Bothersome

Spoilers... I'm in expert mode by the way if that makes any difference.

This mission seems to have a bug in that... Bummer :confused:

It doesn't seem to me that this area should even have a heliport close by. We got neighbors houses to the south, a hill and highway to the west, a tree hazard to the north, and boats and fuel pumps to the east. So, what approach do you usually make? I tend to come in from the east over the boat dock and touch down after passing the pump. Hoping my tail rotor does get into anyone getting fuel for their boat/mower/car/heli/weedeater/whatever while also not letting it get tangled up in barbed fence wire. Coming in from the south yields a longer runway and a choice of landing zones. But the neighbors bitch about me blowing off roofing tiles. Comeing in from the west and you can't easily see the landing circles for the structures and you don't get any ground cushion (from the ground) to assist in a smooth landing transition. Someone needs to cut down the tree on the north side and it would probably be OK. Even though the fence would still be uncomfortable. Yeah, I got too much time. :D

... you landed then put the throttle to idle, let the head slow to idle, then put collective to just above hover (ground effect or more), then throttle to full, then get out? I'm not home right now, so can't try it? Who wants to be first with the answer? :D

I bought it but you still only get the same missions you already had. But you can use it for sling loads that are lighter loads. The view from the cockpit is a little better than the heavy. I haven't tried yet to do a coast guard search yet. Also it looks cool. I've got mine in the Coast Guard colors because we only seem to rescue boaters in trouble. It's something different to fly. I'd like to make my own missions but I can't figure out how to add them to the career mode of play.

OK, this last one is crazy. Started out at just about dark. Got out there and it's pitch black. Fortunately the instruments on the light heli are illuminated when you turn on the nav lights. Using the landing light as a spot light I managed to find the boat. Hovered around till down to less then 1/4 tank left and the Coast Guard didn't even move to intercept. I guess they can't see in the dark. Even when I was telling and showing them where the boat was. Now, I figured, screw this. I'm going home. Flight by instrument to get back and I noticed the land is lit up a little. Nice visuals there BIS. Also nice landing/taxi lights too. Now my heli is sitting by the gas pump and I'll refuel it tomorrow and go see if things change. It looks like I need a way out of this mission. Where is the abort mission? By the way, the boat must have run out of fuel because it stopped dead in the water. But no Coast Guard coming to arrest. :j:

Yes, you're right about that. But most game companies get their intentions from the movies. They don't really know a whole lot about all the finer details of life and how things work. They're basically saying "This is how much charge is left in the battery." In real life, for lead acid batteries, their is no easy way to know how much charge is left in the battery. A dead battery under no load still shows 12 volts (for a 12 volt battery). So in the game you really need a volt meter and an amp meter. And the amp meter would only show a discharge or charge rate. While the volt meter would show a voltage as it comes under load. If the battery is low, the volt meter would fall a little when coming under load.

Well, these are not like real helicopter they tell me. But in this game so far, when you get to about 1 mile from your target start easing back on the cyclic. Take out some collective to keep your altitude from rising. As the heli slows to about 50 knots, ease some collective back into the blades to give some lift back but keep altitude same. Maybe let it fall a little as experience comes. Keep the nose straight until speed has bleed off. Once you're in the yellow speed area, just cyclic forward till level. As you gain experience, you circle around while descending on your target landing spot. Using the circling to bleed off most of your speed. Landing on a certain spot is the hardest thing it seems. To practice landing go to the airport and hover about and learn to control your drifting there till you get it down. If you're drifting all over the place, you still got practicing to do. By the way, it took me about 6 months to learn to hover an RC helicopter well. And another 6 for nose-in hover (although that doesn't apply here). I would imagine it would take a few months to get it down in this game too.

If I get within 290 feet, the guy on the boat start shooting at me. Of course, he appears to be shooting blanks. I never have noticed any damage to my heli. But nothing happens, I chalked it up as bugged. And reverted back to base. Took a different mission. This time the boat chase, only one Coast Guard boat of three chased the bad guy. One thing for sure, all that hovering about has increased my cool landings a lot. :) By the way... At night time the heavy heli has illuminated instruments too. But there is no way the player can turn them on. Tom must do it automatically. But at least we can fly at night.

Try this one... it even scared me.. Climb to 12,000 feet. Cut power to both engines to idle. Let heli fall. At about 3,000 full power to both engines. It takes a couple thousand feet to get rotor speed back up (mine wasn't stopped all the way). Like I said, scared me too.

I already said it stopped dead in the water. But no Coast Guard ships are moving to intercept or arrest. That's the problem, they aren't doing their thing to end the mission.

I might be wrong here but I'm thinking the soft tail rotor effects that people are complaining about may in fact be in their controller setup or their game options. I'm wondering now if they had their auto-trim turned off in their game difficulty settings. When I first started in expert mode and auto-trim was off, I had to use quite a bit of rudder input to keep the heli straight. But after when I put on auto-trim, now hardly any input is needed for lift-off. I'd say on the heavy heli, it needed at least half way of full travel of rudder input just to keep the heli from turning at almost full collective climb. I don't really see how that's modeled wrong. Clue me in.

I fly real RC helicopters. (Raptor 50) Does anyone here fly real helicopters? My question is when we fly faster forward, is it normal to have to counter a right roll tendency with left cyclic the faster we go? (on a right to left (counter-clockwise) rotor helicopter) In RC, we tend to use gyros and Bell-Hiller head setups and this compensates for most of the cyclic adjustments. The faster you go the more the fly-bar is tilted (forward for forward movement). To me, it seems the flight model is wrong in this game having to hold more left cyclic to counter a right hand roll. The advancing blade is moving quicker on the right. So it needs less attack angle. The blade on the left is receding and thus needs more angle of attack. To make that happen you need "Forward" cyclic. It's a 90 degree precession thing. But since I never flew a full scale helicopter, I might need instruction on this. Thanks.

I didn't want to start a new thread just for this tidbit of info... On the heavy helicopter, the number two engine torque gauge is not working. Can we get a repair order for it please? Also, after I've been out doing the work for Larkin Aviation, someone keeps damaging the other helicopter while I'm gone. We need to put in a security camera or something. I'm getting tired of repairing the heli I'm not using. Or was somebody out joy riding? And when do expenses come due? We making money but don't have to pay salaries or bills? And somebody set up a lease program for helis we can't yet afford? I see potential everywhere.

I haven't tried the auto-rotation on the medium or heavy yet. But to me the light seemed like the head slowed too soon. Is that modeled correctly? I dunno about the full scale stuff.

Wow, you got my interests, not steal the thread or anything but last question, about how much weight are we talking? Can a 50 size lift it or does it need something bigger?

I get it from flying real RC helicopters. Granted in heading hold mode (gyro controlled) is an absolute truth. In heading slip mode (heading hold is off) the heli does a bad looking turn as the tail is kept aft from the wind. Much prettier turn when giving rudder input.

Thanks I'll give it a try.

Do those work well? I've never tried em. If they work well could be very useful for aerial photography. Can you pirouette while it's active?

For me it did it automatically. I think you need to land closer to the pump.

One thing to note here. Real helicopter pilots aren't likely to get in the air and try to test this on a real helicopter. It is a very dangerous thing to test. But when you lose lift because of blade stall on the left side of the rotor disk, the disk doesn't fall on the left. It will fall on the back (90 degree precession thing). Then as the rotor blades come around on the right they are starting to flop back up and have greater attack on the air on the right side. This causes an excess lift on the right but the effect is a rise on the rotor disk in the front. Thus making the situation even worse. The roll to the left comes in when then body of the helicopter is resisting the pitch up effect of the rotor disk. This downward strain on the blades at front cause the disk to rotate down on the left and up stress on the back causes the disk to rotate up on the right. This is left roll you feel. So basically, you get a drastic up and left roll effect and usually serious damage to your rotors blades. This would be a very UGLY situation to be in.

How do we change the music during flight?

I haven't tried it but I thought I saw a wheel break toggle in the options menu. I might check it out.

Go back to campaign and when you walking around in the garage or somewhere, hit escape. The top menu item is heliport. Check it out. I would like to say, I hope BIS or somebody adds more missions to the corporate and government missions. There is just not enough. I have about 580,000 so far. Trying to get up to 925,000 or so to buy a Medivac helicopter is a bitch.

Things that I know from flying real RC helicopters... 1. Ground cushion goes at least as high as 1 rotor diameter. 2. 2 Degree down pitch (full down collective)is not much when you are wanting to loose altitude. 2 degrees is best for keeping the head speed up for auto rotation landings. 3. There is no rolling right or left when increasing or decreasing collective. 4. In an auto rotation landing (no power and thus no torque from then engine) when you apply up collective to flair, you don't get torque from the engine that needs countering. 5. Retreating blade stall can cause a boom strike. 6. The Chaos and Piro-Flip are the hardest stunts to do. Uhh, maybe that doesn't apply here. :)