Basic Fundamentals: Ka-50 Startup

Suit yourself:

 

 

Instant action mission Cold Start in Mozdok, airborne at 2:20, you're dead at 2:27.

Not to be a spoon of vinegar in wine here... but this video shows you doing a whole bunch of things out of the sequence you initially criticized my video for.. Claiming I was teaching people completely incorrectly..

Don't get me wrong, it's DCS you're able to do that. However, isnt that exactly what I expressed my videos are about... Getting DCS pilots up in the air...

Just lost all the credibility I had in your comments. Your way of operating the Ka-50 IN DCS WORLD is nowhere close to the correct format. However, you inadvertently just showed a bunch of new people a very fast and efficient way to start the aircraft. I'm not trying to criticize here. I found your video impressive. Just simply pointing out that you yourself don't follow the correct way to operate the aircraft which is exactly what you borderline berated my video for. Nicely done.

The video isn't for you, nor is it a training video showing the correct procedure for starting the aircraft. It's an unlisted video intended solely to dispute Rogue Trooper's claim that he can start up the aircraft quicker with ground power than without. It also happens to be the way I usually perform my startup because though I know the correct procedure, I'm not interested in performing it for the umpteenth time.

Saying that I lost credibility because I didn't do it the 'proper' way is like me saying that you don't know how to drive because you did a rolling stop instead of stopping for the proper 2 seconds. There's the proper way and the expedient way, but when we teach, we always teach the proper way.

I teach the expedient way...

Why would I teach a bunch of uselessness to someone just starting out?

Also... Ranma13... You really need to turn on your fire suppression system before cranking the APU. Complete NOOBERY. NOOBERY!

;)

Also... for a KA50 startup thread...

There's a LOT of **** swinging going on in here...

LOL

Reading comprehension seems to be a major issue in this thread. I've already stated that my video was a "get it started as quick as possible without ground power" version, not a tutorial on how to do it properly. I don't care that I powered the fire extinguishing system after I started the APU because the APU will never, ever catch fire from a cold start in DCS. Not even the official LWin+Home auto-start sequence will enable the fire extinguishing system before starting the APU; it's only turned on halfway through the left engine startup.

For nearly every switch and lever in the startup sequence, the order doesn't matter. Using a macro, you can flip every single switch and lever to its correct position in the same instant with no adverse effects. My startup procedure takes advantage of the fact that many things aren't modeled or don't matter, to get airborne ASAP.

We should teach the proper startup procedure so that people know what it is and can adapt their workflow accordingly once they're familiar with it. It's the same reason why we teach people to drive the speed limit despite everyone going 10 over, or keep your hands at 3 and 9 despite many people driving one-handed, or fully stopping at a stop sign despite many people doing a rolling stop, or giving a turn signal for at least 100 feet before initiating the turn despite many people doing it immediately. You establish a baseline first, and once that's understood, then you give leeway to break those baselines. This is why the Ka-50 Leading Edge startup video is so good; it goes over the proper startup procedure from beginning to end and explains not only what you're doing but also why you should do it. Once you understand what the proper procedure is, you can then start cutting out things you know don't matter, like the built-in tests and switch flipping order.

"It doesn't hurt to use ground power, but I find it to be extra steps that aren't necessary and don't really save any time."

 

Really?

 

Really Ranma13!

 

 

You do not have enough wartime me reckons, not enough spool time under mortar fire I reckon mate. It has to be the reason you would make such a mistake when I can half the spool time due to external power!

The way you do it, the AC power supply comes from a fully spooled rotor blade! This powers the majority of the high end electronic systems!

 

 

The way I do it the AC power is delivered from an external power source instantaneously, it powers the nav and computer, weapon and defensive systems form the get go!

The KA-50 is Weapon ready, opticallyready, Navigation ready when the engines finally reach full spool.

 

Ranma13, we can spool our choppers side by side and I will walk my Kannon up and down your ass half way through your start up.

It's faster/more efficient to fire up the Ka without ground power. All these systems you're talking about requiring power aren't required for flight. You can take off with all of this stuff switched off.

Scramble startup is very easy.

Batteries on, fuel pumps on, fire detect on, APU valve open and start. While the APU is spooling up, open fuel valves for main engines and EEC controllers, and you can fire up any other system, ABRIS, EKRAN,...

Once APU is spooled up, start engines and while they are spooling up you've got ample time to run some rudementary checks if necessary.

I've been airborne while my second engine was still busy starting up.

Fine.

If you got it right then how can I argue with that.

No ground power is faster.... fine, go for it chaps!

I found the video a while back when I was learning the Ka-50 and I bookmarked it. It's a bit lower on the YouTube searches due to its age, but it's by far the best DCS training video I've watched across all aircraft, likely because it was a commercial product:

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=42223

 

Sadly, it seems like either this was the only video produced, or that nobody bought the DVD.

Oh wow, almost exactly 10 years since this was released. :)

I completely agree with you, this is pretty much the best tutorial video I've ever seen in DCS. It was more or less my introduction to the Ka-50, and it's always weird to see people teaching stuff that has been covered so long ago in such detail, and teach it wrong.

However, there was no DVD. Fabio Miguez (the video creator) intended to set up a website dedicated to Ka-50 lessons, where people could purchase the next lessons. This long start-up served as an introduction and was the first thing he completed.

He got an initial website up an running, including user registration and a forum, pushed his own Leading Edge Training skin for the Ka-50 (which looked really cool IMO), purchased a new computer for better and higher detail video and then... vanished. Months later he said there was some real life stuff taking place and he intended to get back to the training lessons at a later time, but unfortunately that was the last I ever heard of that project.

Anyway, that 7-part series of Leading Edge videos (the younger members won't remember this, but YouTube was once limited to videos of 10 minutes max, hence these were broken down into several parts) is pretty much the most comprehensive start up guide on the Ka-50 I've ever seen, and most of my knowledge about this chopper is based on it. :smartass:

In this course for the Ka-50, we'll go over the start up procedures as well as the HUD in its' default configuration.

It's a great video, and well done.

But I agree with some of the others here. We're all passionate about DCS, and about the Ka-50. Much of what you put into that video doesn't hurt, but several items are still wrong. If you watch the Leading Edge video once or twice, you'll probably know most of it already.

One item I can never wrap my head around is arming the ejection seat at the wrong point in time. There's a whole bunch of heavy rotor blades a few inches above the canopy, and I'm sure nobody would want to eject right into them. The only force separating the rotor blades away from the rotor head prior to an ejection is centrifugal force - and with the engines off, there is no such force, hence an ejection would catapult the pilot right into them (depending on their position, which is pretty much a coin flip).

Yeah, sure, it's just DCS. We don't accidentally pull the ejection handle, and if we do, we don't die, so it doesn't matter. But then, why even turn on the SAI? It's the single most unreliable instrument in the history of DCS anyway. Why perform some of the BITs and checks and not others?

In order to teach something as complex as the startup of the Ka-50, a teacher has to have an extremely deep knowledge of its systems. So why teach it if you're still learning yourself? It's not our job to point you in the direction of a comprehensive guide. You took on that burden the moment you published (or even just prepared to publish) a tutorial video.

I'm sure many people around would be more than glad to help create such a video by giving advice, pointing out errors and mistakes by looking at a script or by looking at a pre-release version. And there's certainly more than enough to teach about the Ka-50 in a series where lessons build upon each other, much like the original intent behind the Leading Edge Training video. But if you don't get the basics right, I'd never recommend these videos to anyone, especially not to beginners.

I really like the fluidity of the video. Minus the errors, it would be a great quick start guide and a good foundation to build upon. And I can only imagine how much work must have gone into this video already. All I can say is, it's much easier to point out mistakes than it is to create something - which is why there are no tutorial videos from me. But I'm good at pointing out mistakes. :D