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Bell 205 Huey


Aerosoft Team

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Hi there,

Amazing work with the Huey. I just have one comment and one question.

The comment is about the nose/windshield of the Huey. Maybe it's because of the zoom level/FoV but there is something strange about the shape of it when compared to photos.

The other is a question, what do you mean by this; "Please note that vortex ring state (VRS) is NOT included because the Huey does not suffer from this dangerous condition."?

Best regards.

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The other is a question, what do you mean by this; "Please note that vortex ring state (VRS) is NOT included because the Huey does not suffer from this dangerous condition."?

Vortex Ring State.

I'd enjoy it if this post doesn't start a mini-topic because replies to it.

Okay, I'm having second thoughts about this post, can it please be deleted.

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The huey is not really able to get in a vortex ring state in real life. Iven if you force it to do it barely does it really. It is like a plane that is not able to spin.

Yes, but try to make a downwind approach with All Up Mass and you will see that even the good old Huey will probably show you an unpleasant ride. I've never experienced a VRS in the helicopters I fly (and I hope I'll never be in one!), it was once demonstrated by my instructor the beginning of one. In the R22 is very hard to induce VRS, you just feel the effects of it, cyclic command does not respond well, vibration. But that doesn't mean that it's invulnerable to VRS. Every helicopter is capable of entering VRS if the right conditions are met.

Just my two cents.

Regards and continue the great work.

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Ho ho... the basic flight model for helicopters might not be perfect in FSX but that does not mean we use that for this Huey. In fact if we would not have been able to make it better we would not have started on this project. Included in this project is a special DLL that alters how FSX handles helicopters.

Mathijs, tell me...is this going to make helicopter flying easier in MSFS ?

I've never been able to master it. After lifting off, its like balancing on top of a beach ball on ice, blindfold. The slightest control input seems to result in me skittering off sideways till I roll over.

If you have done something...anything...to make helicopter flying more straightforward, I will be very interested indeed! :)

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Mathijs, tell me...is this going to make helicopter flying easier in MSFS ?

I've never been able to master it. After lifting off, its like balancing on top of a beach ball on ice, blindfold. The slightest control input seems to result in me skittering off sideways till I roll over.

If you have done something...anything...to make helicopter flying more straightforward, I will be very interested indeed! :)

There was me thinking that it was just me who was unable to fly helicopters :blush:

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It's all about the hover. :D

Learn to use a 'soft' hand, make small movements.

Master transitioning to and from a hover... :ph34r:

You have that down, a helicopter will take you anywhere.

(Within it's very short fuel range of course) :lol:

2010-5-16_1-6-40-281.jpg

WoW! Hard to believe it's been 2 1/2 years since the Huey was first announced!

Looking forward to the release! Looks great! :wub:

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Inorder to learn flying helicopters in FS, there is no shortcut around training training and training.

Once You have succes, it´s a very rewarding experience.

A few tips:

General:

-Never yank the stick around or make sudden collective movements - forget about Hollywood movies and their fancy flying.

-In the hover, only make very subtile movements of the cyclic stick, You barely shoud move it.

-Anticipate what the helicopter is going to do..

-It´s only in the hover or at slow speed helicopter flying is hard. Above 60 kts it pretty much reacts like a normal airplane

-In the hover or at slow speed expect the need for some left tailrotor when increasing collective - ease off left tailrotor when decreasing collective.

-As You slow down, You might also need to gradualy add some left tailrotor.

Take off:

-For training - use a long runway..slowly increase collective and start to feed some left tailrotor.

-As the helicopter becomes light on the skids keep slowly increasing the collective.

-Gain a few feet of height and then com into a steady hover.

-Keep heading with the pedals, keep lateral and longitudal position with small cyclic inputs - the requirement is smaller as You think - plan ahead.

Transition to forward flight.

-Push the stick slowly forward

-The helicopter will start to pick up speed.

-At first You will have to add some collective, but shortly after the so-called translational lift will kick in and you might need to lower collective again.

-Translational lift is sensed by increase in vertical speed. This happens because the rotorblades now start to operate in less turbulent air (downwash).

-Around 60 kts no additional translational lift will occur and You will need to add some collective inorder to accelerate and keep/increase altitude.

Normal forward flight:

-adjusting speed is done by lowering the nose and at the same time increase collective for acceleration and vice versa for decceleration.

-Tailrotor inputs are normally not used for turns.

-When turning You will have to increase collective inorder to keep Your altitude.

Descend and slow down:

-Lower collective inorder to start descending

-Adjustments of pitch will be required to keep on speed.

Approach:

-Approaches should be done very much the same way as fixed wing aircraft. Many make the error to come in too steep, overshooting their intended landingspot.

-For training, use the PAPI light of the runway (Red and White lights)

-Gradually deccelerate - You will need more and more collective as well as adding some tailrotor input to counter torque induced yaw.

-Come to a hover only a few feet over and behind You intended landingspot.

-The landingspot should be picked up early during approach - use some of the marks on the runway as reference

-When in a steday hover, move slightly forward and reduce collective for a vertical speed not higher than 200 ft, gradually decreaing to as You are getting closer to touchdown.

-"Feel" the skids down on the runway and smoothly lower the collective - don´t get the habit to slam the collective down.

The hardest thing to learn is to anticipate the required control inputs.

Once You gain experience You will see that actually control input often is different from actual helicopter movement.

F.ex You find Yourself drifting to the right sideways..

You add som left cyclic, but also need to add a bit collective..

Just before and NOT when stoppet, You will add some right cyclic to counter the next probable move, wich would be a left drift starting.

AND !!!

Adding some wind, setup to give You a straight headwind for Your landing heading, will make things alot easier. But only if landing up against the wind.

Helicopter performance can increase very much with the addition of wind.

Having formerly worked on offshore oil-installations I remember that the worst case is a hot and windstill day.

On such days they had to reduce number of passengers onboard, as well as payload - bad if that was the day for Your planned return to home.

Finn

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Mr. Finn,

Especially glad to see you on here, again, and extremely happy to see that this project did not die, either.:)

PS: for those that might be interested, here are some Helpful FSX Video's that might make the process a little easier...

http://www.google.co...ved=0CDcQqwQwAQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S58qrkct01U

Enjoy! :)

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Concerning Vortex Ring State and the Huey: The Huey can and WILL get into VRS if you put it in the right conditions, steep descent, and high power settings will SURELY put a Huey into VRS. A tailwind will make it even more susceptible. I have seen the descent rates as high as 1400 Feet Per Minute. Whoever told you that a Huey can't get into VRS? Whoever did doesn't know what they are talking about. In fact ANY rotor powered aircraft can experience VRS under the right conditions, the hard and fast rules being that the aircraft is under 80% or more power (torque) applied, has an airspeed below Translational Lift speed, and has a descent rate greater than 300 Feet Per Minute. It might not always happen in these conditions, and the Huey may be LESS prone to it, but it CAN happen. Saying it doesn't is ignorant and is unfair to real pilots and experienced simmers that know better. If it can't be simulated easily or accurately, fine, I get that, but please don't tell us that it is not included because the Huey is not susceptible to it.

I am still going to buy it because it looks fantastic and I am sure the updated flight characteristics ARE very accurate, minus VRS of course. Also, I didn't see any mention of Translating Tendency? Is this included? A helicopter without a little left skid low in the hover is displeasing to a real helo driver. Also the huey has some funny behavior (commonly called "Huey Tuck") if you get it too nose low during foreward flight particularly on take-offs. The flat top of the cabin gets pushed down by the airflow and forces the helicopter to nose into the ground. Once it is induced the only recovery is diving away, so if it happens at low altitude (which is most common) ,like on a takeoff roll, it is unrecoverable.

And please, don't be offended by my comments. I know you all have worked very hard to bring us an accurate Huey, but I could not let that statement go uncorrected as it is blatantly false. Please forgive my candidness.

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There was me thinking that it was just me who was unable to fly helicopters :blush:

I would say that this model would be more on the difficult side than default helicopters in FSX. There is alot more going on. However, with practice, anyone can do it. It is just a matter of training your hands and eyes to make it do what you want to . Just like flying the real thing.

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Concerning Vortex Ring State and the Huey: The Huey can and WILL get into VRS if you put it in the right conditions, steep descent, and high power settings will SURELY put a Huey into VRS. A tailwind will make it even more susceptible. I have seen the descent rates as high as 1400 Feet Per Minute. Whoever told you that a Huey can't get into VRS? Whoever did doesn't know what they are talking about. In fact ANY rotor powered aircraft can experience VRS under the right conditions, the hard and fast rules being that the aircraft is under 80% or more power (torque) applied, has an airspeed below Translational Lift speed, and has a descent rate greater than 300 Feet Per Minute. It might not always happen in these conditions, and the Huey may be LESS prone to it, but it CAN happen. Saying it doesn't is ignorant and is unfair to real pilots and experienced simmers that know better. If it can't be simulated easily or accurately, fine, I get that, but please don't tell us that it is not included because the Huey is not susceptible to it.

I am still going to buy it because it looks fantastic and I am sure the updated flight characteristics ARE very accurate, minus VRS of course. Also, I didn't see any mention of Translating Tendency? Is this included? A helicopter without a little left skid low in the hover is displeasing to a real helo driver. Also the huey has some funny behavior (commonly called "Huey Tuck") if you get it too nose low during foreward flight particularly on take-offs. The flat top of the cabin gets pushed down by the airflow and forces the helicopter to nose into the ground. Once it is induced the only recovery is diving away, so if it happens at low altitude (which is most common) ,like on a takeoff roll, it is unrecoverable.

And please, don't be offended by my comments. I know you all have worked very hard to bring us an accurate Huey, but I could not let that statement go uncorrected as it is blatantly false. Please forgive my candidness.

Whoever told you that a Huey can't get into VRS?

..a bunch of German Bundeswehr pilots flying the real thing every day ;)

We are not sying tha VRS can´t happen, just that it i so hard to get there that simulating it makes little sense.

Sometimes developers tend to "oversimulate" features inorder to please cutomers expectations, though the outcome is wrong - we do not :)

Finn

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Regarding VRS, we even tried it in one of the german armys full mission simulators and we were definitely NOT able to get a vortex ring state. The Huey is extremely gentle due to its wide rotorblades.

As I said, IF it even does it, you really have to force it to do, and this makes no sense to simulate...

So please stop arguing about this senseless issue, it is and will not be simulated.

A different thing is the left hanging. The tailrotor produced a thrust that pushes the chopper right and you must tilt it a bit left to hover.

This is also NOT simulated, because we aren't simply able to do it with a sane workload. Sure, we have ideas to do it, but all are sooo complex that we must make a cut here. Guess why this thing already needed over 2 years. Because we were lazy? Things like this need time. Much time!

So many things are simply impossible in FSX, and for us this is one of these for now.

Best regards, Joachim

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Inorder to learn flying helicopters in FS, there is no shortcut around training training and training...etc

Thanks Finn, but that's not what I want to hear ! :lol:

Cant you make it fly something like the Apache in Microprose's 'Gunship' ? All I want to do is tour London VFR in it ! ;)

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Ho ho... the basic flight model for helicopters might not be perfect in FSX but that does not mean we use that for this Huey. In fact if we would not have been able to make it better we would not have started on this project. Included in this project is a special DLL that alters how FSX handles helicopters. Here is part of the manual on that:

The biggest problem of helicopters in FSX is the simple fact the flight modeling is very limited. We solved this by including a separate module that corrects many (if not all) of these problems.

  • Torque induced yaw added
  • Stabilized rotor head simulation added
  • Control travels in hover and cruise flight corrected
  • Tail rotor effectiveness corrected
  • Retreating blade stall
  • Control effectiveness depending on hydraulics pressure

    I am willing to put the flight model of this Huey up to any Huey (heck ANY helicopter) in X-Plane. I am not saying it can not be done in X-Plane (though I am unsure about some of the things we done), but I am saying it HAS not been done. When it is done we'll gladly compete. When the graphics get a whopping lot better it might even look as good. Sorry to post something so venomous, but the comparison in the original post is not correct. I wish the French crew of the X-Pane project all the best and I think they will do something very good. When they find one real helicopter pilot who flown both models in real life and in the sim and tell us th one in X-plane is better we'll even agree that that's a fact. Right now we claim we solved the flight model limitations of FSX and got that at the same realism (or better) then X-Plane. And we are sure that in graphics and systems this helicopter is more advanced.

    With all due respect, just compare the images.

Since this project has been ongoing over 2½ years we tend to forget about certain features..
So we like to add:

Torque induced yaw addedStabilized rotor head simulation addedControl travels in hover and cruise flight correctedTail rotor effectiveness correctedRetreating blade stallControl effectiveness depending on hydraulics pressureTailrotor input affects engine torqueMore realistic engine startup procedure, requiring use of throttle, idle release and starter

Finn

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Thanks Finn, but that's not what I want to hear ! :lol:

Cant you make it fly something like the Apache in Microprose's 'Gunship' ? All I want to do is tour London VFR in it ! ;)

No...

It´s not me making it fly like it does, and if it was, I wouldn´t change a single thing on it.

We never got laurels for downgrading flight models to make them easier.

Believe me...

The Huey is not hard to fly - I can fly it - so everybody else will be able to do it too :D

Finn

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Actually I find the Huey to be easier to control than the default Bell 206.

The Huey is more responsive, but also more stable.

Offcourse the added special features will add further challenges to control the helicopter, but it is far from hard.

Most important thing to learn is not to overcontrol it.

Apply smooth and small inputs and give the helicopter a chance to react.

Then You are allready a good portion closer to become a good helicopter pilot.

Finn

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From trying to tame a 30" high agile R/C helicopter, I learned that the key to success with helis is small movements on the stick, and a lot of patience, in FS one has the benifit, that no one can get hurt, and one doesn´t need to drive home after a slight crash usually following a moment of confusion, scratching the money together for spare parts and such.

In FS you just need to reload the flight and you are good to go again.

One can really learn it when one wants it, it just takes a little time, and it should be done step by step, running before one can walk doesn´t allways work here, it allways helps, when one first masters to keep the heli securely on a spot, a few feet of the ground. When this gets easy and the reactions on the controls are automatically applied by you, it is time to go further and move the heli into a direction of choice.

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Concerning Vortex Ring State and the Huey: The Huey can and WILL get into VRS if you put it in the right conditions, steep descent, and high power settings will SURELY put a Huey into VRS. A tailwind will make it even more susceptible. I have seen the descent rates as high as 1400 Feet Per Minute. Whoever told you that a Huey can't get into VRS? Whoever did doesn't know what they are talking about. In fact ANY rotor powered aircraft can experience VRS under the right conditions, the hard and fast rules being that the aircraft is under 80% or more power (torque) applied, has an airspeed below Translational Lift speed, and has a descent rate greater than 300 Feet Per Minute. It might not always happen in these conditions, and the Huey may be LESS prone to it, but it CAN happen. Saying it doesn't is ignorant and is unfair to real pilots and experienced simmers that know better. If it can't be simulated easily or accurately, fine, I get that, but please don't tell us that it is not included because the Huey is not susceptible to it.

I am still going to buy it because it looks fantastic and I am sure the updated flight characteristics ARE very accurate, minus VRS of course. Also, I didn't see any mention of Translating Tendency? Is this included? A helicopter without a little left skid low in the hover is displeasing to a real helo driver. Also the huey has some funny behavior (commonly called "Huey Tuck") if you get it too nose low during foreward flight particularly on take-offs. The flat top of the cabin gets pushed down by the airflow and forces the helicopter to nose into the ground. Once it is induced the only recovery is diving away, so if it happens at low altitude (which is most common) ,like on a takeoff roll, it is unrecoverable.

And please, don't be offended by my comments. I know you all have worked very hard to bring us an accurate Huey, but I could not let that statement go uncorrected as it is blatantly false. Please forgive my candidness.

That's what I was trying to say. Saying that is not simulated because it does not suffer from it is a bit harsh to people who know better. At least they will have seconds thoughts about the add-on. Believe me that is a lot easier to get into VRS than to intentionally attempt to enter one. We usually get the R22 in a stable hover 2000' or more, and start lowering the collective, you can only feel the cyclic being less responsive (like it's floating) and the vibration. There was a video of this AS350, loaded with people, making a downwind approach to a ridge and from one moment to another it entered in VRS, the only thing the pilot could do was to use all the remaining collective he add to cushion the landing. Broken tail, etc, etc.

Again, every single helicopter can enter VRS when you least expect it, that's why you always take care on the approach. Speed, RoD.

By the simple fact of removing "because the Huey does not suffer from this dangerous condition." it will make a lot of difference to some people like nightsta1ker said.

Regards and good work.

EDIT: To learn to fly helicopter you can always try the Hovercontrol.com community. Don't know if I may post this here, if I can't please make sure to advice me and I'll remove it. You will find nice people there who can help you learning the basics of helicopters.

@ J.Schweigler - Sorry to bring the VRS topic again. Regards.

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