Hi,

I just got back into the sim again to try out helicopters and based on recommendations here and YT reviews, I've got the H145 😃.  I'm waiting for my USB e-brake to use as a collective so I'm making do with the Logitech Extreme 3D joystick and using the throttle control for collective right now.

I'm able to fly it ok... I guess... I can take off, hover, and fly around. The controls are more or less intuitive. However, there are a few things that I don't get...

- What's the right way to fly forward while gaining altitude?  At first, I was pitching the blades cyclic forward (holding the joystick forward) while pulling the collective up, but this was driving me down in altitude. 😲  But then I think I realized that you don't need to continue to hold the cyclic - the blades will maintain the set angle after you release it and only come back to neutral if you pull the opposite direction. It seems like the cyclic functions similarly to the Airbus stick in this way?  Is that right?  So perhaps I was being too aggressive by holding the cyclic constantly forward at first?  How do you trade vertical speed for horizontal speed and where's the sweet spot for maxing both?

- How do you get max cruise speed?  It seems if I play with the pitch of the blades/cyclic I can only get around 140 on the speed ticker, which I believe is far short of the max speed. Is there a throttle or thrust control I haven't mapped or discovered?  Where is the button to jump to hyperspace? 😛

- If I take the collective above around 6, there's a red band on the display... what is that? What happens if I take the collective into the red zone? I think I tried it and nothing really bad happened that I could tell although I'm not sure it was working well either. Dunno. 🤔

Finally, any good YT channels on how to fly this bird? I watched a couple of reviews and a tutorial on how to start it up from cold and dark, but now need something to go over the basics of flying this thing.

ps. it seems a lot easier than I was expecting, probably thanks to the automation this bird has.

Thanks,
-Chris.

Have you joined the Hype discord yet? There are many pilots who can help out. The community is fantastic and you will get 100% of your questions answered. From my POV the H145 is fully automated. Very rarely do i need to hand fly after takeoff and before landing.

Please read the manual also. You need to setup the cyclic and collective trim as well as the key bindings to get full function of the Helionix autopilot system. 

8 hours ago, RW1 said:

Have you joined the Hype discord yet? There are many pilots who can help out. The community is fantastic and you will get 100% of your questions answered. From my POV the H145 is fully automated. Very rarely do i need to hand fly after takeoff and before landing.

Please read the manual also. You need to setup the cyclic and collective trim as well as the key bindings to get full function of the Helionix autopilot system. 

Thanks. Will check the discord. 

Im afraid there’s almost too much automation in this helicopter. 🙂 

At the very least I want to understand how to hand fly it before I get into auto pilot.
 

I feel like I don’t fully understand the dynamics.  I mean the cyclic (rotor plane or direction), collective (blade angle or lift) and pedals (tail rotor or rotation) are all easy to grasp on their own, but what I’m not got yet is how best to combine them for climbing, descending, and cruising. 

If anyone has any tips on these three phases of flight, that would be welcome. 

Edited March 8, 20233 yr by Virtual-Chris

35 minutes ago, Virtual-Chris said:

Thanks. Will check the discord. 

Im afraid there’s almost too much automation in this helicopter. 🙂 

At the very least I want to understand how to hand fly it before I get into auto pilot.
 

I feel like I don’t fully understand the dynamics.  I mean the cyclic (rotor plane or direction), collective (blade angle or lift) and pedals (tail rotor or rotation) are all easy to grasp on their own, but what I’m not got yet is how best to combine them for climbing, descending, and cruising. 

If anyone has any tips on these three phases of flight, that would be welcome. 

The discord is a great resource for sure.

Two quick things.. everything should be flown with small movements of the cyclic and collective.  Its very easy to overcontrol it: use a gentle hand and you'll feel improvement right away.  If you have the option to either loosen or remove your joystick springs this can help too (but may not be a realistic one if you go back and forth with fixed wing).

Top speed for the H145 is only around 120-125 knots.  145 is close to overspeed actually.

One more thing.. Just like a plane, its actually a lot easier to climb in a helicopter when you've already got forward momentum.  While they can do straight vertical takeoffs, that uses up most of the rotor's power.  The spinning disk acts like a wing when you have forward travel through the air, so build up speed first before you climb out and it will help.

Starting to learn to fly helicopters with an H145 is absolutely the worse way to learn. You need to start with something that does not have any automation and I suggest the Cabri G2 for that.

A few months ago, Rotorsimpilot channel on Youtube had excellent tutorials and you could start with those. There are other channels as well that can help. 

But regardless of how you proceed, helicopter flying is hard. The only thing that helps is lots and lots of patient practice starting with being able to hover a couple of feet above ground and not moving about. This will teach you how the controls interact with each other and you need to understand that before you go any further. 

24 minutes ago, MauBen said:

Starting to learn to fly helicopters with an H145 is absolutely the worse way to learn. You need to start with something that does not have any automation and I suggest the Cabri G2 for that.

A few months ago, Rotorsimpilot channel on Youtube had excellent tutorials and you could start with those. There are other channels as well that can help. 

But regardless of how you proceed, helicopter flying is hard. The only thing that helps is lots and lots of patient practice starting with being able to hover a couple of feet above ground and not moving about. This will teach you how the controls interact with each other and you need to understand that before you go any further. 

Airland's Robinson R44 Freeware is a very nice little bird,   really like it.    Perfect introduction to helicopters,  imo.   Very responsive,  very intuitive.

https://flightsim.to/file/45703/robinson-r44-raven-ii-helicopter-40th-anniversary-edition

/And it's a spiritual salute to the FSX Robinson R22,   for old timers like me.

49 minutes ago, MauBen said:

Starting to learn to fly helicopters with an H145 is absolutely the worse way to learn. You need to start with something that does not have any automation and I suggest the Cabri G2 for that.

A few months ago, Rotorsimpilot channel on Youtube had excellent tutorials and you could start with those. There are other channels as well that can help. 

But regardless of how you proceed, helicopter flying is hard. The only thing that helps is lots and lots of patient practice starting with being able to hover a couple of feet above ground and not moving about. This will teach you how the controls interact with each other and you need to understand that before you go any further. 

I don’t want to dismiss your statement about it being hard… it’s certainly not trivial, but I don’t think it’s a lot more difficult than flying a plane. But you have to understand what makes it fly, climb, descend and turn and how the controls affect the movement of the aircraft. If you don’t understand the basic principles of how helicopters or planes work, it’s going to be utterly frustrating to fly. 

Anyway, as I said in my OP, doing basic hovering and low speed maneuvers is easy. Where I’m at now is trying to get things properly coordinated for max efficiency on climb out, cruising and descending. Any tips on that would be welcome. 

ps. I can't find the Rotorsimpilot YT channel... never mind... I think it's the Airland Studios channel.

Edited March 8, 20233 yr by Virtual-Chris

42 minutes ago, VFXSimmer said:

One more thing.. Just like a plane, its actually a lot easier to climb in a helicopter when you've already got forward momentum.  While they can do straight vertical takeoffs, that uses up most of the rotor's power.  The spinning disk acts like a wing when you have forward travel through the air, so build up speed first before you climb out and it will help.

Yeah, agreed. Although I found that if you pitch the blades forward too much, you will actually not gain altitude or dive, even with full collective... so there's some fine balance there I think.  How do you get max climb out?

Oh, and for some reason, I thought the speed ticker was in KM/H... LOL... of course it's in knots so that makes sense... I was travelling at max speed 😄

Edited March 8, 20233 yr by Virtual-Chris

19 minutes ago, Waldo Pepper said:

Airland's Robinson R44 Freeware is a very nice little bird,   really like it.    Perfect introduction to helicopters,  imo.   Very responsive,  very intuitive.

 

 

I agree... excellent helicopter.

1 hour ago, Virtual-Chris said:

Anyway, as I said in my OP, doing basic hovering and low speed maneuvers is easy. Where I’m at now is trying to get things properly coordinated for max efficiency on climb out, cruising and descending. Any tips on that would be welcome. 

ps. I can't find the Rotorsimpilot YT channel... never mind... I think it's the Airland Studios channel.

There are way too many variables here. It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish. For instance, if you wanted the fastest altitude gain you would need to know the specs of each helicopter...how fast should you go for the fastest height increase. These will be specified in the specs of the helicopter as they would be for any plane.

The speed in general is always dependent on the amount of torque and as long as you don't increase the torque past the maximum value, this will give you the highest speed whether you are climbing or descending. If you exceed the maximum allowed speed in a descent, bad things can happen.  To maintain a constant speed, you have to choose a collective torque/power value and maintain altitude with the cyclic. The more torque the faster the speed. if you increase the torque, you will start climbing and you will need to lower the nose with the cyclic to stop the climb. The opposite if you want to reduce the speed...lower torque and raise the nose to maintain altitude.

When descending, it also all depends on what you are trying to accomplish. In general you just can't lower the collective all the way or you will likely overspeed the rotors. You need to modulate the speed with a combination of collective and cyclic inputs to achieve the desired speed and rate of descent.  If you want to lengthen the glide, you also need to look at the specs of the helicopter to find out what speed will give you the longest glide. Same for airplanes. This certainly is crucial in case or power failure and autorotation. 

Anyway, what I said still applies. The theory is nice to know, but you need to try different scenarios many times and it will all make sense at the end and become automatic. 🙂

^ Understood. Makes sense.

Are you using the H145?

If so, does the H145 have some of this climb and glide data in the user guide (I haven’t got far through it)? What are you using for optimal climb/glide performance?

Edited March 8, 20233 yr by Virtual-Chris

3 hours ago, Virtual-Chris said:

how best to combine them for climbing, descending, and cruising

This is just the bare bones of it, but that sounds like what you're after:

When you begin accelerating after takeoff, there's generally a standard torque setting & airspeed for the climb. In the Bell 206 for example, 80% torque and 80 knots is a rough guideline. Set the torque, pitch for 80.

In cruise you want the nose level, and you maintain whatever torque setting you need for desired airspeed. With a turbine engine you'll need to gradually  increase collective to maintain a given torque setting as you climb.

To descend, you lower collective slowly while adjusting pitch. Using the 206 again as an example, 90-100 knots is a rough guideline. You need to be very careful about rate of descent. Unless you're an expert, around 500fpm is just fine.

I find a good exercise is to go explore some of my add-on airports. Practice climbing and descending to various heights in relation to the buildings. Doing that at slow speeds will help you when it's time to go faster.

Looks like I replied right about the same time as MauBen. Well you certainly have a ton of info now - good luck!

Edited March 8, 20233 yr by CapnCrunch

17 minutes ago, CapnCrunch said:

This is just the bare bones of it, but that sounds like what you're after:
 

Thanks, I need to find the right figures for climb and descent for the H145.  (To all)... If anyone knows where to find them, please share

1 hour ago, Virtual-Chris said:

^ Understood. Makes sense.

Are you using the H145?

If so, does the H145 have some of this climb and glide data in the user guide (I haven’t got far through it)? What are you using for optimal climb/glide performance?

I have the H145, but I seldom fly it. I don't care for all the features and automation, so I stick to simpler helicopters like the cowan 500e and the 206. It may be hard to find the performance specs for the H145. It is probably inside the SOP manual, but I could not find a copy online. Best I could find is this, but it does not show the performance data, only the limitations.

https://www.airbus.com/en/products-services/helicopters/civil-helicopters/h145/h145-technical-information