It’s really baffling. It behaves no differently to general cyclic inputs than any other heli in the sim for me.
I don’t know of a real world S300 pilot, but @belatu42 is a RW heli pilot and according to his mini review video and posts he’s made he loves it. I’m certain if he had control issues with it he’d have absolutely pointed them out. All he mentioned was slightly oversensitive pedals, which is common on the Cowansim helis as well.
Thanks for your reply,
Must be my setup then, just strange that it doesn’t happen with the other helis i fly.
Well i will continue to fly it and see if i need to getting used to it or how it reacts in real live.
I was planning to take an introductionary flight in a real one in a few months, maybe i should move this a little bit forward.
I’m one of those unlucky people for whom this doesn’t work at all. It’s really hard to get the helicopter in the air, after that it’s somehow flyable, as long as you anticipate the control movements about a second in advance. The helicopter simply reacts so slowly to cyclic movements that there is no point in flying. I’ve tried with Virpil’s controllers and T-16000M controller and both have the same result. I also sent Nemeth an E-mail about this, but apparently they don’t bother to answer.
This is probably the most important statement made in the conversation currently. It’s very easy to get behind the aircraft when you are first learning helicopters. If you’re reacting instead of anticipating, you are already too late with your control inputs.
There does seem to be an issue affecting some users, if you push the cyclic slightly forward it should tip the disk forward. Not forward/right. Stressing the importance of smooth and slow control inputs. It should respond to cyclic input direction the same as the Cabri G2. Do a quick test with the Cabri, then hop in the S300 and see if the rotor disk responds to the cyclic the same way.
This is not the same as the abrupt, half to full travel inputs that some users have referred to. If you move one control, you have to move the others with the same magnitude. For example, if you abruptly moved the cyclic forward, it will increase the angle of attack on the blades at the rear of the disk abruptly and increase drag. The increased drag will require more power from the engine to maintain rotor rpm. The governor will increase engine rpm to compensate and the nose of the heli will yaw right (opposite the main rotor CCW direction) because of the increase in engine power. You have to anticipate these changes and stay ahead of the aircraft.
Another thing that makes hovering the S300 more difficult than some other helis, is the visibility and large windscreen. There is much less to use as a visual reference when you are getting familiar with it.
Normally if I apply alteral trim in a helo it would immediately respond by veering to either left or right.
There will be a slight delay in the response if you trim in this way. Typically, you move the cyclic to where it needs to be, then you trim the forces out. Or beep the trim in the opposite direction the cyclic force is pushing against your input until the force is gone. You will not be able to trim for hands off flight, but the trim will significantly reduce your cyclic workload.
I’ve never flown a S300 IRL, but a contact in another group I’m in is an instructor currently and he is very happy with the FM. He’s currently flying with a RC transmitter. So maybe a suggestion for the XBox controller users would be to control the sticks with their index fingers too instead of just thumbs and see if that helps.
Thanks for the very welcome post, I have been reading your writings and they have always been excellent!
You are right, I’m still quite rookie with helicopters in the sim world and of course I don’t have any IRL experience. Lately I’ve been flying mostly by cowans’s H125, and I’ve noticed that it takes time to get used to another helicopter. However, I tried Capri and after a little practice I was getting used to it.
The main difference with the S300 is that with the Capri I can immediately feel the direction in which it will move when I lift it off the ground. On the other hand, with S300, I don’t know in which direction it moves and changing the direction of movement takes much longer. So I have to constantly overreact with it, small movements are not enough. I do believe that the overreaction is also due to a lack of anticipation. On the other hand, I feel that the anticipated movements should be really wide ones. The main problem seems to bee with the lateral movements.
I recorded about 11 minutes video on my flying, from which you can see how I manage with Capri and S300. It would be great if you could watch and analyse the video! Once again flying with S300 gave me the feeling that it’s not worth to learn to fly it as it behaves so differently than other MSFS helicopters. After learning S300 it would be too difficult to fly other MSFS helicopters.
If I didn’t know any better, I would think that was a video of Me flying th S300. I feel very comfortable in my helicopter skills in almost all the heli’s I have, except the S300. I’ve watched a lot of S300 videos and have to say, most of the real life pilots make it look so much more stable than the one in the sim.
At around 8:30 in the video you just about have the hang of it!
It looks to me, after watching the video with the input viewer, that you are behind the aircraft and are experiencing PIOs (Pilot Induced Oscillations). The helicopter was moving the correct direction in response to the cyclic inputs, but the inputs were too small and too late for what the helicopter was doing.
Keep in mind also, that the Cabri and S300 have opposite rotating main rotors. So, the pedal inputs and reaction to translating tendency are backwards. The sight picture that you use for movement reference is also very different between the two, and is difficult to jump back and forth.
When I first flew the S300 in MSFS, I was all over the place for the first few minutes until I became familiar with what I needed to use for reference. I’ll make a quick video with the input viewer in the next few days.
Keep practicing…and based on what I’m seeing, if you get the hang of the S300, it should make flying the other helis easier.
Are you flying in VR or 2D?
edit: I cannot get the input viewer to show up in the toolbar…
What controls are you using @AaIiGee ? I have a Virpil with the stick extension and don’t have any trouble controlling this but from what I’ve read a lot of the polarisation about that heli seems to stem from people without controls that are good for a helicopters.
If you’re coming from the Cabri though that is a very very stable helicopter in MSFS. I find the Cowan’s pretty easy to fly as well whereas I had a ton of trouble taming the flyinside 206 penduluming all over the place and the H145 with all the autiopilots and SAS off but got there eventually. I think I would have had similar trouble going from the Cabri and Cowans to the S300 without getting the Flyinside 206 and H145 under control first.
The key I found with the flyinside was getting the right timing neutralising the move. So the heli would start to move in one direction, you’d move the stick to the opposite direction to counter that move, but then you’d need to neutralise your stick movement back in the opposite direction to your initial move before the heli stopped moving in the direction you initially opposed. Getting the timing of that right was really tricky but the key to getting them under control for me.
One thing I noticed in your video as well as sometime you aren’t keeping the heading straight. If you focus on the pedals first then all your other control inputs are going to be more consistent cause the relative direction won’t be changing all the time.
Thanks for your comments @belatu42 and @SealedPaladin73! Maybe I will still give a chance for S300, but unfortunately, I’m away from my sim over one week now.
I’m flying in 2D because I’m over sensitive for motion sickness. Actually, I tried my Oculus Quest 2 the first time only two weeks ago and it was amazing how much easier it was to fly helicopter. However, I felt so bad after every attempt that I decided not to try adapt myself to VR.
I’m using Input Viewer with free version of 42 Flow and it works fine. It’s a good utility and I can recommend it!
I have a full set of Virpil controls, but the stick extension is missing because I’m using very low racing seat.
Wow, I hate to hear that you’re giving up on vr. I remember when I purchased my first vr headset (Rift), and after a couple of days of use I was so sick, I ended up taking it back for a refund. After a couple of weeks, I got the bug to try it again because I so missed the 3d visuals and went back and bought another Rift. I am soooo glad I did! Been flying nothing but vr ever since. That was several years ago. I hope you can eventually adapt to it.
Thanks Donald04 for the link to Input Viewer!!! I saw this in some YouTube videos and wondered where it came from lol. Gonna install and run on my custom 2-place sim cockpit and check a few things for proper centering while in-sim!
Increase your curves by 30-50% and try again. Made a huge difference for me and if you can, disable the centerspring.
Here’s a link to a short video practicing the four corners with the input viewer
Our friend Sergio at Helisimmer.com has published his review of the S300:
And Nemeth have release version 1.0.2 on their website, which seems to have toned down the sensitivity a bit. Sergio’s review is already based on this newest version. It’s not on the Marketplace yet …
Thanks for mentioning it here as I didn’t get any sort of notification from Nemeth.
The update is on SimMarket now.
maybe 1.0.2 will be on the marketplace next week…
I didn’t see it in today’s post.
I fly IRL for a living. This thing is totally broken on Xbox, at least for me, with every cyclic input registering and being output around 45 degrees clockwise of input. Pushing the stick forward = Right roll, stick right = pitch back, stick back = left roll etc.
the animated stick in the cockpit responds correctly, but something is then lost in translation and the virtual swash plate seems to have some sort of wild, reverse gyroscopic precession going on. I have every Cowan product and have zero trouble, and I can promise the real thing absolutely is not like this - IRL the disk goes the same direction as you push the cyclic 
Is anybody able to use “lateral trim”? This is the only helo where I am unable to trim laterally - it always wants to bank to the right a bit. Every other Helo (and I have - according to ze wife - too many helo’s) I can trim - this one - no way. Also it feels kinda sluggish in terms of reacting to input…
I don’t have the .2 update as it is not in the marketplace - yet.
Do you have similar issues?
Yup, it’s fixed in v1.20