A Bunch of Questions and their Answers from the PolyChop Discord

Hello all,

I today went on the Polychop discord with several questions to ask, since I know a lot of people with questions about the module (mostly possible bugs/inaccuracies) that they pretty widely regard as broken. Here is a transcript of the questions I asked and the responses from PolyChop Sven. I thought I'd share this here since I see lots of these same kind of questions asked all over the place, such as other discords and even here on the forums, and these provide (some) answers. Note that this isn't trying to bring attention to the bugs or question responses, it's just so people can see the questions and they don't have to write out the answers again, and I think most of the answers are pretty clear and sufficient.

@Nightwolf I try to answer you as good as I can for each of your points. - Burn animation on Mistral missile never goes away:

this is do to the fact that even we as 3rd party are not able to code a weapon from defaul that has not been in the game yet. therefore we have limited access and can only go as far as the SDK allows us to do. Fact is, the burntime animation is something I can talk to my partner about, if we can do anything about the visual que seen. If so, we can change and will change it

- Mistral appears to be overly maneuverable?

this is something we can not discuss to much, but I can tell you this. If you think the mistral is too manuverable that is your personal impression. I have talked to guys that have the classification permit of such weapons and if they tell me, that mistral and even the stinger are capable of high manuverability, then that is the case.

- RWR can somehow distinguish between Su-27, Su-33, and MiG-29

yes we coded it that way, cause every radar has a certain bandwith and also a very unique structure of the wavelenght. The RWR of the Gazelle can even detect things in real life that you would not imagine. Can not go further into this, but in reality, this thing is very powerful, as any other RWR.

- Gazelle seems to have no to very few structural limits

indeed she does have very few structural limits. Most people see the bo105, that by the way is a former german army bo105 and has nothing really changed in its structure, if so i want a list what they changed.. The point is, i have seen german army bo105 do the exact same at airshows and nothing was changed. Other then that, people like to use what they know of and compare it with the gazelle. The gazelle is the french twin or sister to the bo105 in structural and many other parts. just because the design was optimised for higher speeds she has more the shape of a waterdrop, which by the way is the aerodynamicly perfect bodyshape

other then that, the rotorblades can withstand waaaaaaaay more then the airframe itself can. plus i have seen videos of bell407/ oh58d, gazelles, bo105, ch53, ah64, ec 665 tiger and many others that can and do perform aerobatic maneuvers. I have seen bo105 redbull/ german army, ah64d, ec 665 tiger live doing fancy stuff that most people would not even try to perfrom in a sim.

- Gazelle is impossible to put into a VRS

you can put her into VRS, but as people think DCS huey or mi8 have a realistic VRS i have to disappoint them. Also, how well a module behaves in an effect that nearly all pilots avoid is out of my understanding of measure. Other then that, VRS is something you can get out easier then you think, plus the critical altitudes and speeds are known to pilots and i have talked to some that have been ion it and can still talk about it. Fact is, they all stated, at least the once that fly dcs, that vrs is not very well done on any of the dcs helos, inclusing ours.

fact is, vrs is an effect that there are little data sheets available. if customers think there is huge table with numbers available, sorry, there are not. Even ion a 280 pages manual of a flighttest of a helicopter that i had to read the past 3 month , I have not been able to find any data on VRS wat all. A lot of other information that makes the difference in realistic and not realistic, but no VRS, sorry.

- overspeeding (which causes retreating blade stall if that’s the speed limitation) causes roll not pitch?

yes this causes a roll, as very pronounced roll. I have talked to an royal army instructor about this effect once and he told me he is ucky he can still talk about it today. one of the students nearly killed them. this only happened once during 4500 flighthours as IP on the gazelle. Therefore, also what is part of the physics and how all the effects act on the blade in such situation, only roll stays as such, cause there is no factor on the retreating blade, during its stall that could add to the pitch on the right side of the gazelle, so she starts to roll right and basically if you are in it, you can be more then lucky if you survive it in reality. Luckily the student of that example instantly, when the roll started counteracted the actions

- Mistral missile smoke seems much less than videos

when we talk about details like this, we have to take into consieration also the atmospheric factors of the day the video was taken. altitude, tempratur, airpressure, moisture and so on and so on. if you like a firework on new years eve, they sometimes smoke more and sometimes smoke less. As there is no data of the mentioned given in that video I think it is very overrated as a comparrision.

- IR and SARH missile miss the helo at low altitude (may be partly DCS issue with minimum altitudes)

hard to tell, but i can tell you that the SARH missiles in DCS do not only miss low gazelles. They like to suddenly turn into chaffs that are 4 miles or more away fromt he target. noboy could explain this to me either the past 8 years, which indicated that i like to fly the su27/su33 in this game.

about the IR, well there is the rotor, that also downwashes the hot air from the engine and i am trying to find a video of an ir picture of a helicopter. also in addition we have to think about the little trubine helicopters of that size have. they produce heat yes, but it is not an jetengine. smaller heatsource = smaller ir signature. Also in addition i am not sure how the groundclutter is coded in dcs

Back to retreating blade stall, I was wondering about gyroscopic procession since I've seen multiple physics videos about how retreating blade stall by itself is a self correcting situation (the loss of lift takes effect 90 degrees from the stall which would be the rear, meaning the helo pitches back and loses speed until the retreating blades cease to stall):

@Nightwolf yes periscopic persession is some factor, but think ybout where the blades enter the airflow and where the speedstall starts to happen. the overspeed factor is the greates in the rear left on the gazelle, so basiically the pitch up you would encounter, maybe, is something we can not verify, neither can any helicopter pilot talk about it. fact is, that the blade starts to stall at the left as soon it passes the 3-9 line, cause it changes thedirection ionto the 100% stall

Back to VRS:

most people only know the vrs, but then explain them that the tailrotor can have vrs too, or what LTE is. I studied rotor dynamics the past 2 years on my private time to actually understand one of my ver close friends, who also explained to me a lot about helo flights. fact is, most people never think about the other important factors of helos, like what does the coning effect do to your flight, or how would a helo actually behave in a turn greater then 30° roll. most people do not even see or feel that the mi8 magically stays level in a turn with high rollrates. funny is, i can do a 360 cyrcle without adding collectiv at all and maintain speed and altitude in rollrates higher then 30°

you can do the same in thew gazelle, but this is wrong, same for the huey.

there are so many things to measure a flightmodel, but i am not going to hold a lecture on flightphysics of a helicopter. took me 2 years to finally understand them all the way, but sometimes there are things that even professionals can not explain.

Later on talking to someone else:

“tested the new stuff on retreading bladestall. i knew something was missing. did 135knt in a dive. indicator dropped blank and i think i ended at 150knt or more. we have not added the retreading bladestall yet. it is on my list.“

I hope this helps people with questions about the gazelle in these areas and thanks to Sven for being willing to help me out and answer all my questions!

Thanks for sharing it here!

Yes, good questions, reasonable and understandable answers and a good and respectful sum-up.

Thanks for bringing it to us not following discords.

Interesting points on retreating blade stall

It gets interesting real quick.

Fantastic initiative, Nightwolf!! Thanks for taking the time to clear up some of the issues some of us may have or may have had with the Gazelle. Very helpful!!

I hope I could shine a little light on some stuff. And I hope such direct communication was maybe a little more helpfull.

Yes, thx. That was a great insight and I think most people (especially the ones comparing FM's to Youtube videos) don't get an idea how complicated this stuff is. Even understanding the literature basics doesn't mean you are up to a special helicopter.

The stuff on the other helos… yeah, I noticed some stuff but what should you do, feed the crowd with several helos and a nearly unrecoverable VRS and they will think thats how it is in life. But who am I… If three banks tells me interests are increasing I will take it for granted...