Go to Hoversafe http://members.shaw.ca/hoversafe/Hoversafe.htm and work through their lessons. By the end of it you'll be ready to fly a Huey into 'Nam

Flying a helicoptor isn't too hard, except landing. To land, you really have to trick the helicoptor into landing

Fozzer wrote on Feb 11^th, 2007 at 6:47pm:



They only fly because the are too stupid to know that they shouldn't.

Matt

beaky wrote on Feb 12^th, 2007 at 7:18am:

Thats a good one.

Quote:


I've sort of given up, but if you try the recommended settings and practice with the right model (default Bell is supposedly a bad choice, for what that's worth), you can make some headway. I have actually managed to land the Bell 47, the Huey, and the delightful Cessna Skyhook(?)... and if I can do it, so can you! ;d
Now, don't get the impression I landed where I was trying to land... but I didn't crash!!

Laugh all you want at helicopters... it's pure envy. lol

Trust me, once you've actually flown one, fixed wing's become a thing of the past.  You can almost put a monkey in a Cessna and get them do fly it, but helicopters are another story.  They don't understand the meaning of forgiveness. 


All joking aside... I actually thought the default Jetranger was incredibly nice to fly.  Much better than previous versions. 

Before I had actually flown a real helicopter I could do anything in the flight sim version to save my life.  All I'd do is wobble around and crash.  Once I went up a few times in the real deal I realized that flight sim isn't too far off!  Helicopters are all about "pre"-action.  You don't move the stick how you want the helicopter to move right now, you move the stick to get the helicopter to go where you want it four steps from now.  Everything is connected.  Movement of the cyclic requires coordinated inputs in the pedals and collective.  It's also about very small, precise inputs.  The key to landing on the spot you want is keeping things slow... you shouldn't be moving the stick all over the place, it should be small corrections.  Try thinking of a helicopter in hover like an object in space.  Every input will have to be countered in the opposite direction to stop the motion.  Don't wait for it to get out of hand either... make the correction before you even think you need to.

I'll put together a short video together for you all to show you why helicopters are soooo much better than airplanes.

Quote:

What landing you want... vertical or rolling

Hind is hard... especially with real performance FDE (it isnt the landing that is hard... it's getting the damn thing to slow down)
Mi-8M/MT is quite doable, rolling
Mi-1 is doable... almost vertical
HueyCobra is doable, almost vertical

I'll post the link as soon as I can get to the computer it is on.   It's kind of a stupid, non-fancy video at the moment as I just wanted to get the point accross that things are possible on FSX.

Later (maybe next weekend) I'll have a fancy-shmancy one to show around.

Nice video, Boss.

Crash

uhh  the link wont load for me?!

I managed to get my FSX loaded finally last night and will hopefuly fly tonight.

This is my stick:


Noob question, but can I assume the following:

Throttle up / down - cyclic up/down or collective up/down ?
Normal stick controls for pitch and roll

Now I don't have rudder pedals yet as this baby cleared my bank account out, but I use the antena control on the throttle for rudder in LOMAC- can i use this for rudder in FSX?

I know Paul but a Beaver can't land everywhere. Although I love to fly GA at low altitude, I've been doing that ever since I started way back in 19.. (can't remember when). And I wanted to try something new and different. I tried to fly a helicopter in FS before but crashed everytime so I gave up. Now I've been practising and tweaking for the past few weeks and I'm getting the idea of how it works. The sim is still on the hardest settings (-1 notch to keep it as real as possible). And like someone told me long ago; Practise makes perfect (ask the missus if you don't believe me....)

Crash (2 out of 5 times)

Thanks Triton but I'm already a member at Hovercontrol. I'm not taking their training though. Read a lot on settings and I found a tutorial at hoversafe.com that helped me get going. I've been trying for some time now and it's getting better and better.

Crash

Could that happen for real? Maybe I'll change it into Sir Get-filthy-rich-this-instant............

Crash

Which way is up?? 

Okay, I think I'm becoming more of a rotor head every second. 
Okay, here are my tips.

1.  Don't grip the stick like it needs to be strangled.  I use a light touch. 

2.  I have the realism set as high as it can go.  With no Null Zone on any axis and throttle.  I got that tip from Hovercontrol.com, I always keep realism on high so I don't know how it reacts with it low.

3.  My guess is that you are trying to come to a hover, and the helicopter starts drifting in every which direction.  For me, I always tried to adjust the attitude to what I figured was normal and my heli would drift backwards, whip around and then lose directional control.  Try to keep some forward speed.  The helicopter is much more controllable in forward flight with less corrections.  Keeping the chopper moving forward at 1-2 kts is much easier to control than if you try to maintain a hover at 20 feet AGL and try to land vertically. 

4.  Use the VC! ! !  I can't stress this enough.  It's there for a reason.  It is possible to use the 2-D cockpit, but it is also to drive a car blind folded while trying to play the piano from the passenger seat.  It just isn't easy. 

5.  Minor corrections.  I am/was a very ham-handed simmer.  Even flying in real life, I prefer quick sharp banks and rolls than slow and smooth.  You don't need to jerk the stick forward or back very hard.  I realized that I don't move the stick very much when I play because it just doesn't need the amount of "convincing" that fixed wings do.  I also use a little-bit-forward-back-to-neutral approach as well.  I don't just hold the stick forward or back, I ease it forward a sec and bring it back.  Ease it forward a second and then back to neutral.  Almost like you are trying to touch an imaginary wall of molten lava in front of the stick.  It kinda looks like you are shaking the stick slowly.  That way, if the helicopter seems to start getting away from you, you already have the stick in a neutral position and takes equally minor control input to bring back to equilibrium.

I hope this helps.  I've only been flying the FSX choppers for a few weeks but now I'm hooked. 

If you want an awesome add-on, the Bell 412 from http://www.Hovercontrol.com is the best I've seen so far. 

spitfire boy wrote on May 31^st, 2007 at 5:25pm:


They beat the air into submission. 

If Ells is right id highly reccomend a Logitech Extreme 3d pro!!

I started off as a complete crap heli pilot but i flew around in an r-22 at Whakatane NZ just taking off moving forward then landing.

It took bout 30 mins and now i can pretty much fly any copter i download

when your learning the real things, you look out towards the horizon and use your peripheral vision to notice wot the heli's doing, tiny little movements of all controls, the r22 in fs9 or fsx isnt really that realistic in the way she handles, jetrangers a bit better neither have enough yaw when you put input into the collective, especially on autorotaion entry which on a counter-clockwise rotaing rotor head requires nearly all right pedal which you dont get on the sim, and the r22 just falls like a rock and loses its rotor rpm to quick, upon engine failure. the real one does lose it fast, robinson say it'l be lost if the lever isnt lowered in 1.1seconds its more like 0.9-1 second but when you lower it you flair to regain rrpm which the sim doesnt allow, and in the real one once in autorotaion you have to keep adding tiny bits of collective to stop your rrpm exceeding its limits. and the trick to landing on the sim is not to mess about to much over that last few feet in ground effect, choose your spot keep the picture the same all the way in while bleeding the speed off and just let it land.