Learning how to fly the R22

Quote from Spac3Rat

Jozeff, HoverControl shut down. I am writing a little piece with a former staff-member about it. It's a real shame... My passion with helicopters comes from the time I spent hours at HC's forums, learning with everyone there.

HeliSimmer would not exist if not for HoverControl.

Thanks Sergio and Chris, really great piece on hovercontrol. Spent many hours there and remember Chris being very helpful many years ago when I did my CP at HC. Made Sim helos much more enjoyable. Thanks for all the work you are doing to continue that with HeliSimmer.

Quote from RiftFlyer

Forget real world helicopters for a moment. In the simulator there is no feedback on the controls so trim is only useful to fight the physical joystick centering spring tension which is being used to control the cyclic. I used to use this method when I started out with traditional gaming joysticks. I soon learned that a much better solution is to remove that spring force from the joystick all together.

It’s a drastic step but if you’re serious about mastering control of a well simulated helicopter then that spring is the biggest blocker to progress. Without it you no longer need trim and can focus on keeping the cyclic where it needs to be without any tension working against you.

In my experience, short of buying proper helicopter controls it is a much better solution than using trim.

BINGO!

I discovered this last year when I started flying the DCS helos. Once I removed that heavy spring from my TM Warthog, my world opened up!

My initial plan was to buy or make a stick extension, but after I removed the spring, it solved that problem.

I had an old Logitech 3D Extreme 3D pro joystick from which I attempted to remove the spring. Sadly the process induced a fault (the jumper leads were in so tight that removing them wobbled the pins enough to damage the circuit tracks). I spent several hours with soldering iron and multimeter, trying to re-wire it, but to no avail. I toyed with getting another one and having another go, but ordered a Thrustmaster T Flight HOTAS 4 instead. This has an adjustable spring tension, and on the lowest setting it works just fine. I would certainly recommend this for helo flying as it is better than the unmodified Logitech one. The only slight problem is that the throttle (collective) has a fairly stiff notch in the centre position. Fortunately, it tends not to be near this position for the fiddly stuff, so its not a show-stopper.