bit of help for a helo nooby please!!

[mrtube]

Hey guys, been a keen falcon 4 player for some time, although not for a few years now. black shark has got me back in to flught sims, and being a ex falconeer, I have started learning at the simulation, not game settings. I am having some problems controlling the helo, if I describe them, I hope maybe you have some tips. I have a cougar and rudder pedals and am using Legolandisar profile for the cougar.

 

basically, I can take off and hover pretty good, but the helo seems to want to go left or right. When I correct this with rudder input, after a while, I often seem to get into a kind of high speed spin, round the centre axis. I can stop this by applying the appropriate rudder, but when I release the rudder, it starts again. Once the helo is in this behaviour, i dont seem to be able to stop it. I have tried trimmimg, but it does not seem to make any difference. Then if i try and go forwards, it all seems to go completely wrong and uncontrollable.

 

Any ideas? cheers, Mark

[S7_Viper]

I am a noob as well, kinda. But my first suggestion is to go into your options menu, under the controls tab, and then select the Axis Commands... then once you have them pulled up, click on each one, and run through that they are working correctly... add in some deadzone, and a curve to them to lighten/soften the input.

 

Also, Make sure that you are using the trimmer correctly... If you trim in rudder, it will not help. Set a key to reset the trim as well.

 

One more thing, when you start the bird, make sure you are turning on your AP settings.. the 5 blue buttons low and right. They are Pitch, Bank, Attitude, and Alt hold buttons... The allow the Helos computer to remove unwanted movements and dampen your input.

 

I could be totally off, but on my reading of the forums, that is where I would start.

[CE_Mikemonster]

use; Right-CTRL+ENTER to display trim settings, and see if it's trimming correctly.

 

Take into account that due to the coaxial rotors the helicopter wants to turn varying directions depending what speed you're going.

 

Greetings from another F4 fan! Free Falcon 5 is coming out soon, take a look, still an active community http://www.freefalcon.com/forum/index.php

[sobek]

My guess is that you trim with rudder to one side every time you trim, so the trim accumulates.

[LtFransky]

The Right-Ctl + Enter thing sorted me right out. It's hard to visualize what the controllers are doing without it turned on.

[VS461]

Hey Mark,

hail to the new rotorhead:)!

How did you try to hover? You need to trim the helo properly at all moments of your maneuvers. If you tried it with the autopilot on, it is quite difficult to fly the helo as you want it, cause the AP holds your attitude around your 3 axes. I don't know Cougars but it ain't a Force Feedback stuff, so you must trim your helo in every attitude change attempt and put the stick to the neutral position in no time.

 

Try to fly with Flight Director on. You will still have AP but it only stabilizes your attitude, not holds it; on the HUD you will see the last trimmed attitude to hold it manually. I am a real life helo guy, I think this mode is closer to my helo's behavior, and it is easier to fly Black Shark for me. Time and practice will show you the right method.

 

And don't forget that the trim button has influence on the three axes you want to steer: by pushing the trim you select an exact attitude in the space (and this will be held by the AP or displayed on the HUD). This means an exact force and torque system around the CoG of the helo. If you push the helo onto its nose by the stick, the drag force will accelerate the helo (until the raising resistance stops acceleration), and by trimming you stabilize this angle and force imbalance. If you push the right rudder, you change the torque balance, and the helo will turn right; by trimming you stabilize this imbalance, so your helo will turn and turn... This is a bit strange for me, my helo has no such kind of trim on its rudder... I constantly cursed during my first flights cause of the rudder...

 

So, as you trim the Shark, you need to put the stick to neutral. Try this with the rudder as well. Turn the helo's nose to the desired heading and neutralize the rudder as quick as possible and now you push the trim button. With neutral rudders, now the heading has to be constant. In the real life, during smooth maneuvers, like hover, acceleration, underslung loads etc. we play with the trim button constantly to find the balance. I suggest you to try this during a hover first.

 

Not an easy way as you read, but this worked for me. After a few try, it will work. See my signature below, a helo pilot have much more difficult job to do: (s)he always works with his/her hands and legs. Gods made helos for us as a bigger challenge:D:D:D. If you are interested in rotor stuff, you found the most realistic chopper sim I've ever tried on PC

 

Cheers!

Edited February 2, 2009 by VS461
sth missing

[Big_les]

I had this same problem, both on takeoff, and in flight. In fact it was almost a deal-breaker - thanks to the forums I worked out what my problem was (YMMV).

 

Firstly - deadzone - this has been mentioned. My rubbish wireless joystick needs a deadzone of 4 on all axes - this prevents constant uncommanded (well, kind of!) yaw and sideslip. The other problem seems to have been the AP heading hold channel ("HDG" blue pushlight I think it is). If I'm navigating a route, I leave all channels on and Flight Director off. If I'm manually flying, I kill the heading hold and sometimes the altitude hold as well. If I want to do funky maneouvres, I hit the Flight Director on.

 

Then there's trimming. Contrary to what most have said, I don't get on with either press-and-hold, or single-click-when stabilised. I find that I do best when I make a turn (or whatever), stabilise, and then make multiple clicks of the trimmer button (note that the KA-50 cockpit video on youtube seems to show the pilot doing the same thing - I could be wrong though). It seems to prevent cockups - I can't seem to get the "click and release stick within 0.5 seconds thing" down - this bypasses it. And if I get way out of shape, I have trim reset mapped to the button right next to it - saves my noob skin often at this point.

 

The above has got me taking off smoothly, flying without porpoising all over the sky, and performing vertical landings - I can even translate across over the runway before landing, Sea Harrier-style. A week ago I couldn't do any of that.

 

This may help, or it might not. I hope it does! I for one am hooked on this thing.

Edited February 2, 2009 by Big_les

[Mogster]

Yes its hard to manage rudder trim without the axis view box on. The real Ka50 has FF on the pedals and stick, I'd be happier if there was an option not to have the trim active on the rudder as FF pedals don't exist.

 

To re-center the rudder I position the movement indicator in the centre of the box and then press the trim button. Without the Axis box open I can't see any way to centre the rudder axis without resetting everything using the reset all trim command.

[Flash1606687761]

I was thinking the same thing.. I am quite happy to hold the rudder pedals so it flys straight. I have also 'over trimmed' the rudder and starting spinning out of control :)

[DragonRR]

Hope this helps!

 

Your problem sounds like you are fighting the trim. as another poster mentions make sure you press CTRL-ENTER to see where the "real" heli joystick and rudder pedals are.

 

Secondly remember that it is only when you release the trim button that the trim is set.. so to turn to a new heading you would hold the trim button in, then turn to the new heading/height etc.., recentre your controls and then release the trim button.

 

Remember that trim holds the controls.. so if you push your joystick forwards half way and release the trim the "real" joystick will be held in that position.

 

Remember that trim also holds the heading assuming you have the Autopilot for heading button on (which is default).

 

Finally.. (purists may shoot me because in real life KA-50 pilots apparently use trim almost all of the time without FD)... try flight director! Turning on FD allows you to use trim to set your joystick and pedals up but stops the trim from affecting your heading or height. I use FD constantly unless I'm following a waypointed course, want to go effectively hands off and follow a direction or use auto hover. Auto hover does not work with FD on.

 

I suspect that if I was using a force feedback joystick which holds the trim postion like the real KA-50 joystick then I would probably not use FD so much!

 

Basically.. If I'm understanding your problem correctly.. try turning flight director on and see if your issue goes away.

[mrtube]

Woooooahh!!! Loads of imformation!!!! I can see that i will have my work cut out with this ! Thanks to all for your excellent and in depth replies, i will try out all suggestions over the next few days, work and family commitments allowing and let you all know how I got on, thanks again. Incidentally, how do you turn on flight director? I could not find a macro for it in my cougar profile? Nice community! mark

[159th_Viper]

....Incidentally, how do you turn on flight director?

 

Press the Switch ;)

 

Located next to the 4 Primary AP switches. I would however be negligent in not advising you to leave that button well enough alone :D

 

Fly the Whirly-Bird the way she was meant to be flown - FD off. Takes a while, but with practice it's well worth it :)

Edited February 3, 2009 by 159th_Viper

[DragonRR]

Press the Switch ;)

 

Located next to the 4 Primary AP switches. I would however be negligent in not advising you to leave that button well enough alone :D

 

Fly the Whirly-Bird the way she was meant to be flown - FD off. Takes a while, but with practice it's well worth it :)

 

Pfft Viper.. I knew some purist would jump in with this! ;) It's only like holding down the trim button .. indefinitely :smilewink:

 

TBH It completely changed my experience with the game when I just didn't understand trim correctly. Trim without FD really needs FFB to work correctly in the sim.. just imo of course :)

[DTWD]

Dragon...I might have known you would be telling him to use FD!

 

For me I use trim, along with a latched trim button so I can spend a bit longer comfortably trimming properly. Saying that I do have the FD mapped to my pinkie switch so if something un-expected happens or I end up in close/lots of direction change combat I jab FD on.

[mrtube]

Hi people, well, I have had an interesting and slightly frustrating few hours!! I think I am slowly getting the hang of the trim, but still having major problems getting into big oscillating patterns which i find very hard to get out of, or more importantly, to understand why they started. The right control enter thing is great, my main problem is that the controls seem super responsive sometimes, you just have to touch a bit and massive movements happen. I can see a lot of practice and a lot of further questions arising! The training tutorials help a bit, but when i take over it dont happen like they did it!! Fro example, when i tried the hover and take off, as soon as i lifted off, I seemed to rise very quickly and also start to spin - even though I had not touched the rudders or movedthe collective very far. Do you need to use the throttles at all? I have them set on my range slider on the cougar. Thanks again, i will keep practicing!!, mark

[DragonRR]

I would like to think I fly the heli as realistically as possible given the fact that it is impossible to totally simulate real life. It's been made clear "by those in the know" that real KA-50 pilots rarely use FD. I've switched backwards and forwards between almost no FD and trimming a lot and lots of FD and trimming from time to time.

 

I can see the merits of using trim but feel, overall, that with the lack of proper force feedback rudder pedals and joystick (where they are held at the set trim postion) makes both trimming the controls compounded with a trimmed bearing awkward especially when I have to get the joystick and rudder back to neutral postions within a very short period of time. This is just too much intrusion for combat use, jaunting round the airfield (which I do a lot) and circular strafing practice.

 

I do, however, switch off FD when I'm following waypoints and the odd times when I use AutoHover.

 

@mrtube Throttles: Set to auto position (about halfway) and leave alone after that (more or less)

I *think* you are fighting the Auto Pilot bearing trim. If you don't use FD you need to trim direction + controls.

Edited February 3, 2009 by DragonRR

[ruprecht]

MrTube,

 

I have also flown a lot of F4 and the Viper is a big pussy to fly compared to the Shark. With the F16's automatic stabilisation you can set an attitude and it will hold it - it simply wants to fly. Not so with the Shark - like all helos it desperately wants to beat itself to death on the ground and you have to constantly convince it not to.

 

It sounds to me like you're overcontrolling and thinking too much about it. You have to fly helos with your subconscious brain because your conscious brain is too slow. That sir just takes practice and a force of effort to stop yourself "stirring the pot" with the controls.

 

I'd also do some reading on rotary wing aerodynamics as that can help to explain some of the secondary effects you're seeing. Every control is interlinked and changing one means you need to change another too.

 

You shouldn't need to touch the throttles, just leave them in the "governor" position about halfway up.

 

Good luck!

[Big_les]

ruprecht is right - practice will help more than anything else. You learn to anticipate where the heli is going to want to go, and find yourself moving the controls already to counter it and tell it go where you want it to go.

 

Try mapping FD to one joystick button, and reset trim to another. That way you can try learning to fly with trimming, but get out of any sticky situations by either hitting reset trim (nose will pitch up, but you just need to gently bring it back down and retrim), or if you're really getting annoyed, hit FD and fly with that on.

 

I think part of the problem is that until you start navigating and fighting, you don't realise how damn useful the various autopilot aspects actually are. The thing flies itself - literally in the case of route following mode, auto-hover (though you MUST have it trimmed well before engaging), and "auto turn to target".

 

It's only really wild evasion, stunt-pulling, and pleasure flights that need the smooth control of the FD+your control inputs.

 

I still have to turn off heading hold sometimes, because I find it wants to yaw itself even when I'm almost sure that there's nothing switched on that would cause that.

[mrtube]

Cool, thanks for the advice. Do you need to have just the FD button on, or does it need to be on in conjunction with the other 4 autopilot buttons ? or some other combination of all of them ? I think i will try and get the hang of the controls first using the flight direction, then ease myself into the mysteries of trimmimg... ! Off for a practice now, thanks for the help, Mark

[HansRoaming]

After taking a real flight lesson in a R44 a couple of years ago I found out that flysing helicopters is really really hard compared to fixed wing aircraft. In BS I train myself by turning the autopilot off and flying around the airfield and also by putting a curve into the control options so that it isn't so twitchy.

 

As the comments above indicate you have to get your muscle memory to learn to fly the chopper rather than trying to chase the controls and that will take a few hours of flying to do.

[Big_les]

And after two weeks, I still have moments like earlier on today where I lost the plot entirely and went ring-vortex. Managed to pull out of it, but it felt like I'd unlearned something somewhere along the line. Of course, I was trying to acquire and engage targets in forward flight, so I think I just overloaded my poor brain.

 

Mind you, I still can't work out why the heli wants to yaw in a certain direction. I've tried hdg hold on and off, AP wpt light on and off, and it still seems to be chasing some imaginary heading that I haven't told it to follow (I'm trimming the whole time).

[ruprecht]

And after two weeks, I still have moments like earlier on today where I lost the plot entirely and went ring-vortex.

 

I hear ya man, I lawn-darted last night in multiplayer due to VRS. It's a killer when you're hack-flicking around at 10-20m. I think it's probably a little aggressively modelled in BS, but having never flown the Ka-50 I can't say for sure :)

[ruprecht]

Here's an interesting exercise - pick an object like a ground vehicle or something with a lot of space around it and hover at about 10m AGL, maybe 20m away from it, facing it. Now try and fly a circle around it, staying pointing at it and staying 10m AGL and 20m away. Do that for awhile and you'll start burning basic helo controls into your subconscious.

[LongbowDriver]

And after two weeks, I still have moments like earlier on today where I lost the plot entirely and went ring-vortex. Managed to pull out of it, but it felt like I'd unlearned something somewhere along the line. Of course, I was trying to acquire and engage targets in forward flight, so I think I just overloaded my poor brain.

 

Mind you, I still can't work out why the heli wants to yaw in a certain direction. I've tried hdg hold on and off, AP wpt light on and off, and it still seems to be chasing some imaginary heading that I haven't told it to follow (I'm trimming the whole time).

 

Three things necessary for the vortex ring state or as we call it in the US Army settling with power: Low airspeed, vertical descent beyond 300 ft per min, and 20 to 100% power applied. Easiest way to get out of it is to apply cyclic in any direction to "fly out of the vortices". The worst thing you can do is grab an armpit full of collective it will only make matters worse with one exception, if you have pwr available you can power out of it with collective however best thing is to outfly your vortices. Also if you have altitude you can get out of it by decreasing collective but your descent rate will be very high.

 

As far as your heading problems, check where the winds are coming from because even with heading hold modes helicopters will weathervane into the wind. If you're not tracking a course to your waypoint ie have a crab angle that counteracts the wind so you fly directly to your next waypoint even though you may be in trim the wind will push you off your course thus deflecting your waypoint caret.

 

Just some thoughts, and Ruprecht's exercise is a classic helicopter control touch exercise very good way to get your feel for the antitorque.

[ruprecht]

In BS I find that anything less than 50 km/h with more than 3 m/s descent is a recipe for VRS. Mind you, there is some warning (vibration) and a quick reaction by lowering collective and nosing over will fly you out of it quite rapidly, but if you're under 20m AGL and get VRS you're probably a goner, even if you eject.

 

Some more aerodynamics here: http://vaaf.net/wiki2/index.php5?title=Rotary_Wing_Aerodynamics

Edited February 5, 2009 by ruprecht