Helicopters for Newbies: Tips & Tricks Thread

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What is says on the label, lets keep it on topic. :sunglasses:

Newbie Helicopter Pilots!

I was one of you till the Apache was too cool for me to give up on. :rofl:
My humble suggestions should you be brave and turn off the helicopter assists:

Youtubes

There is a wealth of detailed tutorials on youtube. watch them. Rotor physics is a strange beast. I really like this series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxnHMRqW5Eo&list=PLCEJTqvfJC1NBpERWGPLKsyn2NzOKDG1p

So you want to land? ( " >_>)

  1. To slow down, decrease collective and pitch back.
  2. Then pitch forward and increase collective when you notice you’re starting to fall, but before you really start dropping like a rock.
  3. Start decrease collective when you are descending below 50ft
  4. Really decrease collective when you arrive in the ground pillow known as Ground Effect. It sounds cute but 

  5. Dance your feet and your cyclic in tiny movements to maintain stability when the Ground Effect tries to take you on a mechanical bull ride.
  6. Carefully keep decreasing collective (use your feet too!) to bring yourself through the bucking ground pillow of doom and arrive safely on terra firma.

Your heli will want to climb if you do not decrease collective, but then it will want to drop like a rock once you slow to below translational lift velocity. Your collective hand will be doing a strange counter-intuitive dance, so if it feels weird you’re probably getting it.

The faster you fly, the more lift you get and the less collective you want. The slower, the more collective you need to stay in the air. There is a limit, and it’s called 100% torque. This is what determines your hover ceiling.

(Also, don’t do extreme cyclic changes in a teetering rotor helicopter. :scream: :headstone: )

So I did the collective thing but I keep wagging.

  1. Move your feet with your collective hand. and forward velocity. basically your feet are always moving except in balanced cruise. Which direction you move your feet depends on which direction the helicopter’s rotor system turns.

This is really hard, Ferrus


  1. Helicopters have 2x the sensitivity of a fast jet. You fly figher jets with hand pressure, but you fly helicopters with the tips of your fingers. (Theoretically in irl. In sim you’ll be making 0.1 degree hand movements of fractional mm. :face_with_spiral_eyes: )
  2. 1.5-3x more dancing feet than a properly modeled taildragger. And you thought the Spitfire was bad 
 :rofl:

Please share additional nuggets of wisdom below!

Embrace looking silly, helicopters are really fun once you climb the learning curve.

Good luck!

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Hi @FerrusDude thanks for the great thread, I’ve moved it into the #self-service:new-pilot-help-guides section :+1:

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really good tips - thanks for that, I am new to helicopters but had tonnes of fun flying them last night. Whole new ball game to learn.

More Generally it would be useful if Asobo put the controls grouped by craft type so that I could see all the helicopter controls
for example i saw in another thread something about lateral and longitudinal pitch which i am going to assign to my hat switch today and test out/learn.
It does show all the control surfaces under my gamepad, but not for my stick or throttles. Anyway - look forward to more hints.

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Where are the new helipads? I didn’t see any listed in the release notes but thought there would be some new ones.

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@joeaudacious

London Heliport, EGLW, London, United Kingdom
Giza Plateau Helipad, HEGH, Giza, Egypt
Downtown Manhattan Heliport, KJRB, Manhattan, New York, United States
Issy-les-Moulineaux Heliport, LFPI, Paris, France
Tokyo Heliport, RJTIH, Tokyo, Japan
Heliponto Dona Marta, SMDH, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Burj Al Arab, OBAR, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Lingotto Building Helipad, LIBH, Turin, Italy
Bitexco Financial Tower Helipad, VVBF, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietman
Menara Telekom Tower Helipad, WMMT, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
The Needles Lighthouse Helipad, WMMT, Isle of Wight, United Kingdom
US Bank Tower Helipad,4CA1, Los Angeles, California, United States
Rainbow Air Incorporated Heliport, NK80, Niagara Falls State Park, New York, United States
White House Helipad, KWHH, Washington D.C., United States

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Newbie question: how is this called (so I can map it in the controls :smiley: ) ?

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@HomieFFM look for SET HELICOPTER THROTTLE AXIS in the assignment menu

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And don’t forget incipient vortex ring :upside_down_face:

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Thanks for the help :wink:
Another Question for the Cabri, do I set yaw and pitch trim or something like that?
General trim doesn’t seem to have any effect.

Edit: I think I found it, this has to be set:

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you’re welcome, here is what I used :

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I’m still trying to understand what the ‘‘small helicopter throttle’’ does in relation to the collective throttle and how to use them correctly together :sweat_smile:

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It does nothing if the governor is on. When you turn the governor off, it controls the speed (RPM) of the engine and you have a new task : making sure it stays within the optimal range. The needle needs to stay in the green arc (see photo), but of course everything changes when you move the collective, so it can be a lot of work.

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This video explains it pretty well.

What is the difference between “throttle” and “collective” in a helicopter? - Ask Me Stuff - YouTube

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My tips for helis based on learning helis using the h135, h145.

  1. YouTube “rotor sim pilot” has excellent introduction vids on h135 heli basics
  2. Learn to hover 1ft off the ground using collective on a runway with a centre line so you can see what you are doing laterally. Practice hovvering stationary 1ft off the ground.
  3. Add in micro movement of cyclic to move left/rigth and rudder to rotate. Remember small inputs at a time, and monitor movements.
  4. When you are learning 1ft off the ground you can quickly land again to settle the heli down to standstill if movement gets too out of your control.
  5. Gradually work up to forward & reverse motion with cyclic, again small inputs on cyclic.
  6. I find it really useful having a horizon visible at all times as well as a view through the glass cockpit to the ground, so use the mouse wheel to zoom the view out to wide angle then you have a much better cockpit perspective for flying a heli.
  7. You really need a joystick with throttle (for collective) to get something out of helis. People swear by pedals, but I find using a Joystick with twist rudder control to be absolutely fine too. I use a budget end Hotas One with no pedals and it works great.
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The throttle changes the RPM of the motor.
On the Collective stick, it is a twist function like a mortorcycle.

The Bell helicopter has the default of the motor functioning with a
governor which keeps the motor RPM at max.

The Collective is controlled with the flightstick throttle.
It changes the pitch of the rotor blades. As the pitch increases, lift increases.

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Thank you guys, that helped a lot.
Now I understand what’s going on :slight_smile:

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Great advice! :sunglasses:

In terms of the throttle, it kind of depends on the FADEC in the helicopter model, but also the linkage between the rotor and the engines. Turbine helicopters have a fundamental difference in how they turn the rotor compared to the piston engine. The turbine heli is basically a kind of turboprop, whereas the piston engines have direct gearing to the rotor hub. This changes how you’d want to use the throttle based around direct linkage vs indirect linkage.

Now If you have a FADEC controlled throttle, you set the throttle to 100% or FLY 
 and the computer fine tunes the engine. The governor is similar but different mechanism from a FADEC. Does the same thing in a different way.

The next level discussion is around Torque & Pitch. If I have this correct - You need to maintain enough torque to maintain sufficient RPM for lift. The drag on the blades as you increase the collective drops your rpm. Do that too much and you have a bad day. :laughing: So the simple answer is the throttle controls the power being applied to the rotor shaft. You adjust the throttle to maintain the appropriate amount of torque to generate sufficient lift to prevent a “falling out of the sky” maneuver. Apply too much power and the rotor blades depart the aircraft, which is also bad.

I probably won’t be trying to manually control the throttle any time soon. :sweat_smile:

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is there a complete setup guide for Asobo helicopter control assignments ?

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I have the same joystick. Would it be possible please to see how you have assigned your controls in MSFS 2020 for flying helicopters? I can’t figure it out at all.

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It’s popped up on a few threads already, but the nutshell is:

  1. Copy plane config to a new config labeled helicopter
  2. unbind joystick from ailerons & elevator. Bind to the two Cyclic axis’
  3. unbind rudder thing [pedals, twist, whatever]. bind rudder thing to anti-torque.
  4. unbind throttle. bind throttle to collective, reversed if you want to feel extra helicoptery
  5. if you have a spare analog slider, unbind it and bind it to heli throttle (only works on G2 atm)
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