Hi all, Ive been simming since afs2, but never learned to land a helicopter. Since we just got a few helis, I tried to learn good hover tecnique, and master slowly lowering down. But, I always land beside the intended target, usually in the hudson when using the new york mission.
How can you know you’re at the right spot…or is hovering on a horizontal plane not the right start for a landing descent?
kind of a hard thing to answer solely through text if you ask me. That said assuming you have all assists off and using a full HOTAS + Pedals kit:
when you’ve determined where you want to land you basically want to keep the airframe pointed in the direction of travel so you will need to use rudder to keep yourself aligned. About 20 meters from the ground slowly increase collective to arrest your descent and “catch” yourself on a cushion of air (ground effect). To keep yourself centered, it’s typically recommended looking to the horizon, using your peripheral vision and using small adjustments to the cyclic to keep yourself centered. Once you’re stabilized over your LZ, reduce collective slowly until you land. If you find yourself over compensating or jamming your foot on the anti-torque, you may be using too much power in the collective. You can drop collective slightly or reduce throttle power (the twisty power setting)
The big key is using small cyclic adjustments. the 407 and the G2 are very nimble rotorcraft and otherwise incredibly responsive given that they are unstable flying platforms. When the nose is down, it stays down until you the pilot pull back on the cyclic.
Practice practice practice! Don’t get discouraged because learning rotorcraft is a huge change if you’ve strictly flown fixed wing for a long time. At the risk of sounding all zenlike once you start realizing the helicopter is just an extension of your body that can move in 6 dimensions, your awareness will increase and you’ll then be able to set the helicopter down right at the spot you want
Practise at airports. Plan your approach as you’d do in a fixed wing aircraft: fly a circuit. In the 407 reduce to 60 knots on downwind and when you turn base keep that speed and start your descent. On final reduce further and cross the threshold at around 20 knots. Go into a hover and taxi to your parking. When you can do this without second thoughts you can go and practise the same in the wild.
As others have already said practise, practise, practise. Helicopters are not easy to fly when you start out but really enjoyable and rewarding once you start to develop the necessary skills.
I would suggest initially concentrating on picking up off the ground into a stable hover as a starting point. I.e. raise the collective slowly. As the helicopter starts to be come light on the skids and starts to move around (yaw, roll and pitch) gently apply the appropriate control input to counteract and cancel-out the movement. If you take your time and practise this you should leave the ground and need minimal corrects on the controls to maintain a steady hover.
Doing this will start to build up on your muscle memory; you will start to understand and appreciate the tiny control inputs you need and also the relative position of your controls. When you come in to land you will come to realise that your controls will end up back in this position once you transition from flight, back into a hover taxi and slowing to a steady hover.
Understanding, some of the basics of helicopter flight, e.g. appreciating the primary and secondary effect of controls will give you a good grounding. If you look on YouTube for “Helicopter Lessons in 10 Minutes or Less”, you will find a whole series of short clips that explain things very well - worth a look.
Flying a helicopter is also considerably easier in either VR (if you are already used to VR) or improved with head tracking e.g. TrackIR. Staring at a monitor with a fixed POV will be somewhat of a hinderance. Likewise using a hat switch to look around is not ideal.
Thanks for all your advice. I need to try these idea out!