I’m seriously struggling with hovering the cabri in helicopter training. I have decent controls, vkb gladiator nxt stick, vkb thq throttle + sem, and vkb mkV pedals. I set curves on all of them so I can make precise inputs. I just can’t seem to get a stable hover in the cabri during helicopter training. It asks to hover at 2ft but no matter my power setting the chopper seems to oscillate between flying up 10ft then settling to the ground. Even the smallest collective change that doesn’t even register on the power meter does not help get it stable. There seems to be no power setting that can actually achieve a stable hover at 2ft like the mission wants. It requires nonstop micro adjustments to the collective.
The problem is that these oscillations in height also appear to induce pretty huge oscillations in needed pedal and cyclic input. The helicopter appears to need a significant amount of forward cyclic otherwise it will immediately accelerate backwards as soon as the skids leave the ground. When the altitude oscillation happens the amount of pedal input required to maintain heading varies hugely with altitude. It seems like I need 70% right pedal at 0-4ft then 20% right pedal above 4ft.
This inability to achieve a stable altitude combined with the huge input swings required to maintain a heading and position make it really difficult to do a basic hover like the tutorial wants.
Am I just lacking practice with helicopters or is the sim overly twitchy with ground effect at the moment? Are other people having trouble? Any tips would be appreciated.
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I learned to actually fly a helicopter when I was in the Army. I was always fascinated with helicopters growing up. My normal Army job was as a “broadcast specialist” and “photographer”. I got a chance to learn how to fly a helicopter when I was assigned to take some aerial shots of the military complex. We finished early and the warrant officer was kind enough to show me the basics and let me fly. This was in a Bell 47. I have most of what you have in controls and find that the implementation of helicopters in FS2020 or FS2024 bares little resemblance to actually flying a “real” helicopter. My best luck so far is with an Airbus H145 HPG H145 - Base Pack – Hype Performance Group from HYPE. There are a lot of tutorials on YouTube and my suggestion would be to watch them and try and try again. Best of Luck!
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Thanks I’ll check that out. I like the idea of career mode however so I don’t think you can fly 3rd party aircraft there.
I’ve flown the UH-1H and mi8-mtv2 in DCS World a bunch and I didn’t have a difficult time with hovers in that sim. It appears to be an issue with MSFS. I’ve only flown the cabri so far so I don’t know if maybe other helicopters are better behaved. Did you experience the same difficulties with hovering in sim (altitude oscillations, very large pedal input changes needed over a tiny change in altitude, a pitch backward tendancy when power is added)?
Out of curiosity where do you think the sim differs most from a real helicopter?
It seems to have gotten somewhat better after applying the hack mentioned in some other threads. Set flight model to classic+realistic, fly for a minute, then set back to modern. That appears to have removed the altitude oscillations and pitch backward tendencies. I’m still not great at flying a helicopter however lol 
. The amount of pedal input still seems to have extreme variation with only 1-2% change in collective and total power. It goes from needing ~20% right pedal to like 70% with a tiny increase in collective.
First of all, even though you’re interested in the career mode, leave all that aside and start in free flight. There are things about career mode that make it unnecessarily awkward, like weather including turbulence, high altitudes and setting of the airfield itself, even possibly some differences in flight model behaviour.
Being in neutral trim is really important too, otherwise you’re fighting the controls without any chance of stability.
Small movements are essential, you really have to ‘feel’ without any feel possible in a motionless sim, sight is all you can use so set up your view with plenty of horizontal vision and preferably forward and down visibility.
For some expert tips, watch Mathew Crawford’s channel like this video https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/_9XzIvlTrKE
You mentioned Huey and Mi-8 in DCS, both of these are considerably heavier than the Cabri, they naturally dampen inputs due to inertia, basically the smaller the helicopter, the more twitchy it will be, although power to weight ratio also affects that effect.
Persevere with it, it will become natural over time and it’s worth it given the entire world is in the sim to explore and there’s no better way to that than by helo.
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Initially I was doing the helicopter training, without having enabled any heli specific assistance. I was using a VKB gladiator evo (with springs enabled)
After few days, I enabled the heli assistances (at least the tail rotor one and collective one) and I managed to pass the heli ppl and I then progressed to R66 and AS125 without major issues
Helicopters are very very touchy but not, IMHO, as touchy as the sim helicopters. Also you have the feeling of all the forces acting on the helicopter which is missing from the sim. The noise is intense and in the Bell 47 you are exposed to the weather and the wind from the rotor as there are no doors. I have flown in the Huey UH-1 and the Hughes OH-6 Cayuse. The OH-6 is the loudest helicopter I have ever flown in.
Best of luck in your journey…
As indicated, fly in free flight first get the “feel” of Helis and I would suggest a heavier bird to learn in. The Cabri is very twitchy and its lightness requires very slight control inputs. Controls should not be an issue and I find linear response is best with no dead zone. Mine is a Logitech X56 so quite consumer level, not pro controls. All movements must be very small. The HPG 145 is a great heli but a third party addon. It’s SAS (stability system) can be very helpful and you can dial -in your desired level of stability to use. For FS24 give the H125 a try. It does not have SAS but it’s easier to fly than most of the others. I think the best standard version heli is the Robinson R66 and its great to fly when you get the hang of it. And practice, practice.
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I’ve been having the same issues. I’m going to try helicopter free flight in 2020 with no assistances and see how I do. I believe there are issues with how 2024 handles helicopter flight.
In my experience, the type of oscillations the OP describes are WORSE in 2020 than in 2024. I did a deliberate comparison during the time I had both sims installed. I was able to get the Cabri to hover about 4 feet up with only small oscillations in FS2024 but trying the exact same thing at the exact same spot in the world and the exact same helicopter, in FS2020 it just oscillated between about 6 feet and actually being in contact with the ground. As far as I can tell, there literally is no single stable ground effect hover level possible in FS2020 with this helicopter at least.
I would also recommend not trying to fly without assists in the Bell 407 unless you have “damped down” your torque pedal curves considerably, otherwise a 2mm movement in rotation will translate to a 150 degree swing of the tail. It’s ridiculously oversensitive like that.