Is the Gazelle a decent module? The sale is on and I do like helos. I trust Biselmek to get it close but generally shy away from 3rd party developers. I really just want to know if the flight characteristics are believable.
The flight model isnāt there yet, will type up something longer at home. But in general, only get it if you dont have the other helos yet
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Personally I really like it. It packs a punch, but you have to play the stealth game if you want to survive.
I love(d)* to play hide and seek in the Gazelle. Lots of fun.
*I donāt get time to play these daysā¦
Thanks TAS! Thatās really all I needed to know. Several posts on different forums mentioned the FM as āweakā or āarcade-likeā. I will wait.
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It IS a fun helo, just that the flight model falls flat at a few very obvious points, and that itās not up to ED/BS helo standards yet. I have confidence that when they are over the internal IP problems that they will continue providing updates to the FM. So far the systems modelling seems good, will let you know how MP goes once i get a chance to force Gizzy to fly with me 
So yeah, if you do have all the other helicopters then itās a fantastic addition, if not go with the UH1 first!
Yeah, the FM is not up to snuff, yet, but itās still pretty fun flying it. At least, Iām having a lot of fun with it.
Itās REALLY easy to pick up.
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So weird questionā¦ how do you all know that they FM isnāt right? Iāve had a very limited amount of time at the controls of a R22 and the Gazelle out of all the helicopters in DCS feels the most how I remember the R22, kinda twitchy, like balancing on a ball. So Iām just curious.
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I think this review written by Joe Hudson over at Helisimmer might be worth a read @smokinhole. He does mention some FM strangeness but overall he scores it very highly.
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I see a lot of people throwing around that the FM is off as well, but I have yet to see some actual data. I remember a person on the ED forums claimed to have piloted a gazelle and said it was pretty accurate considering the stage of development it was in at the time. I wonāt act like I am in denial and noted several things that felt severely off compared to other digital helicopters Iāve flown. But I donāt know if they are flaws in the FM or just features of the actual Gazelle.
Something remarkable about the twitchyness is that, while severe at slow speeds, stops being an issue at all at higher speeds. In the Huey I find myself constantly correcting regardless of the airspeed, and the Hip rolls and yaws a little under its own inertia, wich requires correcting. It can feel a little crazy flying the SA342 at slow speeds, but becomes remarkedly controllable above 80-100km/h. It does not feel sudden or scripted. Iāve been told that itās due to the Fenestron.
The helicopter has a bit of an unnatural feeling tendency to level itself out in forward flight. A few seconds after centering the cyclic, the Gazelle will have itself leveled out as well except in the most extreme attitude situations.
The ground effect feels very weak to non-existant. You canāt really stay in the ground effect like you can with all the other choppers present in DCS. An educated guess Iāve taken is that due to its low mass (Just 900kg when empty!) it does not need a high qV/į¹ to sustain flight wich prevents much of the ground effect from becoming an actuality.
Despite the issues, wich as far as I know remain unverified, it is a lot of fun to actually fly. The visibility is fantastic. The SACLOS guided HOT3 is a lot of fun to operate, and requires you to get quite close to your opponents, who can challenge your superiority with their own ATGMās, only the T-55 is defenseless prey, itās a real change from say, the Ka-50, where you take out tanks at nearly BVR ranges ( and donāt need to wait 20+ seconds for impact). I donāt know if youāre mostly in it for the MP or SP, but it does feature a campaign, quite good, quite lengthy, but also quite hard. In MP you can fly this thing with 2 people, a pilot and a weapons officer.
I think itās worth a pick-up unless youāre eying other modules.
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A few of the real helo pilots in the 229th mentioned that the flight model is off. And itās noticable. It doesnāt get light on the skids, it just snaps into a rotation(I am not sure itās the AP doing that). If you get in weird angles the FM just falls apart and becomes static, the ground effect is nigh impossible to feel if there at all. It seems to lack lift from forward airspeed moving over the rotordisc, so sliding through the ground effect and then gaining enough lift like a aircraft doesnāt work, or atleast not all the time.
Really itās about 80% there but has some glaringly obvious issues.
Sryan, I think that itās that stable because of the tailrotor AND the AP correcting/stabilizing. Although Iāve also had a strange constant pitch going on at a airspeed without me even touching the controls.
@smokinhole asked about how the FM was. To me itās a great helicopter with a flawed FM, but I have faith that Polychop will figure it out eventually.
Thanks for the replies all! Itās either this or the Mirage. What I really wanted was a helicopter to fly in āBlue Flagā. āRedā has the Ka50. āBlueā has the Huey and, rarely, the Hip (which is my favorite DCS model).
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The Hip is fantastic! easily my favourite helicopter. If you do have all the other helicopters then the Gazelle is fun to learn, I try and ignore the FM errors though so it really depends, not everyone meshes with it as well.
The Mirage is fantastic though, very well made and really the only semi-modern fighter with full systems modelling.
The Mirage is pretty awesome. The FBW takes a bit of getting used to, but I kind of doubt that will be a problem for you .
Get the gazelle. You wonāt regret it. It is an extremely well done module and you actually get three different helicopters for the price of one. You get an anti-air version, a dedicated gun and rocket version and the anti-tank missile version with the Thermal Imaging systems. I would also mention it is nice to have a helicopter that has RWR equipment integral to the aircraft.
Baguette, get the baguette.
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4000+ hours in the A320. That was many years to go but I still speak Frenglish.
I bought it in the sale - been waiting for a discount for a long time. Very keen to start the training, after the inevitable re-assignment of all my controls for DCS modules.
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I picked up the Gazelle a couple months back. I rather like itā¦ In fact, more than the Huey and Ka50. I have yet to master it because it is super nimble (twitchy) and takes a really light touch. Still, it is fun to fly once you get her up to speed. The systems are relatively easy to get into as well. Iām not much of an egg-beater pilot, but every now and then I try my hands at flying them.
Long story short, if you like helos the Gazelle is a good buy.
āT
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It is a fun helicopter, had a flight with 3 other people last night(stacked in 2 gazelleās) and it was quite interesting. Really makes me wish theyād hurry up and finish the flight model!
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