Is anybody else playing Reflected’s new campaign: Paradise Lost?
I got to dive into it earlier this week, being a pretty novice Huey pilot. What a great campaign!
It forced me to go back to school on the Huey, much like his Fear the Bones campaign did for the F-14. If you’re wanting to start flying the Huey, this is a great motivation to learn. I’ve gotten ‘competent’ at flying the bird, and can actually make a successful autorotation now, and can even sling load things without breaking them! (most of the time…)
One thing I’d recommend if you’re new to the bird is a good checklist for the kneeboard, it’ll save you the embarrassment of a failed start because while you remembered to turn on the fuel, you forgot to open the throttle to idle… 
There’s a checklist included in the campaign kneeboard, but I like this one better:
The Huey is such a great bird. Easy to learn, but just the right amount of challenging to master. And the systems and avionics are simple, which is wonderful for a guy like me with a short memory that might get to play a couple hours at a time, a couple nights a week. The difficulty in this campaign ramps up well, the first mission or two is easy enough, and then later you’re flying it right at the limit, having to do running takeoffs and learning why they call the right pedal the power pedal! I’ve learned a lot about helicopter theory, flying safely and avoiding the dangerous regimes of flight (Chuck’s Guide covers a lot of this really well, beyond that as much as I hate to, I’d point toward the FAA Helicopter Flying Handbook).
The other thing this campaign does really well is use the Marianas terrain to its fullest extent. The island of Guam is small, really too small for a Vietnam-style fixed wing campaign. But it’s perfect for helicopters, because everything is fairly close. There’s no flying in one direction for an hour, then having to fly back like in the DCS UN campaign on the Caucus map, meaning each mission is a small enough bite to tackle in one session for a guy with little kids and life beyond the headset. In VR, the performance on Marianas is decent enough. It could be better (Mostly over Andersen AFB, and I’ve turned off some of the eye-candy, and using ReShade and FSR really help!), but that’s not Reflected’s fault, and he’s kept the unit count down enough to allow it to run well in VR while still having the feel of an alive world. I’ve really enjoyed Guam and navigating by landmarks (and FM homing, occasionally the ADF or a radial off the one operational VOR on the island).
In short (too late), I’d definitely recommend picking this campaign up if you own the Huey.
