Autopilot Heading Hold question

Does it set it to the heading of your travel or heading of your nose?

 

So if I'm traveling to 275 but my nose is pointed to 280, is the autopilot set to 275 or 280?

Heading of your nose.

Heading of your nose.

 

Thanks, make sense as it holds heading during hover too.

Just to clarify some terminology for you Taz,

 

Heading = The direction in which the nose of the aircraft is pointing during flight.

Course = The intended path of an aircraft over the ground or in the direction of a line drawn on a chart representing the aircraft path.

Track = The actual path made over the ground in flight.

Bearing = The direction to or from any point to some other reference point.

Just to clarify some terminology for you Taz,

 

Heading = The direction in which the nose of the aircraft is pointing during flight.

Course = The intended path of an aircraft over the ground or in the direction of a line drawn on a chart representing the aircraft path.

Track = The actual path made over the ground in flight.

Bearing = The direction to or from any point to some other reference point.

 

Thank you for the reminder. I knew I wasn't using correct terminology but used the explanation of the terminology instead trying to be clear on what I'm asking.

 

The reason I asked this in the first place is because it's so damn hard to be accurate with holding an exact heading. It always wanders.

The reason I asked this in the first place is because it's so damn hard to be accurate with holding an exact heading. It always wanders.

I find heading hold to be very accurate. But there are many reasons that you could find this not to be the case, including sub-modes, errors, limitations etc...

 

 

I'm assuming this is the scenario in which you are having problems?

 

In Shooting Range Instant Mission, lock up the truck column from where you spawned, then fly towards it with rockets armed.

 

...By the way, regarding answer #1, it's related to question 3. When I'm flying towards a column and side slipping even by a little and the nose pitch up, all rockets are fired in angle so I miss the whole column. I can fly straight "enough" but sometimes I want to be perfectly accurate. This also related to how small the blast radius of rockets are. S8 missing a truck by 1 meter doesn't seem to damage the truck.

I didn't do any of the ranging tests you described, but I did fly and shoot the rockets at the trucks. Yes if you try and using Heading Hold you're going to have a very rough time because it's a constant fight between the autopilot, piper alignment, and constant resetting of the Autopilot. Frankly it was basically impossible. I disabled the Heading Hold by enabling the Flight Director (stability augmentation only) mode, then with some quick practice destroyed 6 trucks.

On the return to Mozdok, I again enabled the autopilot mode and it held constant heading, then I engaged route mode and it navigated back to base.

It's a powerful but many times confusing autopilot system. Helps answer the question why many attack helicopters still have a crew of 2 :music_whistling:

I find heading hold to be very accurate. But there are many reasons that you could find this not to be the case, including sub-modes, errors, limitations etc...

 

 

I'm assuming this is the scenario in which you are having problems?

 

I didn't do any of the ranging tests you described, but I did fly and shoot the rockets at the trucks. Yes if you try and using Heading Hold you're going to have a very rough time because it's a constant fight between the autopilot, piper alignment, and constant resetting of the Autopilot. Frankly it was basically impossible. I disabled the Heading Hold by enabling the Flight Director (stability augmentation only) mode, then with some quick practice destroyed 6 trucks.

On the return to Mozdok, I again enabled the autopilot mode and it held constant heading, then I engaged route mode and it navigated back to base.

It's a powerful but many times confusing autopilot system. Helps answer the question why many attack helicopters still have a crew of 2 :music_whistling:

 

For flying, I find it sufficient too but I'm trying to use it for targeting. Rockets in game has effective range of about 3km. This works in the Shooting range where nothing fires back but in Deployment campaign, if I fly towards target and deploy rockets and miss any (which is easy to do with default rockets having so small blast radius), then I get hit as I fly by. Even with evasive maneuvers. And even small AK47 seems to knock out my HUD. May also have something to do with default Insurgent infantries having Excellent skill level.

 

So I'm trying to find a way to fire rockets at stand off distance in hover. And trying to use heading hold to aim the reticle laterally to my target. I have heading hold as macro on one of my button so if I hold it down, it deactivates heading hold and if I let it go, it reactivates it. Sort of like trim button. But when I rotate towards my target exactly and let it go, my nose bounces back and forth until it stops slightly off to what I released at. And I can't never get it exactly on my target.

 

For now, what I discovered is Turn to Target is fairly accurate... doesn't turn exactly to my target but it allows minute adjustments. The reticle is still off my shkval sensor but that offset remains constant. So I use it to turn accurately during hover. Also found that I can sort of toss the rockets for more range as well.

 

If there's better way to deploy rockets in actual engagement, I'm all ears.

Edited July 26, 2020 by Taz1004

Do NOT use rockets in a hover!! It's a very bad habit.

 

Rockets have a fair bit of of recoil. The autopilot can't compensate for it fast enough accurately and neither can you. If you're firing a medium burst only the first pair of rockets will be somewhat accurate and given the inaccuracy and lack of splash damage it won't do a whole lot.

 

The best way to employ rockets accurately is in a shallow dive, because the forward velocity combined with the dive will stabilize your helicopter significantly. Even when firing a medium burst the nose should barely pitch.

I would provide some numbers but I just have a feeling for it by now. Sorry. 200kph seems to be a good start though. Plenty of energy for evasive maneuvers and you're still far away from overspeed.

 

When done correctly you can put a medium burst (10 rockets total) right on target at 2.5km. That's enough to out-range all ZSU-23-2s in the game (2.4km engagement range) and your airspeed will make evading return fire easy.

Practice for an hour and you'll see ;)

 

Regarding the heading hold: Hold trim, align pipper with the target vertically, release trim.

Don't worry about minor deviations. The heading hold AP will try to maintain the last commanded heading (when you released the trim) and in turn your rudder inputs will be slightly smoother.

And don't bother with the "auto turn" feature in this case. It only cares about where your nose is pointing, not where the pipper is at. It can make aiming unnecessarily complicated.

Do NOT use rockets in a hover!! It's a very bad habit.

 

Rockets have a fair bit of of recoil. The autopilot can't compensate for it fast enough accurately and neither can you. If you're firing a medium burst only the first pair of rockets will be somewhat accurate and given the inaccuracy and lack of splash damage it won't do a whole lot.

 

The best way to employ rockets accurately is in a shallow dive, because the forward velocity combined with the dive will stabilize your helicopter significantly. Even when firing a medium burst the nose should barely pitch.

I would provide some numbers but I just have a feeling for it by now. Sorry. 200kph seems to be a good start though. Plenty of energy for evasive maneuvers and you're still far away from overspeed.

 

When done correctly you can put a medium burst (10 rockets total) right on target at 2.5km. That's enough to out-range all ZSU-23-2s in the game (2.4km engagement range) and your airspeed will make evading return fire easy.

Practice for an hour and you'll see ;)

 

Regarding the heading hold: Hold trim, align pipper with the target vertically, release trim.

Don't worry about minor deviations. The heading hold AP will try to maintain the last commanded heading (when you released the trim) and in turn your rudder inputs will be slightly smoother.

And don't bother with the "auto turn" feature in this case. It only cares about where your nose is pointing, not where the pipper is at. It can make aiming unnecessarily complicated.

 

It is actually very effective in hover. Recoil only happens when you're firing burst. And with medium burst, I actually use the recoil to fire in a line to destroy a column for example. Recoil is a bug by the way. You actually have no recoil with flight director on. It should be reversed. They modeled the recoil compensation for autopilot and forgot to actually model the recoil for the rockets.

 

And I wasn't talking about heading hold during flight. I said I have no problem with it in flight. Just for accuracy during targeting and I can't ignore minor deviation for that purpose. But as I said, I found workaround for this too. Auto turn is very accurate as it lets you make minute adjustments in heading.

 

You should actually try it. Works very well and quite fun. Hover, turn to target, move the shkval cursor laterally to turn your piper right on the target and fire.

Edited July 28, 2020 by Taz1004