Hover Mode, Descent Mode and Collective Brake

I've been flying the Shark fairly regularly since day one and I'm still not sure whether:

All three are very real possibilities. :)

My problem is that I can't get the Shark to hover with any degree of consistency. Sometimes it works just fine and other times I find myself constantly gaining or losing altitude.

• I know that the autopilot only has 20% authority over the controls, but I'm always comfortably within parameters, so it can't be that.
  
• I've tried all sorts of combinations of pressing and/or holding the Collective Brake.
  
• I've even tried using Descent Mode to set my altitude.
  

All of that being the case, can someone please walk me through the exact steps to getting my altitude stable in a hover, please?

Also, in moment of ironic comedy genius, I got into a solid stable hover with Altitude Hold on and then tried engaging Descent Mode. The indicator light on the upper left panel came on and I could see that the Descent Mode switch was engaged on the collective, but the Shark resolutely refused to decrease its altitude. :)

That being the case, bonus points if someone can also tell me what I'm doing wrong with Descent Mode?

Any help on the above would be greatly appreciated.

Do you trim the Helicopter correctly?

Check out some Tutorials in Youtube!

Trim and Autopilot:

(re: Message #1)

Well, item #2 in your list I would agree with you.

http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/video/bs2-training/

You have to know the proper use of the cyclic trimmer button. Actually, the training helicopters do not use it.

No mention of Auto-Hover: LAlt+T

Next month will be a year I started flying the Ka-50. It took me quite awhile to get hovering down pretty good from a high speed transition to dead hover. And I still get into vortex ring state sometimes, but my reflexes are faster and I also see the situation coming before I get into a no-way-out-but-down scenario. And I sometimes still get screwed-up in hovering, but it is usually combat damage I cannot see, re: 104th server, only has out of cockpit view. I still have not perfected take-off hover pre-flight, but I also do not practice it very often.

Read the Flight Manual! Practice. Read Forums. Practice more! And expect a lot of copter crashes or bailouts.

I agree, the Collective Brake does not always work correctly. It is not consistent in DCS_World. The Collective Brake sets the desired altitude when you RELEASE the lever, but Altitude Hold is pushed to ON, lighted highlight blue, bottom right of the four autopilot buttons. Set your copter using the analog Up/Down meter to zero. Then release the Collective Brake. I can hover without using Altitude Hold and using the Collective Brake and/or even not using Auto Hover, it is possible, but, why?

Auto Hover will not engage and show its HUD circle with either Route Mode on or Flight Director on. Actually the HUD will show both the Hover circle and the FD/Altitude Hold bars on the HUD screen, but I think they are fighting each other.

I use Decent Mode for fine tuning my landings. And lately as my landings are getting better, I only use the Collective. Decent Mode works with Altitude Hold turned ON.

I have the 2009 Black Shark spiral bound book. There is a lot of material it covers. I still have not read it all. I read a little and practice a lot, just a selected topic. Get it down fairly well, then read another topic, etc. I am totally self taught. I wanted to get help within a squad, but the squads I approached require an entrance exam, pre-flight test. That did not make much sense. So, I teach myself, but I read and ask questions in the forums. I must be getting better at it, as more experienced pilots than I am, will fly with me occasionally in Multiplayer sorties.

The best copter pilot I have watched in my travels is 74th_Baron. Watch and learn at their England server:

http://www.74thvirtual.co.uk/

Their server allows you to use all the F-key view cheats, usually.

Cheers

First, if you want the autopilot to do anything about your altitude, make sure you have the altitude channel engaged (the lower-right AP button). Also, select which altimeter the AP will be referencing: barometric or radar. The left-hand switch under the flight director button controls this.

When you engage that button, the Shark will automatically try to hold your altitude at whatever it was when you pressed that button. To change the set point that the helicopter will try to stay at, either hold the trimmer or the collective brake, achieve your new altitude, and then release the trimmer/collective brake. Now the helicopter will try to hold you at this new altitude.

The collective brake only sets a new altitude, not a new pitch/bank/yaw. Use it when you want to only adjust your altitude. The trimmer, of course, sets a completely new attitude and altitude. Use it like you normally would.

To use auto-hover, you first have to bring the Shark into a somewhat-stable hover (the manual says "near-zero"; I usually try for <5km/h). I find that I have to have the Shark trimmed with her nose roughly 5 degrees pitch-up for this. Then, engage the auto-hover and gently release the stick. The auto-hover should bring you into a fairly stable hover and hold you there. If you want to descend while auto-hovering, hold the descent switch. The AP will slowly descend at ~2m/s. The descent switch does nothing if auto-hover isn't engaged and holding you in a hover.

I hope this clears things up a bit. Please ask if you need any clarification or if I was unclear about something =)

P.S. One thing I've learned while flying is that you don't always want every AP channel on. Use your altitude channel when you want to hold a specific altitude, but then disengage it if you're doing aerobatics that require constantly-changing altitudes. Doing a slow hover taxi around base? Turn the heading AP off so that you can turn without having to re-trim every time. Play with these and see what gives you the best results. Good luck!

I can confirm that from some latest version of BS the Collective Brake functionality is changed.

Before that version my behaviour is the same as destribed in the manual.

For altitude changes of less than 100m is preferable use the Collective Brake while the Alt Hold is engaged.

For altitude changes of greater than 100m is preferable to turn off Alt Hold, and reengage it once the new altitude has been reached.

BUT!!!! in the last version, with Collective Brake engaged I have to move the collective more than before, trying to bypass the 20% Authority of the Alt Hold mode, for every change in altitude, not only for >100m change.

MAYBE NEW BUG!!!

I'm getting drifting while all 4 buttons are pressed. The worse is when it slowly drifts altitude or when I find I'm drifting toward the target ,getting too close and getting fired upon.

It takes me very long time sometimes to get it in a good hover, as I try to 'retrim' while hovering and messes it up.

I've had better luck getting into a hover when I'm higher, and I've tried both the Descent and the Collective Brake, but it will often times not lower at all - which always leaves me confused - so I end up decreasing the collective manually.

I'm still very confused about 'alt-hold' vs. 'collective brake' .

When I am level and click alt-hold I'm expectation is that it will not go up or down. ie. does descent only work when using alt-hold ? When does collective brake work? My expectation of collective brake is that I lower the altitude using the collective and when I'm at a alt I want, I use the collective brake to 'set it at that altitude' - but it doesn't seem to stick (I still will go up or down).

Lastly, the hover itself - i use the cyclic back and lower collective to slow down and start to prepare to hover, I tend to be pitched up too high though, so I trim to be 'level' and then I drift forward, it's very touchy, and takes me too long - by the time I hover, I'm too close or drifted out of range!

...

To get hover hold to work properly, you need to first establish an almost perfect huver manually (with steady altitude) and then engage hover hold. If you keep drifting in any direction, make a very small correction in the opposite direction and re-trim. Repeat until steady. Your nose will point upwards slightly.

Altitude hold works the same, hold the collective brake handle (as the name suggests, it is supposed to hold the collective, so in the real aircraft you need to release it to move the collective) and adjust your altitude. When you have settled at the wanted altitude you release the break, not earlier. This works the same for speed and hover. When you release the break handle the barometric (i think) altitude is feed into the AP. If altitude hold isn't activated, there is no need to use the collective break in the simulator.

The descend mode [D] are used for hover hold when the altitude hold is active, I actually don't know if it also works in forward speed with altitude hold engaged. You descend slowly while holding D down, stop descending when releasing (there is a minimum height above ground where it stops automatically). You might bounce a little when releasing, but it soon settle.

The auto-pilot channels only hold your attitude and altitude; you need to engage auto-hover (LAlt+T) in order for the heli to actually hover without getting the perfect trim.

Altitude hold will hold your altitude above the ground and the collective brake overrides it, allowing you to set a new hold altitude when the brake is released. In the real helicopter, the collective brake prevents the collective from being moved unless it's squeezed (it's an actual brake), but in the sim you can move the collective without having to press the collective brake first. You can just move the collective to where you want it to go, then tap the collective brake key to set the new altitude.

You're probably bobbing up and down because you're lowering the collective to change your altitude, then using the brake to set the altitude hold, but you're not raising the collective afterwards. As a result, if you're descending at 5 m/s, then hit the collective brake, the altitude hold can only override 20% of that, so without raising the collective, you're still descending at 4 m/s. An easy way to tell if this is the case is to look at the vertical velocity indicator. If you're descending at a steady rate and turn on altitude hold, you should see the needle jump in the opposite direction. If that amount of jump can bring it to 0, then you will hold your altitude; otherwise, it can only slow, but not completely stop the descent.

As for descent mode, it only works with the radar altimeter (below 300m) because it will only descend you down to about 3 meters, and it will only work in auto-hover mode. It has the same 20% control authority limitation as the altitude hold, so you'll want to be in a stable altitude hold before using it.

Note that there are two sources of altitude hold, barometric pressure and radar altimeter. Barometric pressure will hold you at a set altitude above sea level regardless of the terrain below you, whereas radar altimeter attempts to hold you at a set level above the terrain and will follow the terrain as it rises and dips. The radar altimeter only works below 300m, and the barometric pressure will work at any altitude. You can set which mode it uses using the RALT/BARO mode switch to the right of the altitude hold button. There's also a middle position, but you should avoid it; it's kinda hard to describe what it does, but it's not an auto-source switch (BARO above 300m, RALT below 300m) as some people may believe. Also note that the helicopter won't automatically switch between the two sources or warn you it's not working, so if you engage altitude hold above 300m with the switch on RALT, altitude hold won't work even though the light is on.

it helps to engage/disengage AP-Hover a few times when you are slowing down while already telling the bird to hover over the one GPS spot you just passed. The AP will slow it down, hover..and then fly backwards to the GPS coordinates....eliminate that by disengaging and re-engaging AP-Hover a few times... you will see what I mean once you do it fluently while in motion. Correct your Collective once hovering, the AP is not a GOD-Mode.

put all ap buttons and fd on your hotas !