Helicopter Physics

[delta3242 399]

Why do all helicopters in this game blow up upon impact, even if it is the softest touch? It's kinda getting annoying and forcing me to give the helicopters god mode

 

This helicopter took 10x more damage than most crash landings I attempt to make with the Hummingbird on a crash landing:

https://youtu.be/CUtyUTLeW1g

[ASiberianHusky 1]

For one, this crash was on snow, Arma 3 (Vanilla) doesn't have snow implemented. Also a Hummingbird has skids, the Apache has gears. Finally Arma doesn't have the best physics either. Keep in mind its a game.

[domokun 515]

Rotary aircraft are flying death traps compared to their fixed wing counterparts. Firstly huge sections of their critical airframe (rotors) are spinning at hundreds of rpm. So, any encounter with anything but the smallest of obstacles runs a risk of catastrophic failure in both lift and yaw. Secondly copters are aerodynamically unstable compared to their fixed-wing brethren. Sure autorotation landings are possible but they're trickier than a dead-stick landing. One positive aspect is that landing a helo requires a lot less space than a fixed wing aircraft. Plus their flight speeds are usually MUCH lower (130-170 knots) than most fixed wing aircraft so logically when accidents do occur, kinetic energy will be lower and therefore higher rates of survivability. Source: so this might compensate to a large extent the previous disadvantages. Source 1: personal experience flying in military aircraft (fixed & rotary) & discussions with pilot, Source 2: military aviation accident statistics from UK government (sadly it fails to mention a key statistic: flight hours). Source 3: A total of 130 accidents occurred among US air carriers in 2003 which was comprised of 54 Part 121 accidents, two scheduled Part 135 accidents and 74 on-demand Part 135 accidents. In 2003 air carriers flew more than eight billion miles, recorded at least 11 million departures and logged almost 23 million flight hours. The report shows that Part 135 helicopter operations accounted for 800,000 hours flying and 36% of the total accidents in that class. The remaining two million hours were flown by fixed wing aircrafts and which had 64% of the total accident. Proportionately, helicopter flying was more than 1.5 time more likely to lead to an accident than fixed wing flying in Part 135 operation. This amounted to 22.7 accidents per million hours in fixed wing aircraft and 34 accidents per million hours for helicopters. Further, the proportion of all accidents that were fatal for helicopters was also three times higher than for fixed wing at 12.6% as against 3.9%. Part 121 multi-crew operations were more than 10 times safer than Part 135 operations with respect to injury rates of 3% and 43% respectively. Twice as many people were fatally injured in helicopters as in fixed wing aircraft.

[delta3242 399]

Thank you for explaining this in depth, guys. Really gave me a clear understanding.  :)

[veles-zv 176]

Well Arma is Arma first of all its not perfect but its better then any other game series i've played, here is a video of a UA hind being shotdown and crashing upside down with both the pilot and gunner being relatively unharmed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RczvoPKJVw0

, this would be impossible to do in arma if the side or top of the helicopter even touches the ground or another object it will blow up which makes landing helicopters such as the Ah-99 and the KA-60 extremely difficult due to how thigh the wheels are. I fly strictly AFM, while its not perfect such as fuel and ammo having no effect on flight performance and helicopter with larger disk loads auto rotating better then ones with smaller loads and many other issues, its still great.

 

 

I remembered i was fooling around the editor with the previous version of CUP mod which has a KA-50 but the wheels where not set properly so it looked like it was floating above the ground like something from starwars, i think if a mod dev could have a helicopter surrounded with fake wheels on the sides and top a crash like the hind would be possible but even so you still have to learn how to fly a helicopter, it takes a lot of practice, many many hours and a understanding of how piloting an aircraft works. just be mindful of the limitations of arma 3 helicopters and fly accordingly which means try not to land a helicopter that is falling at above 5 m/s, do not land sideways on a incline. Track IR and rudder peddles like the CH peddles is the most helpful device for playing arma, you can use you'r Mouse and K/B with the track ir in all aspects, and the rudders to control acceleration and braking in a ground vehicle or use it to lean as an infantry men. 

[NickNukem 0]

Autorotation is a standard (though yes an emergency) procedure and practiced dozens of times throughout flight training, unlike fixed wing aircraft...where you will never practice a "true" no-engine approach except in a simulator.