Good advice! I retired 16 years ago from a lifetime in aviation, started privately, then took the cheaper option and joined the military, had a great time piloting helicopters, followed up with 20 years commercial pilot, instructor and examiner on helicopters from single piston to multi engine turbine with all types of rotor systems.
A couple of months ago at the beginning of the school holidays, I took my grandchildren to a games event, they enjoyed the flight simulator there, so I bought MSFS2024…….. Probably not the best way to approach it after 10,000 hours plus in real helicopters. Avoided playing with the helicopters until a couple of days ago, did the licence - I was astonished how bad the control response was, it certainly wasn’t that difficult irl and I’ve flown plenty of small helicopters such as R22, Hughes 300. I gave in and use the assists, funnily enough the response is much better, not like reality but enjoyable to play.
What I miss is overall, apart from the obvious lack of movement is vision in 2 aspects
1. I always ‘fly the rotor disc’ - watch where the disc goes, the disc is the attitude, the helicopter body follows later particularly with teetering heads, unless you fly the beauty of the helicopter world, the Bolkow 105 (plenty of fabulous hours on those) when the response is instantaneous, and
2. Peripheral vision, I hadn’t realised how much my visual scan included the horizon at the side. I also can’t set the TV screen to show all the main instruments and enough of the horizon; rate of climb and descent is vital but it’s so low down in the cockpit in the little helicopter I’ve resorted to having the HuD info showing it.
I was disappointed to find after getting my licence ( ha ha, a commercial helicopter licence gained in an evening!) that the game only offered 2 heli missions, sightseeing in Montreal Canada and another at the opposite end of the world, a pax transfer across Sydney. The ATC at Montreal was a shambles, it wouldn’t give me a frequency to talk to anyone so I was pinged for moving on the airfield without a clearance, then after doing the first 2 sightseeing orbits, 90% around the orbit of the Olympic dome at Montreal the game totally crashed and MSFS needed a full restart. I did it from cold, ie a complete PS5 shut down. Next attempt, identical system crash 90% around the final orbit. Full restart, this time I tried doing the orbit anti clockwise, but same crash. ( When doing the fixed wing scientific Tornado chasing missions I found the aircraft became totally unstable in clockwise orbits with up & down draughts so strong I lost control, but anti clockwise it was completely manageable…..doesn’t make sense, so I hoped it was the same problem, obviously not) The only good point was by then I had found how to work round the ATC. Gave in at Montreal.
Tried the Sydney mission. System crashed 3 times in a row as I approached the H for departure. Really getting hacked off by now. I exited Missions, chose Free Flight, put in the same parameters, tried Sydney again, no problems with Free Flight. Selected Mission, this time I avoided going into the H at the beginning of the trip, got as close as possible to it until the green box illuminated saying I was at the H & successfully completed the mission. At least after every crash I received a few bits of game currency - not going to get rich very quick doing this!
Tried the Montreal mission in Free Flight, no problems, just for a laugh landed on the top of the Olympic Dome, but didn’t have enough time to try the mission again yet to see if I can get it to work, that’s this evening’s battle.
Despite the problems it’s much more fun than setting an autopilot in a heavy jet to do everything.
