The Rookie Thread

Ah, there's also "my helicopter" in the background :)

Aahhhhh:cry: your flying an mechanics nightmare.

No really, i maintain the civilian version of the AW139 and there an downright disaster. You have to remove the seats and wall panels if you want to give

you yourself access to some relays that are mounted in the ceiling......

Anyway, nice to hear you like the sim though. And don't stress that 139 to much.

There are already dis bonding problems whit the tail and it tends to crack on the sub frame just above the fuel tanks. But she should do the job if ya tread her nicely;)

Out of curiosity, what do you think of the level of vibrations in the 139 at speed? 140+ kts????

Ah, there's also "my helicopter" in the background :)

I love the EC135 as well! Here in South Australia the civilian version is used to SAR and retrieval, as well as the EC145.

EDIT:Correction! Air ambulance here in SA use the EC130 and BK117! I need new glasses!

Although, It's easy to make that mistake at 2km away :D

Campaign/Engine startup

When I enter the Campaign game and start a mission my Gun Ship is already in fire up mode (engines going) despite having simulation clicked in the options and 'use these settings for all missions'

This does not happen when I play a solo single mission.

I would like to start my own engine in the Campaign missions

Thanks in advance for any help:)

Some missions have the chopper already running due to their being time constraints (e.g. you needing to get to the FLOT to help friendly forces). Missions where you don't have to worry about timing should have you start in a cold chopper.

If you want to convert all missions to cold starts, you'll need to open each one in the mission editor and do it yourself.

Some missions have the chopper already running due to their being time constraints (e.g. you needing to get to the FLOT to help friendly forces). Missions where you don't have to worry about timing should have you start in a cold chopper.

 

If you want to convert all missions to cold starts, you'll need to open each one in the mission editor and do it yourself.

Thanks Eddie, In the campaign it doesn't let you open the editor as you can in single missions, plus I wouldn't know how to adjust the editor in that way anyway(I can just about manage changing the waypoints etc) no worries as long as it is a scripted thing Iam sure i will get a cold Gunship in one of the missions soon (only completed 3 missins in the deployment campaign so far) What a great sim.

I got curious about the runway landing direction logic. Usually, you want land into the wind and tower assigns the landing direction according to wind (in real life). However today I flew a mission and tower made me takeoff with tailwind. I finished the mission, returned to the base and tower made me land into headwind this time. What's the logic behind this?

Dusk Mission

Can anyone help me, is there a way that I can skip this mission and remain in the campaighn screen and go onto the next mission, (I have flown it many times and the AI of the the wing man lets me down everytime) found a thread where someone was playing the missions from the editor screen but I find that very confusing and difficult to even begin down that road...thanks for any help in advance:)

Hi,

Can anyone tell me if there's a specific ABRIS view key so i can zoom in like the Pilot/Instructor does in the ABRIS training mission? rather than using the move around/zoom in keys?

Dusk Mission campaign

Can anyone help me, is there a way that I can skip this mission and remain in the campaighn screen and go onto the next mission, (I have flown it many times and the AI of the the wing man lets me down everytime) found a thread where someone was playing the missions from the editor screen but I find that very confusing and difficult to even begin down that road...thanks for any help in advance:)

Right, as no quick help was forth coming here,I managed to try some trial and error, and found that there is a button on the editor screen that takes you to the standard campaign screen with breifing etc (for any other rookie having the same issue as me)

I have enjoyed the Deployment campaign but feel very let down by the Wingman AI in general and in particular there ability to hover in one spot when given a location to go to...read on here that this has happened since the 101 patch:huh: :cry:need another quick patch ED asap if this is the case:music_whistling:

Hiya Bullit,

All of the campaion missions can also be flown as individual missions (just look in the campain directory,you'll see each of the individual missions .miz files).

It won't count towards the campain statistics of course, but if you want to play the missions that follow, you can.

Campaign Missions

Thanks Nemises

Is anyone aware if BD know about this 'go to location and hover' after patc 101 issue concerning the Wingmen:cry: and whether they are working to correct it asap, really does ruin a otherwise great sim:thumbup:

Newbie Suggestions

Hey guys. My name is Tony and I am completely new to flying and simulation. I purchased Black Shark and although I haven't received it yet, I figured I would stark lurking around. Anyways, after reading these forums I am getting quite intimidated.

Does anyone have any good suggestions for other flight sims that would be good for beginners and someone who has never flown or played flight sims? Maybe something that would help me ease in to the genre before I start attacking something more difficult like Black Shark.

FYI, I purchased the Saitek X52 and rutters for controller.

Thanks for the suggetsions.

My suggestion is that, rather than worry about it and find other things to play, that you simply approach this with a plan.

You may expect that a flight sim requires a learning curve and investment of time, but no one really tells you just how much - truth is, it really depends on how you go about learning things.

Here's what I'll tell you to get you started: This is a flight combat sim. Learn the flight part. Love the flight part. Shoot things later.

Start with watching the producer's notes and reading the manual, and for heaven's sakes, do NOT try to do everything at once.

Don't worry about the start-up procedure at first. Get yourself a bird in the editor, ready-to-go and start feeling out the controls. Every action should have a plan and expect outcome:

I will activate the FLIGHT DIRECTOR to eliminate auto-pilot input. This isn't the right way to fly this heli, but we'll pretend it's a little trainer heli without an autopilot instead. It also prevents me from having to learn about this autopilot stuff right now.

I'm going to add collective. What do I expect to happen?

I will increase torque slightly in one direction, so I may get nose drift.

I will increase lift, so by adding collective slowly, I will see the nose gear lift off the ground.

I am trimmed for a motionless ground position, so now the helicopter will want to roll or fly backwards. By adding some forward cyclic and trimming it out I will eliminate this.

I will now add more collective, and lift off into a near hover.

By analyzing and understanding every motion like this, it will take you maybe a little more time to study and learn, but you will achieve mastery much faster.

After you get the hang of taking off like this, hovering the heli, flying about gently and then landing, follow up with a rolling take-off and landing (like a plane!), and different flight modes while in the air (ie hovering, straight and fast, turns, etc etc).

Once you've adjusted to the basics of handling and trimming, it's time to take the FLIGHT DIRECTOR off. It's going to be a /huge/ change, because you now have autopilot input and the helicopter will appear to fly differently (in fact, it flies the same, but your input is even more filtered than before by autopilot action).

But that's for the future. Focus on the basics of flying and -oh - keep the ABRIS off and just take care to monitor your climb/descent GAUGE (not the HUD, you can do that later. Heck, turn the HUD off!) and your airspeed gauge.

If you can, find yourself a squad that teaches how to fly, or someone who's willing to teach you. If you go to a squad, expect to commit - not necessarily time, but it would be rude to join or pretend to join a squad just to learn, and then to leave. Joining a squad is nothing to worry about. Most have very flexible programs since everyone works after all, and everyone needs their own time.

Expect to spend between two and five hours learning the basic handling of the helicopter in flight. It might seem like much right now, but it's WELL worth your time. It is a skill that will never rot (ok, it will, but you'll only need a short while to get your skill back, it's not like re-learning everything, and you'll need to take a really long break to lose just that little) and it will also transfer to other realistic rotary wing simulations.

The rest? The rest is very important - the nav system, how you DO navigation, then the ABRIS, and your weapons ... but all those things really amount to little more than operating a calculator (as complex as it may be/seem - heck, you operate a computer, right?) ... the flight part will be what requires most skill, at least at first - defeating your enemies requires you to develop a tactical skill, but that's for later.

Meantime, just remember: Have a plan. Plans help you learn faster ... and remember, if you fail, don't get frustrated, learn from failure. A simulator allows you to do this and walk away :)

Welcome Tony,

Black Shark is definetly a complicated A/C to learn especially right off the bat as your first flight sim. However, the manual, tutorials and videos will make the learning less daunting and the forums as you've noticed is a excellent resource. Learn to fly first and fight after (use the "cheat" start to get you going as well).

To answer your question though, I found LockOn an good flight sim to start with although there are no helicopters.

Good luck

My suggestion is that, rather than worry about it and find other things to play, that you simply approach this with a plan.

 

You may expect that a flight sim requires a learning curve and investment of time, but no one really tells you just how much - truth is, it really depends on how you go about learning things.

 

Here's what I'll tell you to get you started: This is a flight combat sim. Learn the flight part. Love the flight part. Shoot things later.

 

Start with watching the producer's notes and reading the manual, and for heaven's sakes, do NOT try to do everything at once.

 

Don't worry about the start-up procedure at first. Get yourself a bird in the editor, ready-to-go and start feeling out the controls. Every action should have a plan and expect outcome:

 

I will activate the FLIGHT DIRECTOR to eliminate auto-pilot input. This isn't the right way to fly this heli, but we'll pretend it's a little trainer heli without an autopilot instead. It also prevents me from having to learn about this autopilot stuff right now.

I'm going to add collective. What do I expect to happen?

I will increase torque slightly in one direction, so I may get nose drift.

I will increase lift, so by adding collective slowly, I will see the nose gear lift off the ground.

I am trimmed for a motionless ground position, so now the helicopter will want to roll or fly backwards. By adding some forward cyclic and trimming it out I will eliminate this.

I will now add more collective, and lift off into a near hover.

 

By analyzing and understanding every motion like this, it will take you maybe a little more time to study and learn, but you will achieve mastery much faster.

 

After you get the hang of taking off like this, hovering the heli, flying about gently and then landing, follow up with a rolling take-off and landing (like a plane!), and different flight modes while in the air (ie hovering, straight and fast, turns, etc etc).

 

Once you've adjusted to the basics of handling and trimming, it's time to take the FLIGHT DIRECTOR off. It's going to be a /huge/ change, because you now have autopilot input and the helicopter will appear to fly differently (in fact, it flies the same, but your input is even more filtered than before by autopilot action).

 

But that's for the future. Focus on the basics of flying and -oh - keep the ABRIS off and just take care to monitor your climb/descent GAUGE (not the HUD, you can do that later. Heck, turn the HUD off!) and your airspeed gauge.

 

If you can, find yourself a squad that teaches how to fly, or someone who's willing to teach you. If you go to a squad, expect to commit - not necessarily time, but it would be rude to join or pretend to join a squad just to learn, and then to leave. Joining a squad is nothing to worry about. Most have very flexible programs since everyone works after all, and everyone needs their own time.

 

Expect to spend between two and five hours learning the basic handling of the helicopter in flight. It might seem like much right now, but it's WELL worth your time. It is a skill that will never rot (ok, it will, but you'll only need a short while to get your skill back, it's not like re-learning everything, and you'll need to take a really long break to lose just that little) and it will also transfer to other realistic rotary wing simulations.

 

The rest? The rest is very important - the nav system, how you DO navigation, then the ABRIS, and your weapons ... but all those things really amount to little more than operating a calculator (as complex as it may be/seem - heck, you operate a computer, right?) ... the flight part will be what requires most skill, at least at first - defeating your enemies requires you to develop a tactical skill, but that's for later.

 

Meantime, just remember: Have a plan. Plans help you learn faster ... and remember, if you fail, don't get frustrated, learn from failure. A simulator allows you to do this and walk away :)

Thanks a bunch for the info. I will be printing out your suggestions for use when I start the game up. From reading these forums I have found out people here are really helpful and I appreciate the suggestions.

Tony

Thanks Nemises

Is anyone aware if BD know about this 'go to location and hover' after patc 101 issue concerning the Wingmen:cry: and whether they are working to correct it asap, really does ruin a otherwise great sim:thumbup:

I guess not:music_whistling:

Im still having problems with Shkval showing targets, but think it my just be my pc just not a gaming system although flying is working just fine and that is enough for now. My new question is this...

I want to just want to shoot weopons....cannon and rockets without locking on ( I know missle will not fire ), but other weapons should right? I really like " target practice " mission, I can just fly and even toggle the cannon to shoot even using the ridicule to aim it by pressing "c" on the keyboard, but if I press "y" or " I " for other weopons nothing happens. Why will rockets not fire? Pretty sure I got cannon toggled off. Im no pro, and really dont spend hours learing this, but thats cool, just as I try shooting stuff with the cannon at random is helping me learn to fly if that makes any sence, just be fun to unleash some rockets as well. Thanks guys.

What is the secret to learning how to fly well?

you know like when you learn say a musical instrument, you practice simple exercises (which aren't necessarily musical to the ear, or a particular way of playing) which help you build up your ability to play the instrument - is there anything similar to this which will help us fly this baby?

Nice explanation schkorpio,

i think the problem is that he cannot release rockets..and for me sound like he uses wrong trigger!) cannon is fired by the trigger on your stick, if master arm switch is on and you hit "c" that is correct that you fire the gun.

but for missiles and rockets you need to assign another joystick key, go check your options for which button is assigned on "ins cyclic", "release weapon" on your joystick.

keyboard input is: Space - RAlt for Release weapons

if you select rockets, you should see the targeting point in HUD and you can release your rockets with this key

hope this helps

lol i wasn't being smart a$$ to the person above me :lol:

It was a genunie question as I'm new to the game! :joystick: so wondering what the best method is practice effectively.:D

This is more like learning to drive a car, you need to be at least a bit hands-on doing it for real to experience it early on (and how things interact around you, like wingmen who have kamikaze tendencies..). Can't just learn to play by chords and scales.

Watch all the producer note videos, if you have the DVD, locate the folder there with them on since they're all present in a good quality and you can pause/rewind/etc. easily. They're a great insight.

The training missions are OK too, but I didn't labour on them too much and even skipped a couple first pass through (we need to have fun as well as the theory right).

Give this a go too, it's a handy walkthrough with some target practice and more thrown in:

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2626185/1.html

For myself, I then started a campaign for a few missions to get more of a feel for things in the wild, and got by just with the LWIN + HOME / LWIN + END cheatsheet methods for startup and shutdown.

Now I'm going back to some of those original training missions again to refine certain things, learning how to start the beast up properly/manually, things like that. It's not exactly been a textbook approach to learning, but it's been fun and I feel like I'm developing along the way sufficiently which is rewarding by itself.

I mostly use the manuals as a reference though some swear by going through it page by page (Strongharm seems to be a good example of that, whilst he hasn't been playing any longer than I, his grasp of the mechanics and methods was higher/faster than mine). I just needed to have a balance to keep me sane, and if I was to start over again, I'd not regret repeating it the same way.

I don't think there's any one really right way, it is something you can enjoy at your own pace.

Last tip; I'd suggest grabbing the program/mod/addon called Tacview and installing it. Early on there'll be a number of "wtf happened there" moments, and aside from having a track file you can replay, it can sometimes be a clearer set of events seen on a tacview recording -- particularly if you stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time, I learnt a lot about AA threat capabilities from that (first with lockon, not so much with blackshark, but it works well for both).

hehe, i understand you scorpio, just wanted to help astroknight,..

well i have same philosophy on learning to handle new sims,

DoItYourself learning by doing, like i produce music without havin an musics education!)

i don t like training missions, in no case, not in flight sim, nor in producing tools..

i start to build my own missions with the first install..

even if i have some good skills on the controls of the unit(start up, hovering, turning, waypoint following landing, shut down,...), i get more to the details, then i add some easy targets to learn aiming and firing weapons, or add a carrier or fregatte to land on..or even check out the different AAA units to test from which distance they get active..there are many ways to get the feeling, but fly the beast brings best effort,..you ll be conflicted with the systems and weapons, and the question you ll get in learning process, you can read in manuals)

but one more fact, i agree with topdog that it s a huge help to understand piloting failures while watching TACVIEW ACMI records of my own flights. I almost record LOMAC and DCS flights and it s interesting, what has happened around me, i didn´t recognized(even in selfbuild missions)in flight,..

so thx for those great tools, provided by the comunity

cheers

Shkorpio, I'm a total newbie pilot as well, but I've found the dummies giude to blackshark a great help. I just repeat it again and again and I'm getting faster and more confident, I've spent time mapping alot of functions to my stick, and getting "finger memory" of sequences etc is speeding things up. But I still can't fly AND shoot, so I've turned game flightmode on so I can concentrate on buttons and switches until I know them, then I can turn super twitchy mode back on....

I think its a matter of repetition and committing sequences and functions to memory. I suppose this is what it must feel like for those poor souls who didn't grow up with PC's tryng to learn how to use them....

Here's some thoughts for schkorpios question about simple exercises. First some motivational words for people who don't think this is important. From a psychology standpoint, simple exercises that focus only on a small part of the task are the most effective and fastest way to learn. You can't consciously focus on many tasks at once, but unconsciously you can focus on a lot of things. The trick to get some task to be handled unconsciously is practice, repetitive practice.

Think about driving a car. I have read, that people might have to do something like 20 things (mentally) all at the same time while driving a car in a busy traffic on a unknown road. It would be impossible to survive it if you had to do all that you do consciously. A person who has never driven a car would be a good example what would happen as he just can't follow everything and do everything that's required.

If you try to focus on too many new things at once you can't focus on anything. In order to learn effectively and fast you need to focus. If your ability to focus on one thing is taken away your learning ability will diminish. For example, I have found through personal experience that I learn most when playing against people with lesser skills than against superior skills. When playing against noobs, I have time to think what I do and if I make a mistake, I have time to see it and learn from it. Against pros I just die quickly and never have the opportunity to see what I do wrong except that I keep dying. You can learn new tricks and stuff by analyzing how you got owned but as a way of practice its not good.

Other important thing besides focus is observation or feedback. You need to see if what you are doing is bringing results that you are after. First you need to have some idea of what you want to accomplish, preferably a very exact idea. That way you have some yardstick that you can use to measure your performance. Other thing is to analyze your performance thoroughly. More mental effort you put in practice, faster you learn.

Now you can see that if you just jump straight into combat there's so much things to focus on and analyze and see that you will be overwhelmed. I don't mean that you can't survive the mission but that you will spend a long time flying and learning very little. But there's still one other aspect to learning that's some ways contrary to previous statements but is still important piece of the puzzle. In order to focus and observe you need to direct your attention and usually it gets directed into interesting things. What follows, is that you need to keep training interesting and simple exercises tend to be a bit boring. Just doing simple exercises until you have fully learned everything might be effective way to learn if you can keep your attention to the task but I can't. When I start to get bored and lose concentration, I fly combat missions. That way I can get reinforcing feedback when I can see that my combat effectiveness has improved and practice has paid off. I can also see new things that I need to work on.

OK, now to the answer. :D This post is a bit of a transcription of my thoughts so I can stay somewhat organized, sorry for that.

I haven't really thoroughly thought about this and tried to task-analyze piloting combat helicopters but here's my .02c. Maybe someone has access to a real scientist made task-analysis from military or maybe they are classified?

Here's the rough sketch.

-Flying

-Operating sensors, weapons, radios, etc. equipment

-Keeping up situational awareness, looking around, listening to radio traffic, thinking about what's going on, what will happen, etc.

-Planning ahead

For flying and operating equipment it's pretty easy to devise some exercises but SA and planning need to be learned the hard way, through combat missions. At least I can't figure out how I would isolate and replicate the SA and planning problems any other way. So lets task-analyze flying and equipment operation:

Flying:

-keeping straight flight

-coordinated turn

-break turn

-slowing down

-quick stop

-quick descent

-maximum acceleration

-hovering

-flying sideways and backwards

-precision hover landing

-rolling landing

-autorotation

-maneuvering at high altitude and not hitting a mountain

-instrument flying

-navigation

-OK, can't think of more, please help.

Operating equipment and weapons:

-Basically everything that you can do with every equipment (read the manual)

So here's some kind of list of small things you could practice. The point is to practice this stuff so much as that you don't need to think about it anymore. I don't think it's necessary for me to give any more specific examples of what to do to practice these things? I'm hungry for thinking and typing so I have to quit for now anyway.