I personally saw this thing years ago, but never thought anything of it... well, not enough to post here and ask about it. It was, however, brought to my attention again the other day in an e-mail someone sent me.

Have you ever noticed that the main rotor blades won't tilt left? When you are on the ground and the rotors are stationary (it can also be seen when rotating), go to the 3D cockpit view or external view and tilt the cyclic stick (your joystick) in all directions. Notice how the rotors DO tilt forwards, backwards and right - but DON'T tilt left.

Is this a game bug or is it a real helicopter rotor phenomenon? If it is real, can someone please explain why it's like this?

Interesting. When I tried it, I only saw movement of the main rotor front and back. I didn't see a tilt to the RIGHT or LEFT.

OK, I just re-tested this out for myself. Here are the expanded results...

When you are at 0% collective, on the ground, with the rotors not moving - you can only tilt your rotors forwards and backwards - but not to either side.

When you are at, say 15% collective, on the ground, with the rotors turning - you can tilt forward and backwards - but when you try to tilt to the left you hear rotor strain and no visible rotor disc movement, when you try to tilt to the right you hear rotor strain and your rotor disc cones upwards.

Lastly, when you are either hovering or flying forwards and are at, say 90% collective (where some rotor coning is visible) - if you tilt left the rotor cone will flatten-out and if you tilt right the rotors cone upwards more. When you return the cyclic stick to center the rotor cone defaults back to it's collective-related angle.

So, it is actually different behavior for if the rotors are turning and if you have some collective. I wonder what this behaviour is about though?

I think this has to do with the flight dynamics of the helicopter.

When the helo is moving forward the air flow is travelling faster over the blade on the right than on the left side.

The right side cuts into the air (creating more lift) and on the left side the air is trailing the blade (pushing).

A helo pilot could explain it better...

Last night I tested ALL the flyable helicopters in LB2, here's my report:


Longbow 2 Rotor Dynamics

When you first enter a mission, you can't move the main rotors with the cyclic stick in ANY direction until you release the rotor brake and they spin up to a certain point.

Whilst still on the ground, when you put the rotor brake back on, you can only move the rotors forwards and backwards, but NOT to either side - left or right.

The above behavior is the same for all playable helicopters - the AH-64D, AH-64D Longbow, OH-58D Kiowa and UH-60L Black Hawk.


However, there is different behavior in hover or forward flight:

For both versions of the AH-64D and OH-58, when you tilt the cylic forwards - the rotor disc tilts forwards... when you tilt backwards - the rotor disc tilts backwards... when you tilt left the rotor disc doesn't tilt left but simply flattens out... and when you tilt right - the rotor disc doesn't tilt right but cones upwards. When moving sideways, the body of the helicopter tilts in the desired direction and the rotors remain in balance with the body - at the default angle.

But for the UH-60, when you tilt the cylic forwards - the rotor disc tilts forwards... when you tilt backwards - the rotor disc tilts backwards... when you tilt left the rotor disc appears to tilt right and flattens out... and when you tilt right - the rotor disc appears to tilt left and cones upwards. When moving sideways, the body of the helicopter tilts in the desired direction and the rotors appear to move against the balance with the body - as if to stay level while the body tilts beneath.

## END ##

Note that I have only flown TH-67 Creek so far and I have worked on Longbows for 5 years (hopefully I will select them out of flight school) rotor will tilt wherever the cyclic is directed. Cyclic controls direction, collective angle of attack, therefore lift. So if the cyclic is moved left, the rotor disc will move left because that how you will move the helicopter there. Simple helo aerodynamics there is no way around it unless you have a giant amount of translating tendency but even then the helicopter will move to the right (US helicopters) ....

One of our before take off checklist items is to move the controls without hydraulics applied so that we can see proper movement... Cyclic controls are applied to the blade 90 degrees later due to gyroscopic procession, meaning when I move the cyclic forward and aft, I should see the blade to my right and left move, and left right movement of cyclic should create no movement (2 bladed rotor system) Collective will be applied to all blades simultaneously. Never seen a rotor disc cone up due to cyclic unless you are pulling Gs... Coning usually a collective thing...

Ole talked about dissymmetry of lift, which is compensated by cyclic feathering and blade flapping, blades flap up and down to compensate for this lift differential and it is by design and we control the cyclic to reduce the effects of dissymmetry... As you get faster and faster, eventually there would be no usable lift remaining on the retreating blade and would cause it to stall.

I know some of the info on helo aerodynamics won't answer LB2 specific question here but I am throwing it out there. In my opinion, this is a bug because I have seen AH-64s move their rotor discs in all directions.

Flyboy, I hope I was "good enough" to answer your question... Please let me know what they say at LB2 forums.

I was never able to run LB2, so I can't check it for you guys, maybe you have a different sim to compare? Like DCS?

It's been over 5 years already? wow, time does fly!

Yeah I suppose it does answer the question, not the answer I was looking for though! I really wanted LB2 to be correct! I don't have DCS so I can't use that for a comparison, I guess that should be 'perfect' anyhow though, right? Thanks for taking the time out to look over this post and answer.



Do you know Bushmaster, then?

Opps, sorry I went OT, but it really caught me by surprise that that much time has gone by so quickly. It only seems like just a couple of years ago he was still in South Dakota.

Bushie, still sorry I didn't have the time to see ya when you were in Minneapolis. One of these days!

Yea, good ol Frugals we used to post ... Good memories. Remember the time FBI showed up at my door in SD for buying Quickshot's Masterpilot thingy... LOL...

Flyboy, I am going through instruments phase of flight training right now, and we have state of the art Flight Safety International helicopter simulators, motion and stationary for all kinds of mission profiles, and of course different aircraft. Well, it wasn't the LB I was in but out of curiosity I wanted to test TH-67 IFR config aircraft, lo and behold, rotor disc moves in every direction I pull the cyclic towards...

I didn't try DCS either, only thing I played, helo wise, on computers is Search and Rescue 4, and that was a demo. I did a little of the Air Assault game from the same producer but that is it. I really wish LB2 was correct in that aspect. Did you look at Combat Helo thats coming up?

Bad news is that flight school is overcrowded and the word is they halted Apache/Kiowa student accession so past few flight classes were all going lift/cargo. I might never experience the 64.