MI-8MTV2 auto Pilot in a hover

Situation: hover over cargo, AP pitch/roll, altitude and heading engaged.

In this situation I am having quite a hard time keeping the aircraft on the same heading. More often than not I am yawing more than anything else.

I have cheap rudders (pedals) that come with my Logitech force feedback steering wheel. Force feedback is off.

According to Chucks Guide: When in hover, the autopilot stabilizes the helicopter in pitch and

roll, as well as heading when the pedals are released (feet off the pedals).

Also in his controls setup section he stipulates zero deadzone for all controls.

1. In my case would it not be better to have a slight deadzone in the rudder pedals in case the simulation thinks there are small inputs (feet on pedals) from a slight jitter in rudder control inputs.

I have not tested this yet as I just thought of it. Soo...

He also mentions: Autopilot functionality in hovering flight can be verified by checking the zero indicator unit for fluctuations in the "К" (roll channel) "Т" (pitch channel) "Н" (yaw channel) servo displacement indicator needles.

2. Does this mean I can check the zero indicator and if it is making slight adjustments for the aircraft and the needles are moving on their own it indicates it is operating correctly? Or does this mean if there are needle movements it is not working and the aircraft is moving off heading?

I will test this out tonight but any advise would be appreciated.

PS: I have successfully completed my first sling load mission in the Oilfield Campaign but I find operating the aircraft in a hover has not been consistent, hence this train of thought.

Cheers!

re.1) I'm not a fan of deadzones either (because of their inherent concept flaw of inducing input delay), but if pots in your worn out pedals are acting up, that's probably the only software way to deal with the problem. Racing pedals are not a bad stopgap rudder solution actually, I was using Logitech and Thrustmaster ones for the same purpose for quite a few years. In some situations they were even easier to use than my new proper rudder ones (because of faster movement of foot compared to whole leg), so they can be used for the job indeed.

re. 2) When all three AP channels are operational, all needles should be moving off center more or less, especially the yaw one from your point of view. If it flips back to center that means the channel has disabled itself (with corresponding green light on the panel going out). I've just made a test flight and noticed it tends to do that if the rudder is pressed a little by mistake/habit/spiking pot, so make sure you enable the heading channel only when the pedals are dead center. The real chopper has AP-disable microswitches on the pedals, so I guess that's the way their operation is simulated.

Personally, I would recommend not dwelling on heading channel too much really. I don't use it at all, as I've noticed trimming the cyclic is far more important for successful hovering. If you trim the sh..t out of the stick so that the chopper maintains roll and pitch in hover almost hands off, finding and keeping the right amount of right rudder pressed is not as difficult anymore. I stopped using heading channel altogether for this reason long ago.

You might also consider turning "autopilot adjustment" on in the special options, so that the virtual flight engineer tweaks the channels all the time, helping you out with the hover (though it's a bit subjective thing as some players don't like this AI guy interfering with their inputs).

There are some videos I made on hovering see my signature for link