OK I bought it. DCS is strongest in its helicopter campaigns so I mainly bought it for the campaign. I found it pretty easy to fly relative to the Hip and Huey. But that’s because I was warned and before the first launch I put the training wheels on and put both pitch and roll saturation at 60%.
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Have fun! I am about to dive into the campaign too!
When you are ready, you might also want to check out Chuck Owl’s guide to the Gazelle. It is a superb guide to all the systems and how to fly it etc., including setting up your saturation settings to be the most realistic with your HOTAS.
15M altitude is roughly when the dust clouds fades away, important in MP. the NADIR accuracy is about 500M, because you miss that nice degree second of input. So it’s not perfect for entering ingress points and target coordinates but should be sufficient to establish a no-fly zone 
Thanks! The campaign is really good so far.
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Honestly, I should’ve said damage model more than flight model. Take the Gazelle up to about 5,000 feet AGL. Then roll her. You can roll, roll, and roll without so much an issue, even when the G’s go negative.
Despite that, it’s really fun to use. A relatively low tech, easy to pick up and combat effective light helicopter with 3 variants will find a lot of use with me, in DCS.
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Any mast bumping to speak of? That killed me more in the Huey than any other thing (VRS, enemy fire, friendly fire, disattention…
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Nope, no mast bumping for the Gazelle afaik. IIRC if you take her to a certain extreme regime it does cut her own tail of though.
With a slight amount of training you can usually recognize mast-bump conditions and avoid them in the huey 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm8iV_uiBsI
Well for what its worth… (not much since I have an hour in an R22 and a little more in my friend’s Rotorway Exec)… two things stand out as odd: 1) is the very small amount of skid compression. Since the skids don’t compress with weight, there is a near instant loss of skid friction as the collective is slowly pulled. This is definitely not the case with the two small helicopters I have flown where yaw at liftoff was predictable and easy to manage. 2) The linear way in which the vertical stab takes over anti-torque duties as the helo accelerates feels unnatural, almost scripted. 3) As others have noted, ground effect seems muted. It’s there. There’s just not much. Whether or not that is reality, I will never know.
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According to a French guy that has trained me a little(and he flies mostly with a French group) it’s getting there but has some big flaws. And this is from the Frenchies that have flown the real thing
So me > French guy > French group with actual Gazelle pilots.
How do you guys verify the AP being operational? I use the Controls Indicator window because it says which AP mode is active. I haven’t found a good way when they are active and when they get disconnected.
The damage model of all helo’s is a bit off when it comes to ground fire though, it makes simulating actual operations a little harder.
Since Black Shark 1 most damage results in the loss of the tail. Not much has changed since. For AP status I do the same. Maybe the real thing is so obvious that no secondary indicator is needed. When it breaks the “Alarme” and “PA” lights illuminate.
But still…although not perfect…are you having fun flying it?
Oh offcourse I am having fun, I’ve had tons of fun flying the helo’s in Project Reality too! Doesn’t mean I don’t loose a little immersion when the physics fail to respond properly. It’s not something one should ignore when people ask for advice buying a product advertised as a simulator.
A good project, the FM is just not finished yet. I am positive Polychop will get it done, and it’s the first proper multi-crew helicopter we have! I am so looking forward to the Mi-8 later this year!
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I must have missed this news but what is going on with the Mi-8 later this year?
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On the Russian side of the forums one of the devs replied to a question on multi-crew with “Mi-8 later this year”.
So yeah, not a strong confirmation but Belsimtek has a habit of just dropping stuff like that on us so I have some trust in that statement.
Obviously someone could be pulling our collective leg(no not in that way @BeachAV8R) for giggles though…
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It’s been a while since I’ve flown the Huey but that one doesn’t have multicrew does it? As far as I know, it is only the Gazelle which has multicrew, correct?
Yep only the Gazelle has multi-crew.
So, has anyone tried the campaign? I am stuck in the first mission, the Apache and Chinook land, when I lift off for a hovercheck they tell me that they are embarking the soldiers, but then nothing happens. They just sit on the pad for minutes on end.
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Just go to the waypoints. You won’t be following Apache (unless you want to) until it is time to head back to “Paris” from “London” FARP.
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Unfortunately that didn’t work. After waypoint 5 the chatting stops and nothing happens. Sluggy and Meatboy stay’d on the pad, and Meatboy 1-1 was flying near the border. Looking at the mission planner it seems that the triggers are broken in my install.
Hmmm. My memory may be off.