TomPenDragon

Test post - Holy crap, it finally works!!!!!

Wow - I come back after a little while and there are all sorts of things going on! First, congratulations to Melo for finishing his circumnavigation. Second, how many parallel Challenges do we have running now? We've got the Milford Sound in New Zealand, the Panama Canal water rescue, Bosss' Aries circumnavigation, Rotorhead (for when flying fixed-wing just isn't frustrating enough), and though he hasn't branded it as a Club thread, Sirrus' D-Day commemoration is a very nice piece of Flightsim writing. Third is someone else's news to tell; I don't want to steal their thunder (and thunderous news it is, and thanks so much to the people who finally made it happen!). So, before I have to run off again, a little housekeeping: Unless someone PM's me or posts an objection here before 12:00 PDT, I'll at long last lock the Great Australian Air Gaggle's FBO. Thanks! (I miss spending my days hanging around the FBO with you folks - this real life stuff's for the birds)

Re: A,B): +1! Re: C): Congratulations, Kit! How did it feel, shutting down for the last time after your first circumnavigation?

Very quickly: Orbiter still does exist, and can be found at http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/ . The latest version on that site is 2016. In 2021, Martin Schweiger, the developer, put the source code out on GITHub, as time constraints kept him from developing the program further (makes him ACES in my book). There are a ton of add-ons. Orbiter is a true, Newtonian physics space flight simulator. If you think helicopters are hard... But the views... I don't know Kerbal, but from the website https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/ , it seems more like a Sim City for space than a spaceflight simulator. For exploring the cosmos with feet on terra firma, there's Stellarium http://stellarium.org/ . Within 5 minutes, I discovered that I've been looking for Pons-Brooks in the wrong place. There now is a web-based version, so nothing to install. And a quick apology for being so quiet lately - the RW has been encroaching - in a good way; our blood work came out good, and my wife just celebrated a big birthday. More things to do, though, so gotta boogie... Will check in when I can. Peace. Out.

If you're talking about the HoverControl training scenery, I think it's a good recommendation. I'm really glad to see it survive here when so much of that great library seems to have been lost. One does not need the scenery to learn whirlybirds; neither does one need to use the platforms and everything until they're ready. If someone like PhrogPhlyer (how many rotary-wing hours do you have in your logbooks between RL and FS, Dick?) feels the need to practice basic maneuvers from time to time, it's probably a good idea to take his suggestion to not get ahead of ourselves. If I want to relax and have fun (at this point in my flying journey), I'll grab something fixed-wing. I'll only get in a helicopter now if I'm ready to work and learn. Guess what? It's like having a whole new sim, after two decades of FS2004. "It was 20 years ago today, ACES gave us a new sim to play..." (Apologies to John and Paul...)

I wanted to drop a quick note of thanks to everyone who's weighed in on helicopters so far, and especially to PhrogPhlyer and Rupert, who've actually flown them - in 'Nam, too (when you've got bullets coming through the floorboards, ya gotta have brass cojones, as well as mad flying skills to keep 'em from getting shot off). We all have different ways to process learning. For me, the way to learn helicopters is to start by forgetting everything I know about flying and start from zero. What thousands of pages and hundreds of hours over the years had failed to do (my problem, not the writers' and experts') and you guys finally succeeded, was to get me to realize that I was making my biggest mistake not in pulling the collective up too quickly or anything like that, but much earlier in my flight - at the vehicle selection screen. All these years, I've been trying to force helicopters into this massive mental model that I've built with every flight I've planned and taken, called, "Flying." Outside of getting you into the air and taking you someplace, to me they are completely different. Thus, approaching helicoptering as, "hopping in the plane and going somewhere," has to go out the window. My old practice of pulling up on the collective, pushing the cyclic forward, and hoping to get into some sort of controllable flight before I hit something is not only bad flying practice; it's counterproductive in the sense that it all gets chucked into the "Flying" mental model, and all I learn is that helicopters are bad aircraft because they don't fly like Cessnas and Cherokees. So, new mental model. Blank slate. "Helicoptering." They shouldn't even call them, "Helicopters;" they should call them, "Humblecopters," because each time I get in one, it's a humbling experience. The most important thing, then, is to find a humblecopter that I can work with. Here too, we each have a favorite (or a least-hated). Mine is the Nemeth Brothers' EC120B. Yesterday, I flew a B-58 from Meigs to Le Mans, with the window rolled down and my arm hanging out of it holding a root beer (after crossing the pond at Mach 2.05, I've got a bit of a wind burn). Then, I took my Colibri to a little flat spot in the Eifel Mountains where the Nürburgring Flugplatz should be, the way I usually flew it (mostly on autopilot. I was able to land it safely (I usually can), albeit not exactly on the spot that I wanted to hit (I never can). This morning, I just decided to practice. Day One. I don't have a throttle to control thrust or a yoke to control elevator and ailerons. I have two sticks that serve to shape the helical lift vortex that's being generated a few feet above my head. I pull the one that controls the amplitude of the vortex. The turbine is running at a constant speed, fuhgeddaboudit. The number that moves with the collective is the torque. At about 28% torque, the strength of the vortex equals the weight of the humblecopter. Dust starts appearing and I need to neutralize the torque to keep from yawing. 30% and the cabin windows start to sink. Neutralize torque, leave the cyclic alone. Right now, I want a perfectly round, perfectly vertical lift vortex. I keep the roof of the cabin at eye level. Holy Squitts, I'M HOVERING!!! There's a 15-knot wind, too, and I'm staying in place. Okay, so if the collective controls the vortex' amplitude, what does the cyclic do? Well, all I have is this vortex over my head; I don't have anything else to move me ahead. I push the cyclic forward slightly. All of a sudden, my lift vortex isn't perfectly round, perfectly vertical. It's got a lump in the back. I start to move. I'm not getting any thrust, I remind myself. I'm shaping lift, so that there's more of it toward the tail. So, the cyclic controls the vortex shape. The collective controls amplitude. The cyclic controls wave (vortex) shape. Helicopters aren't anything like aircraft. They're like old, analog synthesizers. The collective is the keyboard, each position along its travel producing a note via a voltage. The cyclic is the VCO/VCF. The voltage from the keyboard is converted into a tone by the oscillator (VCO - Voltage-Controlled Oscillator, VCF - Voltage-Controlled Filter) and further shaped by the filter. I do a few liftoffs and touchdowns, try to move around a bit, then a quick hop to Frankfurt for fuel. For the first time at EDFZ, I set down next to the pump for the first time (note to self: if you want to land on a spot, aim in front of it). Back at the 'Ring, take it down an octave. Put a lump in the front of the vortex to slow down and maintain altitude, then sink... Shape, shape, shape, shape, circular... drop it down a major fifth, and I'm back next to my cabin, only a couple of feet away from the oily spot of dirt that I chose as a touchdown spot. It wasn't perfect. The quickest way to get rich in my simworld still is to own the barfbag concession on my helicopters. But for once, a safe landing wasn't an accident. That's something I can build on. Thanks so much, guys! (As soon as I took the headphones off, I started hearing reports of an earthquake in New Jersey. Are you okay, Dick?)

MAD1 has summarized the meeting conclusions better than I ever could: Sorry if it was a bit of overkill, fellas. I guess there's only one more question to ask: Where to next?

It's now 20:15 CDT. The meeting is closed; the bar is open (as soon as I post this I'm locking the thread; all members and new friends should adjourn to https://www.flightsim.com/forums/topic/60177-club-chachapoya-meigs-or-bust ).

Isn't the correct title, "Poobah?" (seriously, bro, congratulations!)

I'm sure it was a great explanation, but I've got rocks for brains when it comes to helicopters. I must have read more than a dozen good, detailed explanations and I still can't wrap my head around them. Cyclic (must have something to do with cycles)? Collective (sounds like some sort of Commie thing)? Swash Plate (in the sink waiting to be washed)? I did understand, "Seat," though. Last week, I set a B-58 down at Meigs in fog and a 20-knot crosswind, and still made the midfield turnoff (the chute helped). I can't hold a hover in anything for more than a couple of seconds without ending up upside-down. My other issue is my control setup. My throttles are keypresses (+ and - on the numpad), and my joystick is an old Saitek with a wrist-twist rudder. For flying rotary-wing, I can use that hack of the zip ties on the centering spring that I commented on a while back to relieve the x-y axis pressure. I can't do anything about the z axis, though, and after a half a minute or so, it sets off the arthritis in my wrist - once that gets going, I can't even hold the stick. I know this might be an imposition, but PhrogPhlyer, would you be willing to put on your CFI hat and teach me (if I can learn) once and for all how to fly helicopters? Maybe some others might like this as well. Perhaps, as Melo said, we can even do a rotary-wing event. Thanks!

So, everyone, what are our conclusions? We seem to like the informality. We will not produce a rules or bylaws set (for that matter, I'll forego a formal results document and simply leave the locked thread as a record of the meeting's results. We will have an unspecified number of Minor (<1 week duration) events and 2-3 Major (2-4 week duration) events in 2024, the administration of which will remain an open question until the events themselves are developed. [ Club Chachapoya ] is the branding for all Club threads. What would you add/delete from the above? It's now 18:00 in Chicago. I'm going to leave this question open until 20:00. Unless we still have things to discuss at that point, I will bring our Annual Meeting for 2024 to an end (and open the bar).

Exactly. Not only that, but if the burden ends up falliing on the same people all the time, they're going to reach the point where they just can't anymore.

I'm glad you brought that up, Tao - I felt this point needed more discussion. A few of us have mentioned that the one who suggests a route should, if adopted, be responsible for both participating in and administering the event. "Responsible," doesn't mean that you have to do all the work yourself, just that the work gets done. For example: I suggest the Carrera Panamericana. The choice of timing system, aircraft type, routing, flight rules, and start-finish dates are mine. But they're not, really - by the time a route is adopted, the group has already opined, probably quite extensively. While I'm the final arbiter on all things, "my route," if I don't listen to everybody and incorporate in as many suggestions as I can while keeping my concept of the Challenge intact, I'll find myself flying alone. The first thing I need to do is flesh out the ideas into some sort of document. It could be as simple as what you suggest in the quote - most of the minor Challenges probably will not go beyond that. Something like the GAAG needs a bit more. Now, if I've never done something like this, I might ask PhrogPhlyer for some help and advice, since he did such a good job with the Route 66. If he can't help, I'm still on the hook for it. When it's time for the event (including the fly-ins) to start, I'll start the thread for it, keeping in mind our branding convention. As the event progresses, I will moderate the thread. When everyone's to their chosen destination safely, I'll lock the thread. This function, at least, should not be delegated. I'm lousy at math and even worse at spreadsheets, so I ask Melo if he can give me a hand with Timing&Scoring. He says Sure. Should a day pass when he can't post the leaderboard, I'm going to have to do it. Should someone have a dispute about how their times were reported, if Melo doesn't resolve it, I'm going to have to. Note that the responsibility for administering an event doesn't have to be overly burdensome, time-wise. Help in running an event is, however, entirely voluntary, so it behooves one to stay on good terms with those who might assist. The more we all share the burden of running the Club and its events, the less likely it will be that those who've stepped up already drop out because we've become burned out. Indeed, having the Route Planner, "take the stick," for a little while is in no small part intended to relieve the burden of those who are administering the Club overall.

Great stuff, Wobbie!! I think that, if you had to pin it down, the Key Differentiator between us and "the competition" is our Culture. Come in, hang out for a while, run an event or two with us, see what you think.

Breathtaking, Tao! Thanks!!!