I don't want to undermine your video, for practical purposes it all still holds true, but what you're describing and attempting to prevent isn't VRS, it's Overpitch. VRS is bandied around way too much, it rarely happens. Overpitch happens all of the time. What's the difference? In a nutshell Overpitch is when the engines can't power through increased rotor blade pitch, so RRPM goes down. This is what is demonstrated in each of your crashes. VRS is when the tip vortices recirculate and tip lift (which accounts for the majority of lift due to tip speed) decays. RRPM is basically unaffected and the engines aren't struggling. The results look very similar but one is an aerodynamic phenomenon and the other is a lack of power. There's a lot more to this, but hope that provides some tid bits of info.
No no, you're not undermining it at all. This serves as a good reminder that there is always more to learn, and that I'm always a little further left on the Dunning Kruger scale than I think I am :) My only regret is that I can't correct the video, so I'll settle for pinning your comment instead. Thank you for the good info!
@@vsTerminus Cheers mate, if you're going to pin the comment then I should do a better job of explaining the details. I'll whip up a short video when I get some spare time and link it back here.
@@tmanf22 It depends on the source and what your definitions are. IIRC, Canada's aviation agency distinguishes VRS and settling with power as two different things, with the latter being essentially the same as overpitching and the rotor speed drooping. The FAA, I believe, defines settling with power as being the same as VRS, or at least, settling with power results from VRS. Regardless, they are two different phenomenon, but they occur in similar areas, and can occur together as well. Both result from not properly managing your descent rate at low airspeed and hover. VRS is very much a real (and dangerous) condition and is very difficult to model properly without moving to computationally expensive free-wake models or CFD.
Just started flying in DCS World, picked up the Mi-8 and fell in love. Your tutorial series is simply the best RUclips has to offer. Cannot say thank you enough!
Careful! The helicopters are gateway drugs to all of the other helicopters. If you like the Mi-8, you might love the Mi-24. Fortunately, a lot of the flight tips and operations carry over between the two. The Mi-24 feels like you're strapped into a massive murder bus, and then the Ka-50 and AH-64 end up feeling like you're flying these really maneuverable computers that once you get used to, you can just throw around the sky. I still remember the first time...probably 6 years ago, that I was flying the Ka-50 and was just cruising along at high speed and saw a missile coming in from the left. I managed to dump the helicopter and dive below the hill to my left, curling around with high speed only to instantly put the Ka-50 into a nice stable hover behind the hill where I eventually popped up behind the hill and managed to find the SAM and launch a Vikhr at it to take it out. It just felt like it was connected to my brain with how easily I was able to pop it into the hover from high speed.
Oh man! You and your channel are a real treasures of the DCS world. God bless you for being talented enough to be able to explain things nobody else can. You just told me all the needed principles and connections that is needed to successfully pilot this simulator. Thank you dear sir, I was struggling for more than a year and a half to understand this. And, yes I have read the manuals for several helicopters modules but it was too hard to get it all in one whole understanding. Thank you once again, have a great time.
Found your t00bs after picking up the Mi 8. Had the Hind for a while and slooowly getting there with short take off/landing - struggling with hover. Got the Mi 8 today and love it AND found your channel which has already shown me heaps. Thanks dude =]
TL;DW - Those jackwagons on Facebook telling you the Mi-8 flies better heavy, and you need to learn that way, are mostly full of nonsense. Excellent video. Thank you for providing the mission file. A lot of people making tutorial videos totally skip this for some reason but Being able to start and fly the exact same route often helps a lot. I've watched most of your Mi-8 videos at this point and one thing I don't think you ever addressed is when and how to use the throttle on the collective. Some people say you shouldn't ever move it but you're clearly upping it for things like takeoffs and landings rather than leaving it right in the middle. I've noticed in the Mi-8 it makes a difference but not really in the Hind so far. Maybe a short video on the collective throttle and engine throttles?
Part of the reason people skip that part is because it requires a surprising amount of planning. When I don't have to share the mission I can cut corners or reuse existing scenarios or not even save the mission in the first place. But if I want to share it I have to make sure I plan for that. It's just one more thing you have to do on top of recording the video itself. But if people are finding it helpful I will continue to do it.
@@vsTerminus I think in this specific type of demonstration it's useful because you have the same sight picture coming into the same airstrip as you just watched in a video. For most of the other stuff, like sling loading, it doesn't rally matter where you're picking it up and dropping off from if it's a flat area around sea level. Now about that throttle control...
People on social media telling other people what to do in DCS is rage inducing. another example are people that tell others to not buy the Mi-8 because of stupid reasons like how it's hard to fly and to heavy, handling sucks etc.. Rrrrng rage inducing! Why don't they just activate the free trial and try it for god sake. It's a beautiful helicopter.
Sorry, I'm going to have to make a couple comments on this one (or write another essay, we'll see how it turns out). I know this video probably took a lot of work to put together, so I'm not trying to be a jerk, just trying to be constructive. 9:45 I would argue that a change in pressure (and density) altitude constitutes a change in conditions. Also note that the temperature will decrease with altitude (I think DCS implements the international standard atmosphere or something roughly equivalent, but probably not much more complex than that) so your estimate at Kerman would likely be a bit conservative (not that that's a bad thing). 15:12 No, it's not to do with the blade design. All helicopter rotors (except possibly some really terrible ones, like an air screw) will see a decrease in power required as forward flight increases. 15:38 No, the blades are absolutely designed to be efficient in a hovering condition, especially in a utility helicopter like the Mi-8 which is designed to carry heavy loads. It's true that there's a tradeoff between hover efficiency and forward flight efficiency when it comes to blade design, but it's not nearly as drastic as you're making it out to be. A high efficiency hovering rotor will still require less power in forward flight. 16:57 This is a bit of a pedantic point, but there's no "horizontal inflow." Inflow is defined as being the component of velocity that is normal (perpendicular) to the rotor disk. Inflow can be induced (as it is in hover) and also due to translational motion such as from an axial climb, or the forward flight velocity if the disk is tilted down. 17:20 I really don't know what you mean by "all of the air." There is no single point where the air passing through the rotor is completely horizontal or "in-plane" (unless there's no thrust or you're in some unusual transient condition). Yes, the wake will skew back (and quite quickly) with airspeed, but as long as the rotor's thrusting and the disk has zero or negative angle of attack, there will always be a downward component to the rotor inflow. Overall, the whole discussion of ETL is very simplified at best or largely misunderstood at worst. The general idea is there, but characterizing it as "some air is vertical, some is horizontal" is simply the wrong way to go about it, in my opinion. What you really need is to show a power required curve. Here's one from one of my rotorcraft classes found using basic (uncorrected) momentum theory and aerodynamics: i.imgur.com/QZezsnV.png. The induced power (Pi) decreases as forward flight speed increases. This is what you're getting at. The power required eventually goes back up largely due to the parasite power Pp (power required to overcome airframe drag) but also due to some increase in rotor profile power P0 (essentially blade airfoil drag). But at about 80 knots or so, you'll reach the "bucket speed" or best endurance speed. 18:00 I really dislike the term "transverse flow." It's not a term we use in engineering; I've only heard pilots use it. Basically, it's a misleading term for the longitudinal inflow gradient from the leading to trailing edges of the disk (there's nothing "transverse" about the flow). Basically, as edgewise flight speed increases, the wake skews aft, and the forward edge of the disk experiences less induced inflow and the aft end of the disk sees increased induced inflow. The gradient between these two extremes is pretty linear. It was first proposed by Glauert in 1926 to explain discrepancies between measured and predicted lateral forces on autogyro rotors (This is briefly covered in NASA TM 102219). If you normalize the gradient by the total mean inflow, the gradient will actually increase with forward flight velocity, but because the total induced velocity decreases with forward speed, the actual dimensional difference in induced velocities at the forward and aft ends of the disk decreases after reaching its peak. The inflow due to forward speed and disk angle of attack dominates at higher speeds, which is why you only see the effects of so-called "transverse flow" (namely, the lateral cyclic requirement) in the low-speed transition region. 23:30 In real life, your airspeed indicator will be unreliable at low airspeeds. It certainly wouldn't be providing good information by the time you're at a speed where you risk entering VRS. 24:08 This is something every simulator gets wrong, but in real life, there's a noticeable lag in the vertical velocity indicator (on the order of seconds). It will show you trends, but not an instantaneous speed. If you're in a descent and the descent rate is increasing significantly, you may be over your ~4m/s descent maximum before the indicator tells you. There are instantaneous indicators (which are augmented by accelerometers to supply the high-frequency information), but I'm not sure if that's what would actually be a typical Mi-8. 24:52 Why the Russians don't make the nominal RPM 100% is beyond me. 25:26 That's another little Russian idiosyncrasy. I don't really know why you need to have that gage. A main rotor torque indicator would be much more useful, I would think. 26:30 Now for something positive! This section is really well done. I'm not exactly sure how engine RPM can move somewhat independently from rotor RPM; on most western helicopters, the needles remain together unless the rotor is autorotating. Could be a different Russian engine or transmission design thing. Regardless, it's a good demonstration of how the governor has a lag. You should also note that pulling up hard on the collective may over-torque the rotor and potentially damage the transmission. That's another reason it would be nice to have a torque gage in the cockpit. 39:35 Something DCS does poorly is show the rotor disk. During my one helicopter lesson, the instructor mentioned that you want to use the visual distance between the rotor disk and the horizon to judge the attitude, and as you get more proficient, you learn to associate that attitude with a speed (ie, you could hold a 50 knot attitude). Because of the lack of a good visual rotor disk blur, this feedback in DCS is pretty poor. Granted, in the Mi-8, you're seated proportionally much farther forward below the disk than in an S-300, so the same visual cues may not apply. 41:38 No, again, it's not half the air is horizontal, half the air is vertical. It's more complicated than that. I think it would be enough to say that you're on the edge of losing ETL. 42:39 I don't think pilots spend much time in that "shudder" simply because it's quite uncomfortable. They're usually either above or below it. You can air taxi at low speeds "below" the shudder. Probably a better question to ask an actual pilot though. Anyway, that's what I've got for this video. Hope you are able to find it useful. I'm happy to discuss everything in more detail, if you're interested, as well.
Went and bought this beast recently. Now I can't stop myself from joining S&R servers. I'm surviving about 80% of the VRS/overpitch situations, she always bites me when I think I've calmed her. I still don't slow down as smoothly, either too soon and I take a long time getting to the landing site, or overshoot then have to go-around. Not even started using weapons yet. A "this is how you pick up peeps using ropes in search&rescue servers" video would be good. I can hover, but when you've got a few in the water, it's damned hard making sure your alt is correct and stay straight over the swines! Keep up the good vids.
One of the videos I'd like to do is on precision landings; How to arrive where you mean to without coming up short or overshooting. The best tip I can give you for now is this: - Pay attention to how quickly your speed is falling - Try to determine whether you're going to come up short or overshoot by the time you start the transition through Transverse Flow (~60kph when it starts to shudder) - If you're coming up short, bring the nose down a bit until your speed stabilizes around 50-55kph and just keep it there for as long as you need to in order to extend your approach. "Fly the shudder" they say. - Then when you're closer you bring the nose up and finish the transition to hover. On the flip side, if you're going to overshoot you have to decide: - Can you bring the nose up more and slow down more aggressively without overpitch? - Or should you maybe start turning now and circle around? It's also OK to overshoot and then just hover-taxi back. Keep your speed under 30kph and you won't have to deal with the transition again. If you have to go around, two bits of advice: 1. Know what your heading was on the way in so you can fly the opposite heading away from the field 2. Give yourself enough distance to get turned around, lined up, and on approach again. Don't rush it. The more of these you do the easier it will get to judge how early you need to start an approach to make it safely.
Regarding picking people up with a rope, best advice is to get as close to a tree as you can. Like hover right in front of one and use it as your point of reference. It's really hard, like REALLY hard to maintain a stable hover when you have nothing to reference to determine lateral movement. If you're picking people up in a forest, try the 20m (default, short) rope. If you just can't get low enough because the trees are too big, use the 40m rope. It's rare you should need anything longer than that, you'll make it harder for yourself imo. Over the water you're also best to stick with the 20m rope and just get as low as you can. Hopefully there are trees or something on a nearby shore you can focus on, and use the water's surface in your peripherals to notice drift. Water pickups are hard.
I usually hate long videos, but yours are a very nice exception... cant see it on a single sitting though.. real life gets in the way :) thanks for still adding to this series.
It's broken down into chapters, I fully expect most people will either skim over it or watch it a few pieces at a time. I hope that will help with the overall runtime a little.
Outstanding work, thanks! There's sooo much new information that other RUclipsrs didn't mention. I didn't know ab out the power loss with anti-ice and dust filters turned on.
Praise the lord a new vsTerminus upload ! I have to say, your videos are one of the reasons I have over 1500h on DCS now. Hopefully they get more people to fly the Magnificent eight !
I know this video is an hour and fifteen minutes long. And I know I could find out all this information on my own. But, it would have taken me a whole lot longer than one hour and fifteen minutes. Thanks for making this and saving me (and everyone) all that time and frustration.
This was a really difficult video to plan and lay out. Deciding what to cover and how to explain it was hard. That's a big part of why it took so long to finish. I had to figure out "why are people *actually* crashing?" If I assume people already know the basic steps, where else are things going wrong? I had to talk to a lot of people and think back to when I first started flying the Mi-8 in 2014 and my struggles to land it. That eventually led to "people are asking too much from their engines". Why are they doing that? Because they weight too much or they are flying too fast or they are slowing down too aggressively, or all of these things at once. Anyway, thanks for the support!
This is going to be fundamental, can't wait to get back in the hip. Definitely spent most of my landings in a burning crater, but there are some key things about coming out of ETL that I definitely was not paying attention to.
Excellent video as always. Thank you very much for these tutorial series! I know it takes a lot of time to produce this quality YT video, and even more time to master these things to be able to teach them. Helicopter flying is so much harder than fixed wing, and so much more fascinating because of that, and you're helping bridge the gap. YT needs more people like you :-)
Oh. My. God! Thank you so much for this video! I was struggling "mightily" with my transitions to hover (I can confidently say that I never executed a good one actually). Then I watch your video from start to finish (the whole 1:20:00-ish... 😊), went into DCS to try it on the Huey and completed 2 successful transitions back to back!! Like almost perfect! Amazing what careful, detailed explanation of the theory and do's and don'ts can do! Thanks a million for taking the time to make this video, it's just plain fantastic! (As my many, many uses of exclamation marks in my comment may indicate...)
Great instructional video. I’ve been flying the Bell 47 in MSFS recently and had forgotten how much fun this module can be 👍 Both have excellent flight models. Keep up the good work 😉
18:40 You were wondering how much the transverse flow shaking is present in a real Mi-8/17. Here is a real Mi-17 transitioning to hover: ruclips.net/video/wLIVi9sPohs/видео.html The shaking and noise is there but imo not as strong as in DCS.
Thanks for the link! I've had a couple of people reach out to me about this now and in general it sounds like the DCS representation is "pretty close". Whether it's a bit extra in DCS or not, it ultimately doesn't change anything about the process, and a lot of the time you'll transition through it so quickly that you barely notice.
Awesome production man. Love that you include mistake videos. Teaching hands on trades during Covid has taughtm me that making something like this takes an INCREDIBLE amount of time. These tutorials have helped me so much with the Mi-8! Cheers
I love your style of videos. Glad you decided to leave in the end part and glad you take your audience into account when you're deciding what type of videos to make. This was a great video and makes me want to get into my hind and try out these techniques.
Boy! I really need to get into 1440 monitors. The clarity of your video is outstanding. As to the tutorials, where are an amazing set of training tools. These have given me much more understanding of flying the Mi8 in DCS. Will you do something similar for the Mi24 and the AH-64?
1440 was the best switch I ever made. Well worth the cost of the monitor. I'm going to be doing some Mi-24 content (hopefully a lot of it), but probably not much if anything for the AH-64. The Apache's not really my style and there are people (eg, Casmo) who will cover it much better than I could.
I watched your very good and useful video thinking of the Hind who needs a good amount of pitch up to slow down :-) But I would ask you how is important using good/expensive stick (maybe with an extension), throttle and rudder pedals to get better control of the helicopter? It could be useful referring to a 1 - 10 scale rating. Thx
With regards to a better setup, let me put it this way: At some point as you learn your hardware will become the bottleneck and limit how precisely you can control the helicopter. Upgrading hardware won't make you a better pilot but it will basically turn *you* into the bottleneck again so you can continue improving. I think if you have the budget to do it and you fly helicopters enough to justify it, the upgrade is worth every penny. In order of importance: 1. A better base with options for centering force and (lack of) center detent 2. A stick extension for that fine, precise control 3. A set of pedals which can remove or at least adjust the centering force None of that is mandatory to fly and enjoy yourself and some people are amazing even with cheap sticks like the Logitech Xtreme 3D Pro, but a good setup feels completely different to fly on and in my opinion is 100% worth it if you can afford it.
I'm looking for a helicopter to buy as my first heli. I got a new account so I got the 50% discount but not on the hind so that's not an option anymore and i'm going to wait for the apache if I want a gunship so i'm kinda iffy about the KA-50, I don't like the huey that much but than I tried the Hip and I kinda fell in love really unexpected! I thought it would be bulky and slow but it's actually pretty fast for its weight and handles great. I also love the firepower it has while still being able to do the search and rescue and the transport roll! How did you get your graphics that good? Is it a Reshade preset or are you using anything other than the normal graphic options? What are your settings?
Good stuff. I know most of these tactics, but need so much more practice as I forget the must hit numbers when things start going sideways. What are your curve settings for your controls? I have a hard time with small corrections, but I do not want to deaden the center area too much as that would teach bad habits vs real life setups. I mean I have to be prepared when the SHTF and I find a random abandoned russian chopper to fly my family to safety. But obviously the stick in an IRL chopper has so much more throw than my VKB NXT.
When I first started I would set about a +15 curve on my cyclic pitch and roll axes. As I learned to make smaller inputs I reduced the curves and eventually removed them entirely. This just comes naturally with time (especially as you begin to relax and feel more comfortable). There's no harm in setting up some curves if it helps you. Like you said, our toy plastic joysticks are ultimately nothing like the real thing. If curves allow you to stay alive in the game then why not use them?
Hello Please why is the best sitting Défaut, central or third Trim on lacet or not ? Thanks very Mitch and sorry for me bad inglish👍👍👍👍👍👍if you Can a little vidéo for that i would be very thankful
There was this tutorial on landing the Su-25 that I watched a while back: it either slows down, or goes down, but not at the same time. It just clicks in my head: for something as heavy as a Hip, I really want to either slow down or go down
I use ReShade to brighten up the colors and lighting a bit. You can read more and download my profiles here, if you want to: www.patreon.com/posts/my-reshade-49449819
Does DCS model weather to that degree? Such as colder temps, like flying in the winter, are much better for generating lift because cooler air is denser, thus flying on a very hot day is bad for performance. Same with altitude. Taking off from 5k feet is much different than sea level. Does DCS take all that into account? Even baro pressure? I will try some different scenarios to see but I would like to know if you know how far they took it.
ahhh help, i use the central position trimmer mode but it behaves like its in default trimmer mode when i press the trimmer button after making small corrections
I know, it‘s off topic, but can you elaborate on the weather and time settings, used in this mission, and if you use any other enhancements like reshade? thank you!
There is a link to the mission file in the description you can check out the weather settings there. You can also get my reshade profiles here: www.patreon.com/posts/my-reshade-49449819
Thanks! I'm currently running an R9 5950X CPU, a GTX 1080 Ti, and 64GB DDR4-3200 RAM. Storage is all SSD, with the OS on an M.2 nvme drive and games on SATA SSDs.
Hello, how did you mount your VKB base without desk mounts? Can you put screws through plate you get with VKB base? One more question, do you have ultimate edition of VKB III grip? Is it worth it buying VKB Ultimate edition or its just fine to go with VKB non ultimate version? I heard its just a build quality? Ultimate is built of metal and non ultimate is built of plastic? Can you give me some suggestions on those questions? Sorry for long comment. Thank you.
When you order there is an option to get a small baseplate for mounting instead of the big desktop baseplate. I made a stand out of 2" PVC pipes and screwed the plate down to that. I got mine before the Ultimate edition came out. There are no issues with the build quality on the plastic one, but the all metal one might feel nicer in your hand? Either way you won't be disappointed. My biggest suggestion is to get the 20cm extension if you have enough room. It makes a world of difference.
@@vsTerminus Oh i didnt know that for mounting plate, thank you. Yeah i will buy 200mm extension. I read a post on reddit, they said that pro version compared to ultimate feels like a toy just because of that metal. Im not that good with a money so ill probably go with pro version. Thank you for the answer, it was helpful.
I don't want to undermine your video, for practical purposes it all still holds true, but what you're describing and attempting to prevent isn't VRS, it's Overpitch.
VRS is bandied around way too much, it rarely happens. Overpitch happens all of the time.
What's the difference? In a nutshell Overpitch is when the engines can't power through increased rotor blade pitch, so RRPM goes down. This is what is demonstrated in each of your crashes.
VRS is when the tip vortices recirculate and tip lift (which accounts for the majority of lift due to tip speed) decays. RRPM is basically unaffected and the engines aren't struggling.
The results look very similar but one is an aerodynamic phenomenon and the other is a lack of power. There's a lot more to this, but hope that provides some tid bits of info.
No no, you're not undermining it at all. This serves as a good reminder that there is always more to learn, and that I'm always a little further left on the Dunning Kruger scale than I think I am :)
My only regret is that I can't correct the video, so I'll settle for pinning your comment instead. Thank you for the good info!
@@vsTerminus Cheers mate, if you're going to pin the comment then I should do a better job of explaining the details. I'll whip up a short video when I get some spare time and link it back here.
Can you send this to the FAA, they still consider VRS and settling with power as synonyms, at least in the HFH?
@@tmanf22 It depends on the source and what your definitions are. IIRC, Canada's aviation agency distinguishes VRS and settling with power as two different things, with the latter being essentially the same as overpitching and the rotor speed drooping. The FAA, I believe, defines settling with power as being the same as VRS, or at least, settling with power results from VRS. Regardless, they are two different phenomenon, but they occur in similar areas, and can occur together as well. Both result from not properly managing your descent rate at low airspeed and hover. VRS is very much a real (and dangerous) condition and is very difficult to model properly without moving to computationally expensive free-wake models or CFD.
This is real VRS. m.ruclips.net/video/urTuwH0lb8Q/видео.html
Just started flying in DCS World, picked up the Mi-8 and fell in love. Your tutorial series is simply the best RUclips has to offer. Cannot say thank you enough!
Careful! The helicopters are gateway drugs to all of the other helicopters. If you like the Mi-8, you might love the Mi-24. Fortunately, a lot of the flight tips and operations carry over between the two. The Mi-24 feels like you're strapped into a massive murder bus, and then the Ka-50 and AH-64 end up feeling like you're flying these really maneuverable computers that once you get used to, you can just throw around the sky.
I still remember the first time...probably 6 years ago, that I was flying the Ka-50 and was just cruising along at high speed and saw a missile coming in from the left. I managed to dump the helicopter and dive below the hill to my left, curling around with high speed only to instantly put the Ka-50 into a nice stable hover behind the hill where I eventually popped up behind the hill and managed to find the SAM and launch a Vikhr at it to take it out. It just felt like it was connected to my brain with how easily I was able to pop it into the hover from high speed.
Oh man! You and your channel are a real treasures of the DCS world. God bless you for being talented enough to be able to explain things nobody else can. You just told me all the needed principles and connections that is needed to successfully pilot this simulator. Thank you dear sir, I was struggling for more than a year and a half to understand this. And, yes I have read the manuals for several helicopters modules but it was too hard to get it all in one whole understanding. Thank you once again, have a great time.
What an absolute goldmine this channel is!
Found your t00bs after picking up the Mi 8. Had the Hind for a while and slooowly getting there with short take off/landing - struggling with hover. Got the Mi 8 today and love it AND found your channel which has already shown me heaps. Thanks dude =]
TL;DW - Those jackwagons on Facebook telling you the Mi-8 flies better heavy, and you need to learn that way, are mostly full of nonsense. Excellent video. Thank you for providing the mission file. A lot of people making tutorial videos totally skip this for some reason but Being able to start and fly the exact same route often helps a lot. I've watched most of your Mi-8 videos at this point and one thing I don't think you ever addressed is when and how to use the throttle on the collective. Some people say you shouldn't ever move it but you're clearly upping it for things like takeoffs and landings rather than leaving it right in the middle. I've noticed in the Mi-8 it makes a difference but not really in the Hind so far. Maybe a short video on the collective throttle and engine throttles?
Part of the reason people skip that part is because it requires a surprising amount of planning. When I don't have to share the mission I can cut corners or reuse existing scenarios or not even save the mission in the first place.
But if I want to share it I have to make sure I plan for that. It's just one more thing you have to do on top of recording the video itself.
But if people are finding it helpful I will continue to do it.
@@vsTerminus I think in this specific type of demonstration it's useful because you have the same sight picture coming into the same airstrip as you just watched in a video. For most of the other stuff, like sling loading, it doesn't rally matter where you're picking it up and dropping off from if it's a flat area around sea level. Now about that throttle control...
People on social media telling other people what to do in DCS is rage inducing.
another example are people that tell others to not buy the Mi-8 because of stupid reasons like how it's hard to fly and to heavy, handling sucks etc.. Rrrrng rage inducing!
Why don't they just activate the free trial and try it for god sake. It's a beautiful helicopter.
Sorry, I'm going to have to make a couple comments on this one (or write another essay, we'll see how it turns out). I know this video probably took a lot of work to put together, so I'm not trying to be a jerk, just trying to be constructive.
9:45 I would argue that a change in pressure (and density) altitude constitutes a change in conditions. Also note that the temperature will decrease with altitude (I think DCS implements the international standard atmosphere or something roughly equivalent, but probably not much more complex than that) so your estimate at Kerman would likely be a bit conservative (not that that's a bad thing).
15:12 No, it's not to do with the blade design. All helicopter rotors (except possibly some really terrible ones, like an air screw) will see a decrease in power required as forward flight increases.
15:38 No, the blades are absolutely designed to be efficient in a hovering condition, especially in a utility helicopter like the Mi-8 which is designed to carry heavy loads. It's true that there's a tradeoff between hover efficiency and forward flight efficiency when it comes to blade design, but it's not nearly as drastic as you're making it out to be. A high efficiency hovering rotor will still require less power in forward flight.
16:57 This is a bit of a pedantic point, but there's no "horizontal inflow." Inflow is defined as being the component of velocity that is normal (perpendicular) to the rotor disk. Inflow can be induced (as it is in hover) and also due to translational motion such as from an axial climb, or the forward flight velocity if the disk is tilted down.
17:20 I really don't know what you mean by "all of the air." There is no single point where the air passing through the rotor is completely horizontal or "in-plane" (unless there's no thrust or you're in some unusual transient condition). Yes, the wake will skew back (and quite quickly) with airspeed, but as long as the rotor's thrusting and the disk has zero or negative angle of attack, there will always be a downward component to the rotor inflow.
Overall, the whole discussion of ETL is very simplified at best or largely misunderstood at worst. The general idea is there, but characterizing it as "some air is vertical, some is horizontal" is simply the wrong way to go about it, in my opinion. What you really need is to show a power required curve. Here's one from one of my rotorcraft classes found using basic (uncorrected) momentum theory and aerodynamics: i.imgur.com/QZezsnV.png. The induced power (Pi) decreases as forward flight speed increases. This is what you're getting at. The power required eventually goes back up largely due to the parasite power Pp (power required to overcome airframe drag) but also due to some increase in rotor profile power P0 (essentially blade airfoil drag). But at about 80 knots or so, you'll reach the "bucket speed" or best endurance speed.
18:00 I really dislike the term "transverse flow." It's not a term we use in engineering; I've only heard pilots use it. Basically, it's a misleading term for the longitudinal inflow gradient from the leading to trailing edges of the disk (there's nothing "transverse" about the flow). Basically, as edgewise flight speed increases, the wake skews aft, and the forward edge of the disk experiences less induced inflow and the aft end of the disk sees increased induced inflow. The gradient between these two extremes is pretty linear. It was first proposed by Glauert in 1926 to explain discrepancies between measured and predicted lateral forces on autogyro rotors (This is briefly covered in NASA TM 102219). If you normalize the gradient by the total mean inflow, the gradient will actually increase with forward flight velocity, but because the total induced velocity decreases with forward speed, the actual dimensional difference in induced velocities at the forward and aft ends of the disk decreases after reaching its peak. The inflow due to forward speed and disk angle of attack dominates at higher speeds, which is why you only see the effects of so-called "transverse flow" (namely, the lateral cyclic requirement) in the low-speed transition region.
23:30 In real life, your airspeed indicator will be unreliable at low airspeeds. It certainly wouldn't be providing good information by the time you're at a speed where you risk entering VRS.
24:08 This is something every simulator gets wrong, but in real life, there's a noticeable lag in the vertical velocity indicator (on the order of seconds). It will show you trends, but not an instantaneous speed. If you're in a descent and the descent rate is increasing significantly, you may be over your ~4m/s descent maximum before the indicator tells you. There are instantaneous indicators (which are augmented by accelerometers to supply the high-frequency information), but I'm not sure if that's what would actually be a typical Mi-8.
24:52 Why the Russians don't make the nominal RPM 100% is beyond me.
25:26 That's another little Russian idiosyncrasy. I don't really know why you need to have that gage. A main rotor torque indicator would be much more useful, I would think.
26:30 Now for something positive! This section is really well done. I'm not exactly sure how engine RPM can move somewhat independently from rotor RPM; on most western helicopters, the needles remain together unless the rotor is autorotating. Could be a different Russian engine or transmission design thing. Regardless, it's a good demonstration of how the governor has a lag. You should also note that pulling up hard on the collective may over-torque the rotor and potentially damage the transmission. That's another reason it would be nice to have a torque gage in the cockpit.
39:35 Something DCS does poorly is show the rotor disk. During my one helicopter lesson, the instructor mentioned that you want to use the visual distance between the rotor disk and the horizon to judge the attitude, and as you get more proficient, you learn to associate that attitude with a speed (ie, you could hold a 50 knot attitude). Because of the lack of a good visual rotor disk blur, this feedback in DCS is pretty poor. Granted, in the Mi-8, you're seated proportionally much farther forward below the disk than in an S-300, so the same visual cues may not apply.
41:38 No, again, it's not half the air is horizontal, half the air is vertical. It's more complicated than that. I think it would be enough to say that you're on the edge of losing ETL.
42:39 I don't think pilots spend much time in that "shudder" simply because it's quite uncomfortable. They're usually either above or below it. You can air taxi at low speeds "below" the shudder. Probably a better question to ask an actual pilot though.
Anyway, that's what I've got for this video. Hope you are able to find it useful. I'm happy to discuss everything in more detail, if you're interested, as well.
Went and bought this beast recently. Now I can't stop myself from joining S&R servers. I'm surviving about 80% of the VRS/overpitch situations, she always bites me when I think I've calmed her.
I still don't slow down as smoothly, either too soon and I take a long time getting to the landing site, or overshoot then have to go-around. Not even started using weapons yet.
A "this is how you pick up peeps using ropes in search&rescue servers" video would be good. I can hover, but when you've got a few in the water, it's damned hard making sure your alt is correct and stay straight over the swines!
Keep up the good vids.
One of the videos I'd like to do is on precision landings; How to arrive where you mean to without coming up short or overshooting. The best tip I can give you for now is this:
- Pay attention to how quickly your speed is falling
- Try to determine whether you're going to come up short or overshoot by the time you start the transition through Transverse Flow (~60kph when it starts to shudder)
- If you're coming up short, bring the nose down a bit until your speed stabilizes around 50-55kph and just keep it there for as long as you need to in order to extend your approach. "Fly the shudder" they say.
- Then when you're closer you bring the nose up and finish the transition to hover.
On the flip side, if you're going to overshoot you have to decide:
- Can you bring the nose up more and slow down more aggressively without overpitch?
- Or should you maybe start turning now and circle around?
It's also OK to overshoot and then just hover-taxi back. Keep your speed under 30kph and you won't have to deal with the transition again.
If you have to go around, two bits of advice:
1. Know what your heading was on the way in so you can fly the opposite heading away from the field
2. Give yourself enough distance to get turned around, lined up, and on approach again. Don't rush it.
The more of these you do the easier it will get to judge how early you need to start an approach to make it safely.
Regarding picking people up with a rope, best advice is to get as close to a tree as you can. Like hover right in front of one and use it as your point of reference.
It's really hard, like REALLY hard to maintain a stable hover when you have nothing to reference to determine lateral movement.
If you're picking people up in a forest, try the 20m (default, short) rope. If you just can't get low enough because the trees are too big, use the 40m rope. It's rare you should need anything longer than that, you'll make it harder for yourself imo.
Over the water you're also best to stick with the 20m rope and just get as low as you can. Hopefully there are trees or something on a nearby shore you can focus on, and use the water's surface in your peripherals to notice drift. Water pickups are hard.
I usually hate long videos, but yours are a very nice exception... cant see it on a single sitting though.. real life gets in the way :) thanks for still adding to this series.
It's broken down into chapters, I fully expect most people will either skim over it or watch it a few pieces at a time. I hope that will help with the overall runtime a little.
I put his vid on while I'm working on my thesis. Damn I missed DCS
Thank you so much for this, very much appreciated vsTerminus! I looove the Mi-8 in DCS, have spent a lot of time enjoying her. I am a Hipster 😁
in "Hind"sight me too! :)
Outstanding work, thanks! There's sooo much new information that other RUclipsrs didn't mention. I didn't know ab out the power loss with anti-ice and dust filters turned on.
Praise the lord a new vsTerminus upload ! I have to say, your videos are one of the reasons I have over 1500h on DCS now. Hopefully they get more people to fly the Magnificent eight !
I know this video is an hour and fifteen minutes long. And I know I could find out all this information on my own. But, it would have taken me a whole lot longer than one hour and fifteen minutes. Thanks for making this and saving me (and everyone) all that time and frustration.
The actual info is only the first 30 minutes or so. The rest is demonstrations. If that makes it any easier to digest
Love that you are talking about those often overlooked basics like weight and balance! Keep up the great work
This was a really difficult video to plan and lay out. Deciding what to cover and how to explain it was hard. That's a big part of why it took so long to finish.
I had to figure out "why are people *actually* crashing?" If I assume people already know the basic steps, where else are things going wrong?
I had to talk to a lot of people and think back to when I first started flying the Mi-8 in 2014 and my struggles to land it.
That eventually led to "people are asking too much from their engines". Why are they doing that? Because they weight too much or they are flying too fast or they are slowing down too aggressively, or all of these things at once.
Anyway, thanks for the support!
This is going to be fundamental, can't wait to get back in the hip. Definitely spent most of my landings in a burning crater, but there are some key things about coming out of ETL that I definitely was not paying attention to.
Wow. Incredibly production quality. I haven't watched the entire thing yet but I can tell you worked hard on this.
I wish I could smash likes 1000 times . Great video! I loved your Mi8 campaign playthrough too!
Excellent video as always. Thank you very much for these tutorial series! I know it takes a lot of time to produce this quality YT video, and even more time to master these things to be able to teach them. Helicopter flying is so much harder than fixed wing, and so much more fascinating because of that, and you're helping bridge the gap. YT needs more people like you :-)
This helped a great deal in regards to helping me learn how to land, thank you
Excellent vids hope you come back soon
Oh. My. God! Thank you so much for this video!
I was struggling "mightily" with my transitions to hover (I can confidently say that I never executed a good one actually). Then I watch your video from start to finish (the whole 1:20:00-ish... 😊), went into DCS to try it on the Huey and completed 2 successful transitions back to back!! Like almost perfect! Amazing what careful, detailed explanation of the theory and do's and don'ts can do!
Thanks a million for taking the time to make this video, it's just plain fantastic! (As my many, many uses of exclamation marks in my comment may indicate...)
Watching the whole video is dedication! I'm really really happy to hear it worked for you though!
Great instructional video. I’ve been flying the Bell 47 in MSFS recently and had forgotten how much fun this module can be 👍
Both have excellent flight models. Keep up the good work 😉
18:40 You were wondering how much the transverse flow shaking is present in a real Mi-8/17. Here is a real Mi-17 transitioning to hover:
ruclips.net/video/wLIVi9sPohs/видео.html
The shaking and noise is there but imo not as strong as in DCS.
Thanks for the link! I've had a couple of people reach out to me about this now and in general it sounds like the DCS representation is "pretty close". Whether it's a bit extra in DCS or not, it ultimately doesn't change anything about the process, and a lot of the time you'll transition through it so quickly that you barely notice.
I suppose that the excessive shaking in DCS is justified. In a real Mi-8/17, you’d feel the shaking. In DCS, not so much.
The Royal Guards skin returns!
Gotta bring it out for the tutorial series!
Awesome production man. Love that you include mistake videos. Teaching hands on trades during Covid has taughtm me that making something like this takes an INCREDIBLE amount of time. These tutorials have helped me so much with the Mi-8! Cheers
Absolutely superb video! Most helpful. Thank you.
I love your style of videos. Glad you decided to leave in the end part and glad you take your audience into account when you're deciding what type of videos to make. This was a great video and makes me want to get into my hind and try out these techniques.
great vids best tutorials ive seen
Excellent information and tutorial. Thanks, much appreciated.
Wow! I thought I was good at this, but I was doing quick stops all the time :\ no wonder there was so much pain... thanks for a great video vsT!
Boy! I really need to get into 1440 monitors. The clarity of your video is outstanding. As to the tutorials, where are an amazing set of training tools. These have given me much more understanding of flying the Mi8 in DCS. Will you do something similar for the Mi24 and the AH-64?
1440 was the best switch I ever made. Well worth the cost of the monitor.
I'm going to be doing some Mi-24 content (hopefully a lot of it), but probably not much if anything for the AH-64. The Apache's not really my style and there are people (eg, Casmo) who will cover it much better than I could.
Love your vids, is there a plan to do one for employing weapons ?
simply beautiful, thx homie
I watched your very good and useful video thinking of the Hind who needs a good amount of pitch up to slow down :-) But I would ask you how is important using good/expensive stick (maybe with an extension), throttle and rudder pedals to get better control of the helicopter? It could be useful referring to a 1 - 10 scale rating. Thx
With regards to a better setup, let me put it this way:
At some point as you learn your hardware will become the bottleneck and limit how precisely you can control the helicopter. Upgrading hardware won't make you a better pilot but it will basically turn *you* into the bottleneck again so you can continue improving.
I think if you have the budget to do it and you fly helicopters enough to justify it, the upgrade is worth every penny.
In order of importance:
1. A better base with options for centering force and (lack of) center detent
2. A stick extension for that fine, precise control
3. A set of pedals which can remove or at least adjust the centering force
None of that is mandatory to fly and enjoy yourself and some people are amazing even with cheap sticks like the Logitech Xtreme 3D Pro, but a good setup feels completely different to fly on and in my opinion is 100% worth it if you can afford it.
I'm looking for a helicopter to buy as my first heli. I got a new account so I got the 50% discount but not on the hind so that's not an option anymore and i'm going to wait for the apache if I want a gunship so i'm kinda iffy about the KA-50, I don't like the huey that much but than I tried the Hip and I kinda fell in love really unexpected! I thought it would be bulky and slow but it's actually pretty fast for its weight and handles great. I also love the firepower it has while still being able to do the search and rescue and the transport roll!
How did you get your graphics that good? Is it a Reshade preset or are you using anything other than the normal graphic options? What are your settings?
Good stuff. I know most of these tactics, but need so much more practice as I forget the must hit numbers when things start going sideways. What are your curve settings for your controls? I have a hard time with small corrections, but I do not want to deaden the center area too much as that would teach bad habits vs real life setups. I mean I have to be prepared when the SHTF and I find a random abandoned russian chopper to fly my family to safety. But obviously the stick in an IRL chopper has so much more throw than my VKB NXT.
When I first started I would set about a +15 curve on my cyclic pitch and roll axes. As I learned to make smaller inputs I reduced the curves and eventually removed them entirely. This just comes naturally with time (especially as you begin to relax and feel more comfortable).
There's no harm in setting up some curves if it helps you. Like you said, our toy plastic joysticks are ultimately nothing like the real thing. If curves allow you to stay alive in the game then why not use them?
Hello
Please why is the best sitting
Défaut, central or third
Trim on lacet or not ?
Thanks very Mitch and sorry for me bad inglish👍👍👍👍👍👍if you Can a little vidéo for that i would be very thankful
Hello, I actually have a video for trim already: ruclips.net/video/rt8-BkGShTw/видео.html
(I like central position trimmer mode)
There was this tutorial on landing the Su-25 that I watched a while back: it either slows down, or goes down, but not at the same time. It just clicks in my head: for something as heavy as a Hip, I really want to either slow down or go down
You can absolutely do both at the same time, you just have have to know how much of each you can do safely. That's a future tutorial though!
hey
vsTerminus how is your lighting wayy better than other youtubers is it a filter?
I use ReShade to brighten up the colors and lighting a bit. You can read more and download my profiles here, if you want to: www.patreon.com/posts/my-reshade-49449819
@@vsTerminus thx soo much I was super confused
not gonna lie school bus livery on the hip would look good
Does DCS model weather to that degree? Such as colder temps, like flying in the winter, are much better for generating lift because cooler air is denser, thus flying on a very hot day is bad for performance. Same with altitude. Taking off from 5k feet is much different than sea level. Does DCS take all that into account? Even baro pressure? I will try some different scenarios to see but I would like to know if you know how far they took it.
As far as I'm aware yes they do take all of that into account.
ahhh help, i use the central position trimmer mode but it behaves like its in default trimmer mode when i press the trimmer button after making small corrections
Could you share your reshade settings in the description, please/
What spring setup do you use for helicopters?
I know, it‘s off topic, but can you elaborate on the weather and time settings, used in this mission, and if you use any other enhancements like reshade? thank you!
There is a link to the mission file in the description you can check out the weather settings there.
You can also get my reshade profiles here: www.patreon.com/posts/my-reshade-49449819
@@vsTerminus Cool, thank you!
This is good stuff!
Nice video. What are your pc specs?
Thanks! I'm currently running an R9 5950X CPU, a GTX 1080 Ti, and 64GB DDR4-3200 RAM. Storage is all SSD, with the OS on an M.2 nvme drive and games on SATA SSDs.
@@vsTerminus Thanks for fast respond. Nice PC.
Hello, how did you mount your VKB base without desk mounts? Can you put screws through plate you get with VKB base? One more question, do you have ultimate edition of VKB III grip? Is it worth it buying VKB Ultimate edition or its just fine to go with VKB non ultimate version? I heard its just a build quality? Ultimate is built of metal and non ultimate is built of plastic? Can you give me some suggestions on those questions? Sorry for long comment. Thank you.
When you order there is an option to get a small baseplate for mounting instead of the big desktop baseplate. I made a stand out of 2" PVC pipes and screwed the plate down to that.
I got mine before the Ultimate edition came out. There are no issues with the build quality on the plastic one, but the all metal one might feel nicer in your hand? Either way you won't be disappointed.
My biggest suggestion is to get the 20cm extension if you have enough room. It makes a world of difference.
@@vsTerminus Oh i didnt know that for mounting plate, thank you. Yeah i will buy 200mm extension. I read a post on reddit, they said that pro version compared to ultimate feels like a toy just because of that metal. Im not that good with a money so ill probably go with pro version. Thank you for the answer, it was helpful.
Planes fly bu using physics to their benefit. Helicopters don't fly; they beat the air into submission just enough to fall constantly
Great video, really informative. However, its not pronounced huvver.......really irritating :)