Left-Skid-Low

I don't like doing it either Dudester, but at the current version its all we got. You can either have people saying "wtf are you waiting for take off!!!111!!" or "wtf you noob pilot where are you going, you are lost." I'd rather say "give me 30 seconds I'm figuring out how to get there." Of course knowing BF2 noobs, they probably wouldn't read it, then they would get out and shoot me through the window to steal it.

-IF you can call that walking than okey... thats more how fruit cakes walk and not soldiers in combat... - Flying a helicopter is nothing like that... i should know especialy the Mi-8/17 thers no way in hell a 12 ton helicopter like that can rolle i dont know W.T.F you are talking about or in what move you saw that, te only helicopters that can role are teh samall attack helicopters liket the cobra which are suposed to role and not side wards no helicopter rolles side wards... ony the attack helicopters can do a back flip and nothing els, flying a helicopters in not that had and its is nothing like in ArmA, hoverin can be hard, but not flying this game is not half the game that OFP was whne it first came out.... Flying a helicopter is nothing like that you should know? Why should you know, its quite obvious you don't know jack shit about helicopters. Any helicopter that is fully articulated is responsive as hell regardless of weight. Oh btw only smaller helicopters can roll, guess you forgot to tell these guys that http://youtube.com/watch?v=VZlqfYLFR-4 A CH-53 is a hell of alot bigger and heavier than an Mi-8 and its still responsive. Please stop spreading your uniformed, almost unreadable crap about helicopters. You have no idea what you are talking about.

Not saying I like doing this, but you are stuck using pilotage for now. Before you lift off, look at your map, choose several visual waypoints easily recognizable by air and try to get an accurate heading as possible to get there (maybe even write the way points down on a notepad). Nothing wrong with following roads or power lines to your destination either. Another thing that helps is a passenger on voice com to navigate you there. Edit: For anybody interested, I have another method for long distance direct routes that involves using a compass heading. I drew a diagram on the map to show how I do it, pretty simple stuff, all you need is a straight edge.

There are already Chinook sounds in the air.pbo, not sure if there is anything else.

Call him back and ask him what input on the controls he makes if sees that the yarn on the windscreen or turn coordinator indicates that he is flying out of trim. Answer = the pedals, thats where you hear the saying "step on the head of the snake" or "step on the ball" to get back into trim. I think he might not have been sure what you are asking, it isn't going to turn you in the sense that it will really change your track over the ground, but you can fly in and out of trim using the anti torque pedals. Yeah they are waaaay less effective, you practically have to mash them into the chin bubble but you can change the heading (not course).

One thing I've been wondering about, is that people keep saying you can autorotate in ArmA. The only way I can figure out how to do it correctly is if you already have the collective full down before the engine quits. They way I've been experimenting is setting minimum fuel (about 6 seconds or so) and it can be done without the collective bottomed out if you are low and slow enough but you don't get any effect from the collective input after the engine quits. The only way to cushion the landing with the collective is to have it bottomed out beforehand from what I've seen so far. Anybody else have different results?

We have here a 17 year old "expert helicopter pilot" who barely got out of high school. Mind telling us how are helicopters handling "realistic" in ARMA? I must admit that there is an improvement in 1.02 over 1.00, but far from enjoyable. Other than flying around, and landing, theres not much you can do with a chopper. Being accurate with a chopper and hitting something while flying is close to impossible. (Using mouse and keyboard). And because of that, the helicopter is in control of you. Conclusion: OFP helicopter handling was better than ARMA, and more fun. Whoa buddy calm down, relax, and start breathing. Who said it was realistic, I don't think I did. I haven't found any sim you can get on the PC that is "realistic" in the sense that is just like flying in a real helicopter, it can't be done unless its a full motion sim and even then it wouldn't be the same. If you are using a mouse and keyboard I recommend getting a stick, I haven't actually tried the mouse and keyboard method but I'm pleased with the stick. I will say though, I wish the tail rotor wasn't as ineffective as it is at higher speeds, would make hitting targets with FFARs easier. Oh BTW, I made it through High School just fine but I have to admit that I was a slacker at times. I didn't know I was only 17, glad somebody is keeping track, just don't tell that to the FAA.

Plan ahead and anticipate when you need to adjust power, a UH-60 moving at 130 knots is going to take some time to stop. Remember, you don't need to fly around at full power, in fact I'd recommend cruising around 70% for a few reasons. 1. When you are flying low level and need to get over an obstacle or hill you still have 30% power in reserve with your airspeed to get over it. 2. Your airspeed will be slightly slower but you will be able to make tighter turns. 3. You have better visibility out of some helicopters because you are more level, like the UH-60 has that crossbar in the windscreen that obstructs the view if you are pitched down too much. This is how I slow down for a landing. 1. Adjust to a speed a little slower than you normally cruise at, whatever you are comfortable with, and judge when you will need to slow down more to make the landing. 2. On the inside view, look all the way down at your feet, lower the collective (amount depends on how quickly you want to stop) and instead of letting the helicopter descend, use aft cyclic to maintain the same altitude or a slight descent, you can use the vertical speed indicator gauge inside to see if you are climbing or descending. You can also look straight out at the horizon and get an idea if you are climbing or not. This is how you are gonna slow the helicopter down. 3. Again depending on how quick you want to land, slow it down to maybe about 60 kmph with the method in step 2, and eventually it will start to fall through, the trick is to know when its going to fall through and bring the power in early and should terminate into a hover or slight running landing. Don't forget that you have a huge tail boom behind you when you get near the ground, you will need to level out accordingly so you dont stick it into the ground. The numbers aren't exact and I'm still getting the hang of it like everyone else, but maybe Ill go ingame and get some speeds for you but they don't matter that much once you get the feel for it.

I fly helicopters in real life also and agree with you 100%. It's actually kind of fun flying in 1.02 now that we are in control of the aircraft and not the other way around. I haven't noticed the power increase with forward cyclic, I'll have to check that out. I know this is pushing it, but I wish there were a way to correctly fly out of a tail rotor failure, either cut the throttle and do an auto or get airspeed and fly out of it. Also would be nice to do running landings in the UH-60 without taking a ton of damage.

So I finally got patched to 1.02 and I have to say its 10 times better than before. Is it realistic? Not really but now we actually have positive control of the aircraft instead of just altering our course to the scene of the crash.

I didn't know FSX simulated this, but the left rolling tendency at overspeed (Vne) must have been a retreating blade stall, though, it should have pitched up first then rolled left. I don't know why the robbie in fsx gets sluggish at higher speeds, I've never noticed that in real helicopter but I don't have any r-22 time either.

I'm trying to make a small .pbo to replace the default helicopter sounds with realistic ones ie (UH-60 shouldn't sound like a Huey, A/MH-6 should sound like a Hughes 500 etc). Anyway I'm not sure how to go about it, I figured I could just create a pbo similar to the air.pbo with my new wss sounds file and config.cpp (with new directory to the sounds) but I got an error. I believe it said "required addons not an array." Am I even approaching this the right way? I want to make it so players don't have to unpack and repack any PBOs.

For anybody interested here is some ingame footage of the sounds I've been working on, they are little distorted by youtube but pretty accurate. Both are actual recordings of the real aircraft. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd7KIXQMcns

Would you be interested in combining efforts to make a realistic ArmA air soundpack, I already have the AH-6 and MH-6 done, and working on the UH-60 now. Figured it might be better to do one bigger mod than a bunch for each individual aircraft.

Just an update, I haven't figured out the PBO stuff yet but I did tinker with a sound file to get the Littlebird ingame to sound just like a real Hughes 500 (which it basically is). Anyone who has ever heard the real helicopter will immediately recognize this one. rI'm still working with the UH-60 sound because the sound file I created sounded totally different ingame.

I also get terribly distorted sounds with that program, not going to be usable unless I can figure I can figure out how to solve it. I tried to use the those other wss decoder DOS programs but I don't know how to do anything in DOS and it will take forever that way. I'm using a Creative X-Fi, maybe thats why they wont convert correctly? Edit: found a wss converter that works from the Avon Lady site.

Don't take this the wrong way but as far as you know, what do you know about real world tail rotor effectiveness in a Hughes 500 or UH-60? Yes, the tail rotor is less and less effective with more the more forward airspeed you have, but there is still plenty of pedal authority to get the nose of the aircraft pointed to where you need it to. For example, when I'm flying at night and need to check the windsock when overflying an airport, I just flick on the landing light and use the pedals to point the light at the windsock. Edit: I also need to make a further critique regarding the fore and aft cyclic movements, as said already the helicopters are pitching in about 5 degree increments, I think there might not even be a dead zone as I said earlier, possibly just a gap between the first increment. The roll inputs seem OK, still something a little too twitchy though. We need to be able to make small adjustments down to even half a degree on all the axis for this work.

I agree with point 1 totally, but in point 2, I have to say that the dead zone in the pitch input and the lack of authority on the cyclic and collective, inhibits players from flying around at 10ft. off the ground. IMO half the fun that was had in the OFP model, was the ablity to fly low and fast, hug the terrain, and zip in and out of valleys, to evade detection and pop up where the enemy least expect it. The current model just does not offer the same degree of flexibility for this style of flying. And thats a real shame. Cheers thats one problem that arma had, even a little gound fellowing effect would be a huge change(realistic not, but atless give you the feeling of under control so you could foucs on other things), with the current control(too sharpen on pitch roll & turn, while the always have a feeling of underpower when trying to fly higher) Well I surely don't want the ground following thing back in ArmA and I agree that the nullzone in the fore and aft cyclic movements will make it more difficult for players including myself. I do think that BIS thought it would help players out, maybe it does more so with a keyboard and mouse? I don't know, but I do know I'm using a stick and that makes it really suck to try and fly NOE. Basically the left and right cyclic movements should be the same as the fore and aft in sensitivity and null zones, unless you want to get really technically about center of gravity, translating tendency, and all that other crap ArmA doesn't need.

You act like they intentially went out and really destroyed how helicopters fly in ArmA. Bascially what they did is give the player less limitations than in OFP, now you can actually bank more than 15 degrees, they are touchy and you have to plan ahead with the power and think about what you are gonna do next. Yeah, they dont fly like a real helicopter but they are closer than OFP was. I actually notice myself now putting all of my attention to how I'm gonna slow the helicopter down, when I'm going to bring the power back in, etc. instead of letting the noobish keyboard mouse thing from OFP just slam it onto the deck.

I just tried armed assault and flew around for about 30 min and the flight model is alot more realistic than OFP was. For what its worth I'm a rated helicopter and fixed wing pilot, and about most of the stuff I've read in this thread is misleading. I have a feeling there are other helicopter pilots that play this, probably with more experience than me and I'd be interested to see what they have to say also. Anyway, my only real complaints are: 1. You lose all your tail rotor effectiveness after a certain airspeed, this may have been done to keep the helicopters from being overpowered by being extremely maneuverable. I think it would be best if there was some limited tail rotor effectiveness at higher airspeeds, and it would really help the problem people are having with aiming at their targets by letting them adjust their heading a few degrees. 2. There is a pretty big null zone (dead zone) in the fore and aft cyclic stick movements but none in left or right. I know why they did this, people flying around 10 ft off the ground at 100 knots would plow into the ground alot more if it wasn't there. Realistically speaking there shouldn't be a null zone in any of the cyclic movements but like its been said already, making it configurable would be great. Thats realistic, a turbine engine is known for being somewhat unresponsive when compared to a reciprocating, they take some time to spool up and down. So your collective movements need to be slower and you need to plan ahead a little bit. Thats not really correct, a pilot flying a UH-60 and pilot flying an MH-6 have their hands and feet on the same controls and they do the same things. The difference is in the UH-60 it has stability augmentation, stabilators, and all that other fancy crap controlled by a computer while an MH-6 is all pulleys, cables, push and pull rods, going directly to swash plates. Well the only added control for the pilot would be an additional throttle in the UH-60 since its a twin.