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From Hovercontrol.com Flight Simulator Setup Helicopters are, by definition, inherently unstable. They will not fly like a fixed wing when you take your hands off the controls. They require constant input to fly level and a lot of hand-eye-foot-brain co-ordination in the hover. Because they are so unstable, you must have the ability to respond to their smallest movements with your controls to make them do what YOU, the pilot want them to do.
Now we need to configure our joystick. The first thing you must know is that you absolutely need either a joystick with a twist-handle for rudder control, or a set of rudder pedals. Without either of these, you are not going to be able to fly a helicopter well. The very best set up will be a digital joystick with a throttle control and a separate set of pedals. However, a digital joystick with a twist handle for rudder will also suffice until you decide that you are hooked on helos and want to upgrade. Regardless, get the best you can afford without breaking the bank. If you have a force-feedback joystick, turn the force-feedback off, right now. It’s a nice gimmick, but totally unrealistic when flying helicopters and will only impede your progress by giving you false feedback and false cues. The first thing you need to do is to calibrate your controls/joystick. Follow the manufacturers recommendations on this. To calibrate your controls, go to OPTIONS, CONTROLS, CALLIBRATE JOYSTICK and follow the instructions. An improperly calibrated joystick is of no use to anyone. The next thing, and perhaps the single most important tip I can give you, is to set up the sensitivities and null zones of your joystick/controls for maximum performance. These settings are quite different from those I would use if I were flying a fixed wing. What we want to achieve here is to set up the controls so that they have maximum sensitivity and minimum null zone. Remember earlier when I said: “ Helicopters are, by definition, inherently unstable. They will not fly like a fixed wing when you take your hands off the controls. They require constant input to fly level and a lot of hand-eye-foot-brain co-ordination in the hover. Because they are so unstable, you must have the ability to respond to their smallest movements with your controls to make them do what YOU, the pilot want them to do.” So to be able to respond to the helicopters movements and maintain a maximum level of control, we need to make VERY SMALL , and I repeat, VERY SMALL joystick corrections. We cannot do this if the sensitivity is low or the null zone is large. A null zone, by the way, is an area of movement of the joystick that has no effect on the simulator. The software ignores movement of the stick when it is in the null zone. So, the first thing we do is remove all NULL ZONE from our controls. We need the stick to be able to respond to the slightest movement of the helicopter but we do NOT want to be moving the controls like we are mixing a cake. If you have ever seen a real helicopter pilot flying his or her machine, you would think that they were actually not doing anything, as their hands and feet never seem to move. What they are actually doing is making constant, minute inputs to their controls to keep their bird doing what they want it to do. The other thing we need to do is set the sensitivity of all axis to maximum. A joystick with a throttle and a twist rudder has 4 axis. Aileron Elevator Rudder Throttle These are fixed wing terms, but for now we will use them. So, we go to; OPTIONS, CONTROLS, SENSITIVITIES and set up our controls to look like this.
I hope this helps. Steve © Copyright 2010 by Hovercontrol.com |
