dene maxwell wrote: > > Hi Josh > Ah, this is the clue I think I needed.... trying to fly with > auto-coordination "on" would explain why i'm hearing alot of that > sickening "crash" and view the runway lying on my side? > > Regards > Dene >
Well, the reason that you keep hearing that crashing sound is probably that it's really really hard to fly helos. I would suggest reading the dynamic flight pages, then try the following exercises with auto coordination turned off and no wind. You will not be able to do these without a 4 axis joystick. Most people recommend having pedals as well, I wouldn't know I don't own any :) 1. Hover. From the ground, ease up on the collective while holding the tail rotor pitch about where you would expect it to be at takeoff. This will probably be around 89%-90% in the direction that the blades are rotating. Wiggle them back and forth. As the ship gets lighter, the skids will start to get mushy, and you will see some yaw from the wiggling. You are just shy of liftoff now. Add a little collective, and a tiny bit of tail rotor pitch to counteract the extra torque and you're in the air. Now, keep crashing until you can hover at about 1m without any drifting. Then crank up the wind and repeat. 2. Hover up and down. Just like hover, but change your altitude in a controlled fashion. Stay in ground effect. As you add collective, you will generate more torque, so apply tail rotor pitch as appropriate. The converse is also true. 3. Translate. From a hover, try and very slowly fly a box forward, left, backward, and right back to the starting point. Do it slow and controlled, without any change in altitude. Try doing it faster and in more wind, but be careful because there is a limit to how fast you can fly backwards without the ship spinning into the wind. 4. Convert to forward flight and back. Flying over about 40 kts works a lot different than hovering. The tail rotor is no longer as important, and it starts flying like an airplane. Increase collective to speed up, use pitch to control speed. Bank to turn, and give a little pedal pressure to coordinate the turns. 5. Convert to hover. This is a little trickier. Cut back on collective and use the cyclic to keep the nose up and the altitude constant. Your forward momentum is what is keeping you in the air now. When you run out of forward energy, get ready to pitch forward and apply collective, or you'll fall out of the sky. Be ready on the tail rotor too, once you start adding power you have to counteract the associated torque. 6. Flare and landing. Like flying an approach in an airplane, but steeper. As you approach the ground your speed should eventually get very low. Keep your descent rate in line with the speed so you fly a straight line to the landing point. At about 10m you should flare to bleed off extra energy. If you're good you will come out of the flare just as you touch down, but you will probably end up in a hover. It takes a lot of practice, and I suspect that it is harder to fly a helo sim than a real helo, though I don't know. Luckily YASim has a pretty simple helo model so a lot of the really nasty stuff just doesn't happen. The biggest problem that I have had is dynamic rollover. I have also found that external views are a lot easier to learn with, and shadows are a must since there is no other way to gauge exact altitude near the ground. Josh _______________________________________________ Flightgear-users mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-users 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
