When flying helicopters in FS9 or FSX, for some reason i cannot fly in a straight line. When flying a plane there is no problem. My helicopters insist on turning slightly to the left & to counteract i constantly have to twist my joystick to fly level or when my wrist starts to ache i fly at an angle.I'm using a Saitek X52 joystick & all the tests i've done say that the joystick is centred correctly, yet whilst in virtual view in FSX the rudder peddles are visibly out of sync, the right peddle is slightly back compared to the left.I apologise if this is the wrong forum for this problem but i was hoping a Rotor head might have a better idea as to what may be going wrong. Help would be very much appreciated.

Well,the only problem with what you report is that it is not as intense in MSFS (fs9 or FSX for that matter...) as it should....Real life helicopters behave that way, and are a lot more sensible in yaw than MSFS simplistic FM makes it look like....Increasing/Decreasing collective in MSFS has nothing to do with the real thing. Your foot work is minimal... We look forward for the DODOSIM guys to do something about it when they upgrade there doll for FSX!Meanwhile, if you have the chance, and rotary wings are your "job", please try XPlane! It's a completely different world in this area!!!

>Meanwhile, if you have the chance, and rotary wings are your>"job", please try XPlane! It's a completely different world in>this area!!!Yeah, Propsman's EC120 Colibr

Thankyou for your help guys, X-plane & i do not get on, i find it more frustrating than enjoyable but i'm not knocking it, each to his own as they say.Back to my problem, i was trying explain that the right peddle was slightly back compared to the left, this attachment was taken on the ground with the engine off & i'm not touching the controls.

What makes xplane so much better than fsx for helos? I find that all i want to fly anymore are the helos. I am officially addicted to them and would love to learn to fly one irl. What am i missing by not flying them in xplane? Does xplane have any 3rd party addons that are better? What is the best addon for fs9 or fsx which adds realism to the helos? I have the realism settings maxed in flight sim now and i'm doing pretty good and can land them on buildings at least :) I'd love to get more involved with these machines.

Just to update this subject, a friend of mine also has an X52 and indeed suffers similar problems with Helicopters in FSX.He thinks it may be a fault with FSX, he compensates the error with excessive rudder, as do i, So i'm hoping it's not a Saitek issue.Are we the only ones that have this problem?I eagerly await your experiences.

>Just to update this subject, a friend of mine also has an X52>and indeed suffers similar problems with Helicopters in FSX.>He thinks it may be a fault with FSX, he compensates the error>with excessive rudder, as do i, So i'm hoping it's not a>Saitek issue.>Are we the only ones that have this problem?>I eagerly await your experiences.It's not a problem.. in reality you are supposed to apply rudder. the twist handle is just about the worst way you can do this with any precision and for any lenght of time.So, there are 2 workarounds this:1. buy pedals (not cheap and bulky but a must for the serious simmer)2. use the keyboard to adjust rudder.. it will stay in a constant position in cruise and track straight. as said FS9/X has a very stable rudder once at cruize speed so you can pretty much set it and forget it until landing or manuevers etc.

You may need to calibrate you joy stick. You should also realisethat helicopters tend to drift to left for European ones, and rightfor US ones because of the anti-torque rota at the back. (US andeuropean use opposite directions of main rota rotation, so the anti-torque rota pushes in the different directions).Above the transition speed though (about 20 knots) the heli rotabecomes an flight surface and the copter tends to fly with somestability. (Relative here!). If you want more detail on flying helicopters then I recommend youlook at hovercontrol.com. The flight models for helicopters are equally bad or equally good in FS004 and X-plane. If we consider flying is 100, then fs2004 is 25.001 and X-plane is 25.002, the discussion of using the "best" flightsim programs is not that relevant - if you want the real thing thenpay for a lesson. Enjoy using the flight sim you own and have fun.Note :You must use the realism set close to max in Fs2004to achieve the best flight model - but start to walk before you run.Regards