If you’ve tried flying the FS2000 Bell 206 and crashed on every takeoff come with me to Governor’s Harbor, North Eluthera, MYEM in the Bahamas and try your hand after a few hints on how to do it under ideal condition. You are missing a real treat if you’ve never flown NOE down the Grand Canyon or made a late night visit to one of those off-shore drilling rigs in ¾ mile vis in the pouring rain. Helicopters are closer to "flying like the birds" than any other "Seized wing" machine and they offer a lot of great scenery or gut wrenching challenges far away form those well groomed, lighted, landing areas they call Airports.

If you want to know the joys of NOE (nap of the earth) flying then try some of this and I’ll give you the best chopper-instructor tips to help you master it. The Bell 206 is actually a pretty good representation of the real thing and even without the peripheral vision clues that are so useful in REAL flying, there are a number of things you can do to minimize effects of that limited view. For this session I chose my MD500 Canadian Helicopters bird, in honor of my friend Danny Danford who flew out at the Canadian Helicopters school in Buttonville, near Toronto.

Next go find a nice simple airport layout with a few buildings or towers around. Actually, Meigs is fine but some other places like LAX or Santa Monica CA would work well too. Position the helicopter on the ramp with one of the buildings at 10 o’clock and another at 2 o’clock. Santa Monica's a good spot. I find it’s often easier to go to "Map View" under the "World" menu, Zoom in, and just grab the plane and set it near the runway somewhere. I like to move the tower nearby at the same time. I set it about 5 ft higher than the plane so I can watch those great Instant Replays. Now, in SLEW mode set it down where ever you want.

Today . . . "We go to Bahamas Mon"

Find the site under World, Go To Airports, Search under ID and type in MYEM. The aircraft is automatically "snapped to" the local RWY so you’ll have to go to Slew Mode and move it onto the ramp over the "H" facing left of the tower. Go to Spot Plane view now and move yourself around behind the aircraft at about 7o’clock position. It should look something like this.

Now set the Tower position about 200’ up just behind the chopper in this location. It will be a good vantage point to watch the replays as you role over in exploding fur balls a dozen times. Don’t worry I crash lots too! Further down the page there is a tower view with everything turned on FULL. Lucky I have a 1Gig K7 Athlon and a GeForce 2 GTS with 64 Megs. I still get 35 fps. Ok I’m bragging . . . but I’ve waited YEARS to get this level of realism.

Here are settings I like for training:

You will have better control with a small Null Zone (maybe not quite as small as this) but remember you’re better making only very slight movements of the stick. Did I mention you need a Joystick. I’d recommend a force feedback one of some kind. I REALLY like the Logitech Strikeforce 3D. I got it for Christmas this year and it has very good feel and lots of buttons to assign where you like. I’ll give you some suggestions on helpful switch assignments another time. If you use a wide Null Zone you’ll find yourself over controlling even more, but don’t set the sensitivity too high. 50-75% is usually best to begin with. Set it higher as you get better if you like but I find about 75% is pretty realistic.

Even if you have a very fast machine you want to consider frame rates (over 50 if you can, 30 min) to give smooth, rapid movement cues. If you don’t get 30 fps then turn down texture quality and remove any smoothing but keep the shadows. If you don’t see shadows you probably just need to upgrade to the FS2000 patch that came out last Dec 2000. Check any sim site they all have it.

I’d leave the shadows on though and turn down the complexity and distance detail. This will give you as much detail close in as you can get. And forget the dynamic scenery for now we just want to hover smoothly and get back on the grown in one piece.

Give yourself the minimum 60 miles in "unlimited visibility" and leave the shadows on. Did I tell you about the shadows. Set the textures and complexity to normal or near 50%, less if you have to, in order to get at least 30 fps. That will give you pretty good frame rates even on a slower machine if the Image and other "smoothing" is turned off. Now get into Spot Plane view and sit back about 5 or 7 o’clock position just slightly above the chopper and maybe zoom in once (the "+" key).

Here’s what the ramp looks like from the your Tower view with everything turned on.

Go to the Spot Plane view and from this view point you can experiment. I assume you know how to turn the machine on and get the throttle up to 100%. Now the normal "throttle" control acts as the "collective". (You REALLY need a joystick for this). There are some good discussions on helicopter dynamics so I’m not going to go into all that. Just remember this. The stick will tilt the rotor disk and drive the helicopter in the same direction. (Although you can’t see the rotor tilt in FS2000. Maybe in the next version). Bring the collective up slightly till you notice some movement in the shadows and hold it there. Try feeding in some rudder "twist" to the left and right. If it doesn’t move add just a touch more collective. You should be able to rotate 360 degrees while "light on the skids". Inside the cockpit that’s about 60 lbs of torque.

Now go back to the start position or reset it quickly <CTRL ;> . This time as you get light on the skids, try and feed in a little left rudder to hold it steady as you bring it to a hover with a touch more collective. OK now put it back down right away . . S l o w l y . Do it again, but this time let it move to the side a few feet first. Just like the real thing (and this is my best tip from real chopper flying, from my old flight instructor "Billy Sundman") . . . He said "Don’t try and move the helicopter by moving the stick. Just "Think it LEFT a bit" and the slight control movement that your thought generates will be just enough to move slowly and smoothly".

Watch the shadows AND the helicopter AND the near/far buildings or tower. . now try it from inside the cockpit and see if you can READ the subtle movements and "think it" into a steady hover. Play around with "light on the skids" hover for several minutes before you get it up into a 3 foot hover. Rock it back and forth and side to side gently while you get used to the "very little" amount of control input needed. Believe me, the real ones are the same. I’ve tried this in full realism and with about 8 or 9 different machines including the H53 and the little Hughes 300. They all behave differently due to their size and weight but I think the FS2000 helicopter flight dynamics are actually pretty realistic with a good joystick.

TIP: If you ever get totally out of control in some weird "Spin" that won’t stop just click "P" (pause) and go to map view under the World menu. Look at the aircraft airspeed. It’s probably ZERO. Just set it back to 100 kts and go back to flying. Something in the software makes it otherwise impossible to fly out of the spin as you might do by in the real aircraft entering auto-rotation. I haven’t experienced auto-rotation in any of the sim choppers yet so I’ll be trying that next.

Dave Cooke

David Cooke is an ex-military combat-trained "Loach" driver with over 3000hrs on Kiowa (Bell206), Twin Huey and the odd bit of Cobra and piston helicopter. He served 20 years with Canadian Forces with tours in both 10TAG and NATO Armored forces, as well as LOH Flight Commander at 403 Tactical Training Squadron in Gagetown, New Brunswick, Canada. He holds a current commercial multi-engine license with helicopter endorsement with something under 4000 hours total time, jet and helicopter.