How to alter flight attitude question?

I am under the impression that helicopters fly with the nose down during normal flight, I read a while ago to get the attitude altered is with the Cruise Lift Scaler in the aircraft.cfg.

Increase for nose down and decrease for nose up: I have an AI heli flying not problem but I am trying to get this nose down and I've changed the number a few times and it isn't affecting the attitude, is there something else I need to do or am I in the wrong section changing the the scaler?

Col.

Changing the Cruise Lift Scalar for a conventional aircraft usually adjusts the attitude of an ai 'plane in flight. I've used it to advantage on several occasions.

The problem with an ai helicopter may be that, as FS9 doesn't support ai helicopters by default, other characteristics of the .air or .cfg files may have been so heavily tweaked to make the aircraft 'act' like a helicopter that the Cruise Lift Scalar may have effectively become redundant.

You may have to revert to using FSEdit (from the SDK) or AirEdit (old but can be helpful) to get the effect you want, but do make a backup in a safe place before you start! Gerry Beckwith's AirWrench (payware) may be overkill for an ai aircraft, but may be worth considering, depending on how serious you perceive the problem to be.

My experience is that neither utility is totally predictable and a seemingly minor edit can either do nothing or suddenly cause major problems if you go beyond certain limits!

The ai engine does seem to only use a sub-set of the FS9 aircraft capabilities, so what may seem to be a satisfactory result for a "normal" aircraft may have little or no effect (or vice versa) on an ai aircraft.

Good luck!

Thanks for the reply Chris, to get it to fly as an AI it thinks it is a fixed wing aircraft, I have managed to get it to lift off almost vertical, it climbs OK and flies OK, but like I said I am under the impression helicopters tend to fly slightly nose down.

I can live with it as it is because I have a few more tweaked helicopters but I have them tweaked as fixed wing, they all fly good but not nose down, I have since read even tweaking the cfg also the air file can effect the angle of attack too, I am not too familiar tweaking air files, I have the 'AirEd' program that I have rarely used.

Col.

Real helicopters always fly nose down depending on their forward speeds. This is because they have no forward pushing/pulling power like fixed wing aircraft have and therefore need to tilt nose down in order to gain and to maintain their forward speeds.

Flying a real helicopter is in fact a constant balancing act for it's pilot, between his main rotor collective and cyclic pitche controls, combined with his anti torque tail rotor control, all of which constantly effect each other, depending on forward speeds.

It's therefore my opinion that seeing any AI or flyable sim helicopters, flying forwards at any speed without the strongly related nose down attitude, remains vey unrealistic.

Hans

Real helicopters always fly nose down depending on their forward speeds. This is because they have no forward pushing/pulling power like fixed wing aircraft have and therefore need to tilt nose down in order to gain and to maintain their forward speeds.

Flying a real helicopter is in fact a constant balancing act for it's pilot, between his main rotor collective and cyclic pitche controls, combined with his anti torque tail rotor control, all of which constantly effect each other, depending on forward speeds.

 

It's therefore my opinion that seeing any AI or flyable sim helicopters, flying forwards at any speed without the strongly related nose down attitude, remains vey unrealistic.

 

Hans

Rubbish! It is entirely dependant on the mast position and angle of attack. You WILL notice transitional changes (nose down for acceleration for example).

How much helo time do you have in the real world?

Thanks for the reply Chris, to get it to fly as an AI it thinks it is a fixed wing aircraft, I have managed to get it to lift off almost vertical, it climbs OK and flies OK, but like I said I am under the impression helicopters tend to fly slightly nose down.

Col.

It's been a good while now, but I seem to remember running into similar issues with my ai "Gyrobee" … I think I ended up drawing the aircraft so it appeared "nose-down" naturally, then set it up as a tail-dragger so it appeared to be sitting normally when it was on the ground. I can't find my design files for the moment and I'm not sure FSDS is W10 compatible, so it'd be a lot of fuss to confirm the details :(

Have you seen any other ai helicopters in FS9 that fly nose-down? If so maybe you can draw inspiration from their configurations ;) As far as I'm aware, most FS9 ai helicopters base their configurations on one or two carefully developed sets of files, so it might be pertinent not to try to re-invent the wheel and fine-tune someone elses hard work ;)

Although I'm a great fan of GA ai I've spent little time with ai helicopters.

Hi Chris, I think I've cracked it, if you look on the screenshot section I posted some of my repaints there plus I have the Chinook CH-3 that is working nose down.

The only thing I've done was change the altitude in the flight plan, at first I had it flying at 8000ft and it was flying level.

Then I altered the plan and changed it to 10,000ft and for some reason it is flying nose down just like i wanted.

Col.

Hi Chris, I think I've cracked it, if you look on the screenshot section I posted some of my repaints there plus I have the Chinook CH-3 that is working nose down.

The only thing I've done was change the altitude in the flight plan, at first I had it flying at 8000ft and it was flying level.

Then I altered the plan and changed it to 10,000ft and for some reason it is flying nose down just like i wanted.

Col.

I can imagine a twin-rotor machine would have it's own set of complications, so I'm glad you've got it sorted as you want :)

Michael replied in the screenshot section he used to fly helicopters in Vietnam, he gave a detailed reply.

Col.

Rubbish! It is entirely dependant on the mast position and angle of attack. You WILL notice transitional changes (nose down for acceleration for example).

 

How much helo time do you have in the real world?

Rubbish ?? There are far more helo types without tilting masts than there are with them, whether you like it or not. Furthermore, my helo time on such helos is not something you have the right to openly question.

Explaining the advantages and effects of tilting masts in addition to my fixed mast post, would have been far more interesting for all readers, than your very undiplomatic and coarse reaction.

Hans

@MrZippy,

Ha Ha Chas, I like your humour mate.

Col.