autopilot problems or my lack of understanding

as above, when collective assign altitude hold is depressed the altitude hold channel is disengaged. I tried setting VVI to zero and altitude hold seems to work but not when assign altitude is depressed.

one other thing, do I need to keep my pedal input once autopilot heading hold is depressed?

another thing is what are the safe speeds for engaging autopilot with all three channels and is barometric or radar altitude used for altitude fixing?

the SPUU-52 system controls the rudder I get that (by limiting right pedal input?, why would I want to limit the rudder right input?) but its console is not on the three channels so is that what is causing my foot to stay on pedal?

finally, the autopilot also steps on the ball for me or do I need to assist it? what time need I remove my legs off pedals if any?

In the training mission it is explained that the autopilot tolerates a deviation of +/- 15° in either axis iirc.

Soo, set your course, speed and angle, trim your controls to stay in that attitude and engage the autopilots. Et voila, happy flying while munching a sandwich ;-)

autopilot problems or my lack of understanding

what does adjust autopilot say when you depress it?

"adjusting or adjusted something"

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You mean virtual flight engineer? He confirms adjusting channels (one at a time), although both his English and Russian skill is too low to understand clearly what he's mumbling about :D. Certainly pitch and roll channels, not sure about heading and altitude, 'cause I don't use them anyway.

And I'm fairly sure the altitude channel uses barometric input only.

The Mi-8s autopilot is probably not what you would expect a "usual" autopilot to be. In the Mi-8, the autopilot is more of a stabilization system rather then a traditional autopilot which holds predefined headings/altitudes. The AP´s pitch and bank channel have to be ALWAYS turned on. The AP generally tries to maintan the helicopters current attitude in a trimmed and stationary flight, thereby counteracting any oscillations not induced by the pilot. The same goes for the heading channel, as it tries to maintain whatever heading you when you activated it. However, if you move your pedals out of the trimmed position, the heading mode will temporarily disengage until you move the pedals back into trimmed position. This is done to allow heading correction without having the AP counteract pilot input. This means that whenever you want tou use heading mode, make sure the pedals are trimmed properply.

Same goes for the altitude mode. It will maintain whatever altitude you had at the time of activation, but only within its range of authority, meaning you have to zero our your VS before enganging it. The real AC has a switch on the collective to deactivate altitude hold mode. In the sim this is done by simply moving the collective.

There are also AP adjust rotaries. They are necessary since after a certain time of flight, the AP servos tend to hit their movement limits and cannot provide stability augmentation anymore. To remedy this, they are manually moved into center position by the flight engineer. In the sim this is done with the adjsut autopilot command you mentioned (but only for pitch and bank IIRC).

About SPUU: It limits the pedal travel since at high air density, a full right pedal deflection can put enough load on the tailrotor to damage it. It is not part of the autopilot but simply limits pedal travel.

Im not quite sure what you mean by "steps on the ball" thou

There was a trade off that Belsimtek made regarding the heading AP and the pedals. In the real MI-8 the pedals had micro switches that detected when your feet were on the pedals. These micro switches prepared the heading AP for pilot correction (pedal movement) and once corrected (with the pedals staying in place and foot removed from micro switches) the AP now adjusts around the new physical pedal setting.

For Belsimtek there were 2 problems, firstly none of us have micro switches in our gaming pedals.

Secondly most of us have self centring pedals which is not true in the real MI-8.

These are major problems for Belsimtek to simulate correctly and once a compromise was decided upon, then us simmers must know and understand why and how this compromise was made and how it effects us simmers in game play and how we must adapt and overcome this fundamental but unavoidable comprimise.

You must understand and adapt to our weakness of not owning MI-8 pedals!

Only switch on the heading AP once you are happy with the old girls attitude and level wing flight. Switch off when its time to adjust flight path or massive amounts of collective.

YOU MUST CONTROL THESE RUSSIAN BIRDS, KA-50 or MI-8, the APS are primary HOTAS stick activators for each and every AP and must also include a single and complete de-activator. (NOT including the MI-8 PITCH AP.. this is a critical AP).

Yes I see that too with the altitude AP, it works perfectly until I manually change altitude and then it switches off!

When I reach my desired altitude I switch it back on and it holds that altitude just top notch...All this sounds about right for me... real good.

You mean virtual flight engineer? He confirms adjusting channels (one at a time), although both his English and Russian skill is too low to understand clearly what he's mumbling about :D. Certainly pitch and roll channels, not sure about heading and altitude, 'cause I don't use them anyway.

 

And I'm fairly sure the altitude channel uses barometric input only.

Thanks mate

Im not quite sure what you mean by "steps on the ball" thou

I meant the coordination of flight (putting pedals to fly straight not crabbing like WWII birds).

the AP now adjusts around the new physical pedal setting.

 

But the Ka-50 autopilot is a true one not stability augmentation (unless I've missed something since BS2.0). So should I enable rudder trim in SPECIAL tab in options?

My main problem is having to depress and keep pedals while heading hold is engaged. Thus, if the ball is stepped on, once I engage heading hold, A/P takes over then I remove my foot off pedals the A/P will keep heading but not ball (so the heading will stay but crabbing flight not straight flight will also be there.

For me it is a case of knowing your wind direction, like a plane, I fly the MI-8 into the wind. I set the auto pilots heading, trim her level on the wings and the ball should remain "roughly" centred with the directional AP engaged... but I am flying here with the nose offset into wind to ensure true direction. If the wind is from the rear then I try to trim her every which way but loose and still she may not be right. In this case, yeah, a bit of crab is on the menu today. I simply shrug my shoulders and live with a ball half way into the centre..... I have accepted much much worse in truly terrible weather.

If however, the weather is good then you need to do much more work to stabilise the MI-8. you have probably heard it a thousand times but trim, trim, trim. Take pride in the amount you press the trim button, even through maneuverers.

I believe the trim on the real MI-8 is "press-hold-manoeuvre-release".... but I do not do this as there is no hydraulic pressure on my warthog.

If you have self centring pedals then the rudder trim will cause a massive exponential workload to understand where you put the pedals 20 minutes ago when the outside world and all its aggressors are offering a gigantic workload ..... this situation will always come quickly and sharply into reality, I guarantee this!

Even under a leisurely landing situation. Understanding your "trimmed" pedal position and its relation to your real life centred pedal position is simply a recipe for disaster due to the thought process and delay required.

It is only when you add this to the self centring joystick's virtual trimmed position with its 2 axis positions (I can handle these) and then add a third axis in the pedals then you truly create a massive weakness in our standardized controllers.... the weakness is us.

Rudder trim off for me... always! perhaps when I can afford a proper chopper pedal then things may be different.

If you think you gotta hold the rudder for efficiency of flight and the error can't be trimmed out, then yeah..... its time to take a real hard one for the lads.

I have rudder trim OFF in all Helicopters as I also use them for airplanes WITH the centering spring.

YOu get used to push right foot down for a LONG time pretty quick, it's not the best solution but the best I can do w/o removing the spring OR buy a 2nd set of rudders ( and stick ) and remove any springs...which I may do as I mainly fly helicopters.

Having springs and trim is just asking for trouble and a bad flight experience imho, done that and was no good at all.