Helicopters: tips, controls, personal preferences

[Ferrard Carson]

The technique for Blackhawk+ is a little different, as you can't turn like a maniac and land.

I beg to differ!



~ Ferrard

[SuperU]

A couple of videos that example the type of flight you would want to achieve are linked below.





I use an xbox 360 controller for my flight, and I must say that I really do like my set up, I have left stick for the cyclic, right stick for head movement (cheap mans track ir!) and then the variable triggers as the rudder. I use buttons for collective, I find that it is a really intuitive interface.

On the topic of A3 flight, the "flight model" is actually really quite nice now (latest beta/dev build) and I would highly recommend practice inside of A3 because hell its the future!!! ...

[tryteyker]

Well Ferrard, good point. That essentially means the Littlebird is NO different to any other helicopter. And as an answer to your question Thirith, you'll want to use the MH-6J found in the US Army tab. The AH-6J variant is the Attack Helicopter variant, means instead of transport skids you get rockets and miniguns. It doesn't matter for practice though, unless you want to practice strafing runs.

[boberro]

AH-6J has also broken instruments I believe (showing mirrored image).

[Thirith]

My apologies for the thread necromancy, but I've got a question resulting from flying a bit more: I'm flying with a KB+M setup, sometimes using TrackIR. Once thing I think I might be doing wrong is this: after I take off, I usually keep my finger on the Collective Up button, pretty much treating it as if it were a throttle button on a gamepad. Does that make any sense, or do I just keep Collective Up pressed until I lift off and after that I just use Collective Up/Down for specific manoeuvres?

[Ferrard Carson]

In ArmA's simplified flight model, it's not wrong at all. It means you can increase your angle-of-attack (and thus your acceleration) more before you start trading too much altitude for speed.

For fastest travel, you should fly in a straight line, tilted forward about 25-35 degrees, with full up-collective.

~ Ferrard

[Thirith]

Thanks, Ferrard. Will keep that in mind.

I am somewhat lazy at hooking up the TrackIR usually, but I realised today that even as a poor to mediocre heli pilot I find it so much easier to fly with it. One thing that I'm not particularly good at is judging height and distance, but if I can move my head freely I get a much better feel for where the heli is with respect to its surroundings. I just wish that the Pro Clip didn't fall apart so easily... and I wish there were more heli training missions.