Heli flying...

[HammersFan]

 Guys, I got my trusty old TRUST Predator joystick down from the loft today to see what it's like flying those lovely choppers on BFV.  Got it all nicely calibrated inside WinXP...so off I went into BFV.

I setup the joystick controls under the `Air' option and went for a little flying practice.

Now, is it just me...or is it SO difficult to get the heli to lift off the pad in a smooth movement...I find it takes me almost 5 secs to lift the heli and for it to then flip on its blades.... :blink:

What can I be doing wrong?, any calibration techniques for BFV alone?

Help...I wanna be a flyboy  :rolleyes:  

[Oddbodge]

 just to prove its not a setup problem, try the jets first.

make sure you can
pull up/down down
roll left/roll right
rudder left/rudder right
vary speed.

you should be able to stall the plane in level flight by reduceing speed.

then try landing.

this will prove that the air/setting to joystick are in the right position. ie you havent mixed up pitch/roll/jaw or throttle.

good map operation flaming dart for planes and choppers.

to lift chopper keep it level, with no pitch/roll/jaw and simply increase power.

push stick forwad a bit (not much) and keep attitute very slightly foraward.

watch roll
watch jaw
watch pitch

you can hover at about 50% power. (on my joystick anyway) dont go too high as you will loose visual orientation with ground. if you go too high reduce power to 25%.

not sure about ground affect yet. ie do you need less power to hover very close to the ground.

ps if you go to position 2 in a chopper then the chopper dose not autogyro back to earth.

 :lol:

also if there is a tree between you and an incoming missle it helps a lot.

[Viper]

 I think power varies per joystick - so you'll have to work out whats best for you. With my throttle set at 50% I don't even move. slight increases will allow me a slow lift off and hover. Watch out that you don't pull back on your stick or you'll prang the tail and start moving backwards. Once lifted depress ever so slightly forward for forward movement. Setting my throttle to full power straight away allows me to head straight up fast, instant nose down will get me flying along forward at full speed. Practice will get you the right attitude.

Landings a pain, but the one thing to watch is your tail dropping, its better to have nose depressed slightly and gradually reduce power, if your going to miss you landing target then use yaw (left right) to turn the heli around.

Note after landing on slopping ground, watch out when lifting off. If your at rest attitude is tail down then you must be forward on your joystick before lifting. If Attitude is left side down then joystick should be held right before lifting, etc.

[HammersFan]

 eek   , after all that I might stick to running around with my plantation knife.

No, I will maybe try tonight. plane first as Odd says then move on to the harder stuff...heli's.

Cheers guys

[commodore]

eek   , after all that I might stick to running around with my plantation knife.

Blimey - switching from one chopper to another

For what its worth, I've had a pretty good experience using my Microsoft Sidewinder joypad for flying the coptors - needed a couple of rounds of tweaking the calibration, but now its done I think I can now hack it in the air.

Mind you, I still can't fly the choppers in DC for sh*t!