I have CH yoke, quadrant and pedals. Is there a quality payware or freeware helicopter than is both reasonably realistic in flight behaviour and possible to fly well and enjoyably with my hardware?Or are my two wishes mutually incompatible?

get yourself a stick instead of the yoke for helicopter ops. ;)

I have CH yoke, quadrant and pedals. Is there a quality payware or freeware helicopter than is both reasonably realistic in flight behaviour and possible to fly well and enjoyably with my hardware?Or are my two wishes mutually incompatible?

I think the best FS9 helicopter is the Virtavia (formerly AlphaSim) CH-53A Stallion. (Not the MH53 Pave Low - it is similar but the VC is not as good).... It is very easy on FPS, has the kind of solid, heavy feel you would expect of a large chopper, great 3D and VC panels, good sound and definitely fun to fly. The Aerosoft HH-60 is also fun and it comes with a USCG Cutter to land on that is a huge challenge...

Hello,By far, the best sim for a helo is the DODO SIM (payware) . Realistic to a fault.Cheers,Ron Sagel

Hello,By far, the best sim for a helo is the DODO SIM (payware) . Realistic to a fault.Cheers,Ron Sagel

I'm certain Ron is correct on this. Though I don't have the Dodo Sim 206 (too expensive for me) from what I have read about it, it's the most realistic helo in MSFS in terms of the challenge of handling a real chopper. But the original post talked about wanting something that is "reasonably" realistic so just be aware that there is a huge difference between "reasonably realistic" and "realistic" when it comes to choppers. I have many thousands of hours of real world fixed wing time but have only ever flown a helicopter twice. It was bloody difficult! I would definitely class the CH-53 and HH-60 as "reasonably realistic" in that they will challenge you to develop some new skills while at the same time being very flyable and are visually excellent - but if the DODO SIM 206 lives up to its claims, be ready for a very steep learning curve. And just how you simulate flying a realistic helicopter with controls designed for fixed wing aircraft eludes me, but I haven't tried it. There are reviews here on AVSIM for all three products - look them over. And there are others that have been well received by reviewers.

I have CH yoke, quadrant and pedals. Is there a quality payware or freeware helicopter than is both reasonably realistic in flight behaviour and possible to fly well and enjoyably with my hardware?Or are my two wishes mutually incompatible?

HiI have a similar set up to you and it is possible to fly most helicopters quite well with this with a little practice (I haven't got a joystick connected any more). An excellent freeware helicopter is the Sikorsky (Erickson) S-64 Skycrane which flies very well with this setup and which I have spent quite a few contented hours flying.It comes in a couple of different versions allowing you to carry out various tasks if you wish and is certainly as good as if not better than some payware! From the various payware products, the Nemeth Design helicopters are in my opinion the best overall - I have a few of them and they all fly well although I particularly like the S76. I would agree with Kiwiflyer about the CH-53A Stallion as being a nice aircraft to fly but I am not sure about the other helicopters from Alphasim/Virtavia as the quality of some of their products (I have a large number of their fixed wing aircraft) can be very variable. On the negative side I would avoid the Area 51 Chinook which has not impressed me. Hope this helps!Bill_{Windows XP Pro SP2; Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0Ghz CPU; Arctic Cool 7Pro; ASUS P5N-E-SLI Motherboard;4GB Corsair 800Mhz DDR2 RAM; 768MB nVidia GeForce 8800GTX Dual VGA Graphics card;2x 500GB SATA 7200RPM Hard Drive; 650W (2 x 12V) PSU; 2 x 1000GB + 1 x 150GB Western Digital External Hard Drive; CH Pro Yoke and PedalsAll helping to power 331GB of fs9!}

I have CH yoke, quadrant and pedals. Is there a quality payware or freeware helicopter than is both reasonably realistic in flight behaviour and possible to fly well and enjoyably with my hardware?Or are my two wishes mutually incompatible?

Jordan Moore's Bell 412 is probably the best freeware helicopter to be found anywhere. It's available ((the Hovercontrol 412 Personal Edition) in the files section of the Hovercontrol website (along with a lot of other interesting FS heli stuff) http://www.hovercontrol.com

Jordan Moore's Bell 412 is probably the best freeware helicopter to be found anywhere. It's available ((the Hovercontrol 412 Personal Edition) in the files section of the Hovercontrol website (along with a lot of other interesting FS heli stuff) http://www.hovercontrol.com

i'd agree with this too. bit of a learning curve to get it to start and stay running but it flies really nice. also get a stick.

If you don't get a joystick (which you should) what is also worth looking at if you want some pretty useful FS helicopter controls for not much money, is any of the 'playstation-type' controllers you can find for PCs. This is because they have two joysticks (operated by your thumbs), and that means you can assign the cyclic to one joystick, the tail rotor and collective to the other, then put the throttle on two buttons on the front of it, meaning you can easily control everything all at once, as you can in a real chopper.Track-IR is a worthy thing to have for FS choppers too, so you should definitely consider that if you don't already have it, as it makes flying FS choppers vastly more feasible.The problem with 'realistic' choppers in FS9 (and FSX) is that you need to be on the controls all the time with a chopper, so the above is worth a try, but beyond that, 'realistic' choppers in FS can sometimes equate to 'not fun', and often a concession to ease of use can make them more enjoyable in lieu of all the disadvantages a PC sim confers when compared to sitting in a real chopper. A good example of choppers in that mold are many of the freeware and payware Hughes Cayuse/MD500s out there, most of which are not as twitchy as a real one, but are the better for it in FS, since they can be enjoyed more easily.A trip over to the Hover Control website is in order too of course, since there are a lot of cool freebie things to be had there, including utilities to tweak the flight models of choppers to make them more realistic if you so desire, and of course there are many really cool freebie choppers over there too. Some of the Nemeth (ex-payware) FS9 birds are worth a look too, but the Nemeth site is currently down for maintenance, so you'll have to wait a while to try those, where they can normally be downloaded from.As far as payware is concerned, if you want 'as real as you can get' for FS9, then the Dodosim Bell 206 is the bird you are looking for, although be prepared to have your ego dented a bit when you try and fly it, as in a similar fashion to when you try to fly a real helicopter (even if you have a lot of fixed-wing hours) it requires a lot of technique, since it models VRS, retreating blade stalls, translational lift, rotor inertia, wind effects, and the turbine lag all very realistically. Keep in mind though, that it isn't something you'll be flying beautifully in five minutes, it takes a lot of practice to get good with the thing, but as a rewarding challenge, it'll put a smile on your face for sure.If you are prepared to go outside of Microsoft Flight Sim, you'll find an extremely realistic Bell UH-1C Huey in the 1C combat sim: Whirlwind of Vietnam. Website: http://www.1cpublishing.eu/game/whirlwind-of-vietnam/overviewThat is of course a combat sim where you fly a UH-1C Huey gunship, so it might not be your cup of tea, but it is a wonderfully-well modeled flight experience, with convincing 'Huey tuck' effect, VRS, blade mass etc, etc and the throttle, collective pitch, rotor governing etc are all well modeled. Worth a look if you are a chopper nut and it runs on a low spec computer very well indeed despite the nice graphics.Look out for this forthcoming chopper sim too: http://takeonthegame.com/Al

Oh dear, what have I got myself into?If I keep to freeware i will always be wondering about what I´m missing from luxo-payware, and if I keep to my yoke I will always be wondering what it would be like with a joystick - or two. And so I fear I will end up spending more money eventually. The "reasonably realistic" comment was deliberate: I am pretty sure that a "realistic" chopper would be unflyable (and unenjoyable) without the proper hardware controls, and also possibly beyond my patience/determination/abilities.Thanks for the suggestions - that TakeOn chopper sim looks quite fun, but I dread to think what kind of Cray supercomputer would I need to run it - I am over at HoverControl right now.

Oh dear, what have I got myself into?If I keep to freeware i will always be wondering about what I´m missing from luxo-payware, and if I keep to my yoke I will always be wondering what it would be like with a joystick - or two. And so I fear I will end up spending more money eventually. The "reasonably realistic" comment was deliberate: I am pretty sure that a "realistic" chopper would be unflyable (and unenjoyable) without the proper hardware controls, and also possibly beyond my patience/determination/abilities.Thanks for the suggestions - that TakeOn chopper sim looks quite fun, but I dread to think what kind of Cray supercomputer would I need to run it - I am over at HoverControl right now.

Having read some of the earlier replies, I popped over to Hovercontrol and downloaded their Bell 412 and also the Sikorsky S-70 Firehawk and both of these are excellent examples of freeware. In addition I would add that they are very enjoyable and not difficult to fly well with my CH Pro yoke and pedals, but I accept that this would not be a realistic setup for a helicopter. Although I would admit to not being a systems addict (more often than not I like to just 'jump in and fly'), I would agree with your view that total realism and enjoyment do not necessarily go together, but I'm sure that depends on the nature of the simmer himself!Although I have a fixed wing pilots licence, I have never had a licence for helicopters and I would bow to the knowledge of the more experienced helicopter simmers who have replied to this thread, that if you seriously want to be as realistic as you can get, then you might want to consider some sort of set up as suggested by others to replicate the cyclic, collective and tail rotor controls. I would suggest however that first you should try the Hovercontrol freeware with your existing CH Pro setup and see how you feel (there is nothing to lose!), but I guess if you really get into helicopter simming in a serious way then joystick etc would be the way to go.Bill

Hi all i used to fly in fs9 but when my whole computer crashed i upgraded to fsx. anyway i will advise you to get as stick for helo ops and sometimes the diffrence between freeware and commercial products is only a small thing. hope this helps Nick Ps as everyone has said it hovercontrol do have some nice helo's there

If you don't get a joystick (which you should) what is also worth looking at if you want some pretty useful FS helicopter controls for not much money, is any of the 'playstation-type' controllers you can find for PCs. This is because they have two joysticks (operated by your thumbs), and that means you can assign the cyclic to one joystick, the tail rotor and collective to the other, then put the throttle on two buttons on the front of it, meaning you can easily control everything all at once, as you can in a real chopper. Al

Al, Thanks for that little tidbit of information. I always wondered if a Gamepad would have any useful functions for FS, and you have just mentioned a BIG one! A couple questions, if I may... 1) I would presume that one could map the button and joystick functions on the gamepad similar to that of a yoke or joystick? 2) Are there particular Gamepads that work better for this than others? I know that some of them have a "force feedback" feature for other games, but forFS I would think the feature wouldn't work... correct? I always thought flying a helo with my CH yoke was doable, but tricky just because of the constant control inputs one has to make. But, with a Gamepad I betit would be much easier since all of the axis controls are right there at your fingertips! Thanks again! Alan :)

The only thing to consider really is that some gampads are quite small (since they are basically controllers for kids games, so that is a design consideration where size is concerned), but apart from that, if your PC can see it, you can assign any FS control you like to it. Al

Al, That's awesome! Guess who's going to the computer store today? I will give it a try and report back! Alan