air control

[almanzo 144]

I am no pilot, and I don't know much about aircrafts in general, but why is there a tail rudder on both airplanes and helicopters when they are rendered useless in moderate to high speeds?

To those of you that are pilots, or know alittle about aviation, is it so that you can't turn 180 degrees without tilting your airplane or helicopter by using tail rudder in high speeds?

When flying a helicopter or plane in both ARMA and ARMA II, I sometimes feel the need of correcting my flight path, and I am continiously tapping "z" and "c" without any reaction what so ever to the path of my aircraft. At slow speeds however, it works as I suspect it to work. I've played trough Operation Flashpoint as well, and even though I generally like ARMA in every other aspect, the fact that I could use my rudder made me like the helicopter handling much better. I do recall that I could turn my helicopter around by only applying rudder in Operation Flashpoint, and I wonder why it has been removed in ARMA and ARMA II? I find this very frustrating indeed...

The same goess with airplanes, you have tail rudders, and I can't figure out why they are there if they don't work even at moderate speeds. Is this really realistic?

[ajsarge 10]

I've heard that at higher speeds, the tail rotor on helicopters looses effectiveness (also why if you lose it, you can stay stable by still flying fast), but I remember seeing somewhere that airplanes in RL (mainly thinking the A-10 here) use their rudder(s) to line up their gun.

[benjellio 10]

The rudder loses its effectivness at higher speeds beacuse of momentum, in rl if the rudder is continuously applied the aircraft will yaw (techy word for turn) but beacuse of the air it takes longer, it gives a weathercock effect.

However other control surfaces become more affective at high speed.

so basically its just coz the air is hitting it and making it straighten

(im an Air Cadet and have passed gs :P)

[Master gamawa 0]

is it so that you can't turn 180 degrees without tilting your airplane or helicopter by using tail rudder in high speeds?

yes. In high speeds the rudder would just turn the chopper sideways since the forward momentum is huge.

Imagine a car going straight too fast and suddenly turning. The momentum will force the car to follow the original direction... which probably means the car would tumble and flip out of the road.