I usually fly with ‘Clear Skies’ and turned on Live Weather to make things interesting.
I then found that even when I checked with Little Navmap for what the weather was doing, even with light variable wind, the helicopter was still flying as if it was strong and the ground effect stopping all forward speed and picking me up.
So I went back to Clear Skies and something is not quite right. The ground effect is still strong, and I crashed landing on one of the North Sea oil rigs which I usually nail. The yaw/slip ball on the H145 is usually correct, but it doesn’t seem right either.
Has anyone else noticed anything lately like this?
I almost always fly with live weather and have never experienced any flight dynamics issues caused by it.
I have occasionally used a preset but have not experienced any weirdness when swapping between presets and live.
Is this happening in all helis or just the H145?
I couldn’t find anything in other posts other than ground effect being different with more wind from live weather.
My metric was just that I ‘didn’t enjoy the flight’ that I have done before. I’ll try to find something measurable or it could be just me not adapting to different conditions.
Heh, I think we’re going to need something a little more scientific than that to draw any conclusions 
Is the “clear sky” preset also completely wind free?
If you’ve been flying helis without wind then you absolutely are going to notice a big change with even fairly light winds. In one of @belatu42’s latest videos he recommends always doing hover training with some wind. It’s very rare to have completely wind free flights and helis are extremely wind sensitive. It’s all part of the challenge (and fun!) of heli flying.
1 Like
I had no issues with the wind and real weather, it was turning it off, and being similar.
Ah, understood. I guess more testing is in order then. I’ll have a go as well later and see if I notice it.
Was this just in the H145 or have you experienced it in other helis?
Just the H145. I will test with others.
The H145 is usually really good with the yaw/slip indicator, as well as the nav display showing direction and orientation. The flight was really funky with the ball all over the place, but the direction and orientation was correct. Mainly it just didn’t feel right as I have done so many hours in it.
When I came into land on the oil rig pad, I did my usual hover before landing and it was made more unstable than normal by the ground effect, but it was then like I was hit by a truck. I have thrown the H145 around and recover well when it is in unusual attitudes, mainly flying in ‘manual’, but this time there was a calculated lift unevenly from the platform as if there were strong winds that just threw me over the edge.
I’ll try tomorrow with a restarting of MSFS, and if it still bothers me, I will put together a video.
2 Likes
Platform landing pads have a known bug that over exaggerates ground effect. It all of a sudden pushes you up 10-15 feet. That could be part of the issue as well.
Do you fly platforms often?
I’ve done a fair amount of rig landings over the last few months.
You are correct on the ground effect being funky on them,