the collective brake when making collective changes. That said, if you're learning to fly this bad boy, I strongly recommend learning to fly with Flight Director ON. I even promise not to completely shun you if you decide to fly with it on all the time. Many folks do and for good reason.
In the series of well-written <ahem> articles linked above, I describe how the autopilot can appear to be constantly fighting the pilot but only because the pilot is constantly fighting the autopilot. The Flight Director mode removes all the control inputs from the autopilot so the only thing the pilot is fighting is the Trimmer.
Learn the Trimmer. Love the Trimmer. Become one with the Trimmer.
Only then can you appreciate what the autopilot is trying to do in the background and only then can you flight with it, instead of against it.</My $0.02USD>
I don't totally agree with you. I learned to fly without the FD and now I just can't fly with it turned on. You actually fight your own aircraft because you just don't trim (or don't trim enought). Trimming resets the point where the APs are trying to put you on, so if you trim you don't fight your Shark. I know that it is not as simple as that, but I suggest you to practice as much as you can on the trim. Focus on it, and every time you have the feeling the Ka-50 it's not doing what you would like, trim.
Originally Posted By: EinsteinEP
Learn the Trimmer. Love the Trimmer. Become one with the Trimmer.
I learned to fly without the FD and now I just can't fly with it turned on.
I don't like flying with the FD on either, but I think it makes great sense for folks who are struggling with intuitively understanding the Trimmer. It can be hard for a student pilot to differentiate between Trimmer and autopilot feedback - not all cases, granted, but many struggle with this problem. For those students, I *strongly* recommend flying with the FD on while learning to understand the Trimmer.
I would even suggest that it's good practice for "experienced" pilots to occasionally fly with the FD on just to reinforce and perfect trimming habits.
I think that the most difficult thing is to help new pilots to understand how the Trim works. A bit of immagination can be useful (it has been for me, at least).
If we can image the Shark as a sphere in the space, it becomes quite easy to understand the difference between trim effect and AP feedback. A sphere can go up, forward, spin around, etc. just as our Ka-50 can do (with some limits of course). Therefore, if we push the sphere it will go forward until we stop. What if we want to make it go forward forever? We should keep pushing it, isn't it? However, sooner or later we will get tired, so we need someone else to keep pushing. And this one is the Trim. It is nothing but "someone" who just keeps to do what we were doing. And what if we would like to do something different, turn left, for example? If we were pushing our sphere, we should just push it on its right side. But we are not touching it, Trim is doing that for us. However, Trim has its own "rules" (APs) and it's quite "stubborn". It would like to keep doing its stuff, thus it will try to oppose to any change of direction (AP effects). Hence we have to find a solution: we can fight against it and then tell it what to do next (change direction and then press the trim button); we can ask it to take a break while we change direction (press and hold the trim button, change direction and the release the trim button) or just tell it to forget its rules and let us do what we want (turn on the FD).
I know that this example can sound a bit stupid (and english is neither my first language and thus makes harder to explain and understand), but I think that sometimes extracting concepts out of context can help to make them easier to understand.
If this is not understandable, I'll try to explain in a different way, if you want.
I use FD for extended flight maneuvers and turn it off, once I fly straight ahead again and only need to do minor course corrections.
If you do not use FD, I can't see how you would do more drastic maneuvers like a loop. Without FD, the autopilot would always try to push you back on course. And holding down the trimmer also is no alternative, since that would disable all stabilizing autopilot input.
Interesting.. didn't know that... so basically the question then is, if you want to press and hold the trim button, or if you just turn FD on.
Although those are both workable options (pressing and holding the trim button down for the entire flight seems a bit excessive to me), there is a third option: learn to fly with the autopilot. It's certainly not impossible, but it takes a good understanding of Ka-50 helo dynamics, the Trimmer, and the autopilot systems.
As I said, I only use FD for maneuvers, for example for a sharp turn behind a building. Now that's probably too fast to make incremental adjustments to the autopilot via the trim button. Up to now, I always enabled FD before and disabled it afterwards.. seems a bit more comfortable, than holding the trim button down.
But as I said, I'll try and see how it feels without FD.
Ah. I think I misunderstood your initial comment: you were saying that you'll hold down the Trimmer button during a maneuver. This is exactly what I do. The other school of thought out there is to push then release the Trimmer once you get your desired setup. I prefer the mash, but the other solution works, too.