Cowan Simulation’s MD 500 E helicopter will be released this weekend. I’m excited…
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Awesome!
Will be available on Xbox X Series??
Available
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I’ve only owned it for 15 mins and I’ve already couldn’t resist getting the skids a little wet…
First time owning a Cowansim product, but have heard loads of good things from the XPlane community, and the recent 206 release seems to be a favorite of many now as well!
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vfr low level group flight anyone?
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I will be in VR! Join up on discord !
USA EAST, KHST
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Nice location in the nature…! Where is it? 
At cruise (135 kn) I have to bank the helicopter about 5 degrees to the left and add half of full deflection left rudder to be able to maintain a constant heading. If I don’t ,the helicopter will keep yawing/turning to the right. Is that the correct behavior?
im guessing it needs a few updates the 206 is alot more stable
My Snowflake Lake, Alaska freeware 
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Fine! 
Thanks!
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Overall impression of the 500 is pretty good. There’s some cosmetic stuff such as UV stretching and what looks to be bad geometry/shading in a few areas, but overall still really good. There are some animation issues with the main rotor linkages, though this was mentioned as a WIP in the product description.
All this is pretty much nit-pick stuff though, which as a dev myself is probably noticed a lot easier since I’m always looking for that stuff in my models. 
As mentioned above, it does tend to drift right, and I find myself holding a bit of a left bank, even in a hover to keep it level (Though, that may be correct - not sure). Overall, it’s a very stable helo though. And pickup feels pretty good to me. One of the few I can actually keep in a good hover while still breaking in my new flight stick.
The sounds are also really well done and there are plenty of attachments such as wirecutters, skid mirror, & etc to make it more personalized. The throttle also doesn’t bother me a ton being mouse controlled, as I haven’t had a free axis until recently to control that anyways. Luckily, it’s not really needed in flight - only if you want to simulate auto rotations.
So, overall a little rough around the edges (literally) cosmetic wise, but not enough to deter me from enjoying it.
All that aside, I really have no reason to not recommend this helo.
Thanks Cowan! Can’t wait to see what comes next!
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Can anyone tell me how to bind the heli throttle to the rolling helicopter throttle in this aircraft? Just the rolling throttle by itself. Its driving me nuts. Watched a bunch of YouTube videos with zero luck. Please help. Other than this the 500 is awesome
It cant be used on any of Cowan’s helos as far as I’m aware. He wasn’t able to get the code working correctly. For now, it can only be controlled with the mouse, but he’s hoping to have that addressed in the future.
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There are no words. 
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First impressions:
- Beautiful model
- Very sensitive on the controls, but kind of expected for such a small, nimble helicopter
- Torque gauge is very strange, changes massively with forward cyclic input (don’t know if realistic)
- ball does not seem to work, so hard to trim in flight with the pedals
After my first 20 minutes with the Cowansim 500E, I like this one a lot better than their 206 and look forward to properly learning to fly this little whirly bird!
Edit re ball: it does move with larger pedal inputs, but seems to be always centered in cruise, no matter how far off my nose is
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I watched this video of a real world flight in a MD500E: Flying the MD500 Helicopter - YouTube
Torque gauge is a bit hard to see, but in the hover it is roughly in the 9 o’clock position, so about 60 PSI (with two people and an unknown quantity of fuel). In the sim with default settings, I can hover at 10 PSI, transition to forward flight and even reach 100 KIAS in level flight, all with torque at 10 PSI (with one person and 50% fuel).
I know Cowansim is using the Asobo helicopter flight model, with all its limitations. Hopefully they will be able to improve the torque behavior, because I really like this helicopter! Also keep in mind that we are still on the initial release of Asobo’s helicopter model, and there is hope they will improve it with upcoming sim updates.
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It is currently a MSFS limitation and not a limotation by the author. As soon as Asobo implements it, it wil be updated.
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I noticed when using Sim Inovations Air Manager that torque readings are 70 to 80 with collective fully forward. Torque reading quickly peaks at 125 when pulling back on the collective. Also noting that the 500E instrument does read PSI where the other helicopters read % percent torque.