A real shame that I can’t try it - but I do hope they haven’t gone OTT and spoiled the fun. It’s no use having “realistic” handling on a PC (if such a thing even exists) if it means no-one can complete the missions cos they can’t hold the thing steady enough to use the weapon systems.
Some were complaining about that with the old FM - be interesting to hear what they say about the new one.
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The little bit of stick time I got before work today it was definitely flyable and controllable. Killed a few trucks with that new HMG pods before I called it a day with no issues. Just not sure on some of the physics in that brief excursion.
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After 30 minutes of testing (daughter has kicked me out of the computer room to play The Sims 
) the changes seem all in the right direction.
1-First Complaint from the very beginning: Skid friction. The Gazelle would stay on heading until the collective hit a certain point, then it would suddenly spin like a top. Of course helicopters don’t do that. Friction with the ground inhibits the turn. As the skids get light and friction decreases, you can easily see the yaw and start feeding in correction. It’s very predictable. And the helicopter doesn’t just spin like a top once free of that friction. The spin starts slow and accelerates. With a strong enough right crosswind, there may be no tendency to yaw at all–you can (but shouldn’t!) put your feet on the floor. Or with a really strong right crosswind, the tendency might be to yaw with the torque to the right.
All of this seems to have been corrected. My only issue now is that there seems to be very little reserve right pedal remaining in a heavy hover. But this may well be correct.
2-As the old Gazelle accelerated, the need for anti-torque decreased to zero in a very linear fashion. It felt scripted and unreal. People defending the helicopter would say that this is probably due to the digital nature of the flight controls. But that never made sense to me. It only made the helicopter less predictable when maneuvering hard.
Anyway, this is fixed. The slipstream stability is predictable now, realistically so I feel.
3-The old Gazelle was very unpredictable in a hover. And even when you learned to nail the hover, it felt like the instability was (using the word again) “scripted”. Now, no, it’s not rock steady like the Mi8. Nor should it be. It’s twitchy. But twitchy in a way that takes only a few seconds to get accustomed to. And once you get it, you can slide around like a figure skater accurately and predictably.
So, YAY!, fixed.
4-Helicopters are pretty much like airplanes above ETL (15 knots or so). They aren’t stable per se. But they are predictable enough that a non-pilot who’s given a little verbal guidance can turn, climb and descend pretty accurately and without a great deal of effort. The old Gazelle would never return to a trimmed attitude. Even at speed it would trend away, sometimes rapidly. No amount of helicopter experience could prepare you for that. It made the helicopter very fatiguing to fly. This I knew was wrong. The Gazelle’s close cousin, the Squirrel, was one of the very first helicopters to be certified to fly IFR. The digital FCS made this possible. There is no way that anything so unstable at speed as the Gazelle would ever win such certification.
Fixed. The new Gazelle still flies like a helicopter. It’s not super easy. But it is nicely predictable and keeps it’s trimmed attitude if all else is unchanged. This makes it a great instrument platform. And I’d guess this also makes it a good weapons platform.
5-The old Gazelle needed less collective to hold altitude in a banked, coordinated turn than it did in level flight! This was crazy to me. It was a simultaneous insult to both Newton and Einstein. Or, if you didn’t lower collective but held altitude with cyclic, it would accelerate. Nuts!
Fixed!
6-Autorotations. Impossible!
Still…well, not impossible…but very difficult. The game has let me survive all 5 that I tried but I am pretty sure they would have been either fatal or the pilot would be 4 inches shorter for the rest of his quadriplegic days. I doubt this is correct but it really doesn’t matter as we so rarely autorotate in the game. And if it lets you survive the unsurvivable, well, that works too.
I forgot to try looping it. That was something the old Gazelle did very unrealistically well. As soon as Rin lets me have the PC back I look forward to testing that and a few other things.
I’ve had fun in the old Gazelle even as I hated its faults. It was DCS’s very own little Mario Kart. BS but a blast. Now it is a joy without the BS. The Kiowa will be an easy purchase.
EDIT: More testing. It doesn’t loop. It sort of falls off the vertical, tail slides a bit and then either crashes or recovers depending (I guess?) on how much damage was done to the rotorhead. One thing that might disappoint people is that it is quite easy to fly now. I am guessing that this is probably fairly realistic. It was/is? used as a trainer, after all. So it probably wasn’t much of a challenge in real life. With all the A/P channels off it’s a little harder but still nothing close to a piston trainer like a 269 or R22. Probably it is more on par with a Jet Ranger or other light turbine helicopter. I’ve tried all of the various trim modes including the new “fade in/fade out” option. That last might be a good choice for a player just starting out. I have a standard sprung stick and pedals and personally prefer the “Central Trimmer Mode” with no trim on the pedals.
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It’s really good. There’s a couple transitions that feel strange still. Like when gaining speed, you rather suddenly can let go of all that right pedal. Almost like a system turning on.
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True. The vertical stabilizer should help offset some or all of the anti-torque load as the helicopter accelerates. The less power to the pedal means more power to the rotor. But it is a bit linear. I have no idea if it is wrong but it feels off intuitively. There is also a bit of rubber-bandiness to the collective which takes a little of the joy out of flying the Gazelle. I feel that the collective should be twitchy and instant, almost like the cyclic. Instead there is a huge amount of inertia on the vertical axis. With some planning it is predictable. But it lacks the Low Level Hell OH-6 “I can do anything so long as I have the torque” spirit I would expect.
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I looked up power and weights for the Gaz and the little bird and was surprised that the gaz has so much more power than the oh-6.
I never would of guessed that
The little bird was very underpowered, especially with the machine gun pod. That’s why a lot of units in Vietnam kept the pods in storage and refused to mount them. Well, that, and the philosophy that the scout pilot should be eyes only. Let the red half of the pink team do the shooting.
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I think it’s the pedal trim that’s giving me fits. It seems to double and halve your inputs instead of adding or subtracting. I need to spend some time in my man cave with actual pedals to confirm, a twist grip is not amenable to flying without pedal trim. I’d be curious to see some real world flight footage to show the roll rate, as it seems a bit low ATM, but it might just be me.
I don’t use pedal trim. But with a twist stick it is probably essential. I did test pedal trim and it worked ok on my end. I used the “fade in/fade out” option. It takes a little practice to get the timing right with recentering. But it does work. There also needs to be a decently large center deadzone so that it recognizes the return to center.
Has anyone had issues with higher density altitude? I’ve been trying the Gazelle on the “Enigma” server which is currently running Syria. With 50% fuel and practically any weapon loadout, at some of the higher FARPS the Gazelle can’t even get light on the skids. If the real Gazelle shares traits with it’s turbine powered predecessors, the engine was derated to keep wear and tear low while allowing for a relatively linear power band up to higher DA’s. What’s funny about our Gazelle is that we run into either a torque limit or physical collective limit. But torque is a function of the actual power applied to the rotorhead. If that shows 100% (which it does in my Syria case above) then full SL power is available. So now we’re just talking the high DA’s effect on the rotor and TR. It doesn’t seem like it should be so limiting.
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Well I’m not a real pilot so I’ll defer to you but there was a part in Casmo’s video a few days ago where he talks about how the Gazelles’ new flight model does take into account the environment it is flying in. I’m assuming that means the weight of fuel, weapons, sensor etc. and the actual atmospheric characteristics set up in the mission editor by the server admin.
I’ve included the video here where he talks of it briefly.
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Oh I think it’s great that the model is now forces to struggle. But I have to think that it should be able to get off the ground with 1:15 fuel and a combat loadout at 2200m. Of course this might well be legit and the Gazelle may well be a SL machine only. If so, the torque guage should probably be equally limited. Anyway, I’m not complaining, just surprised.
Thanks for bookmarking the appropriate part of Casmo’s video. That saved so time. He’s right. Polychop didn’t have to do this. That they did shows respect for their customers, both current and future. This reminds me a bit of when ED updated the Caucuses for free.
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Chucks guide to the Gazelle has received a large update!
https://www.reddit.com/r/hoggit/comments/16772dx/chucks_sa342_gazelle_guide_update/
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Reviving this thread because what I have to say isn’t interesting enough to begin another. I’ve discovered a powerful tool if used with extreme caution: The Gazelle Minigun. I took it up for the first time on Rotorheads after getting pummeled time after time trying to employ the 4km range missiles. I took the minigun because it is unarmed from the pilot’s seat and I figured that maybe without the temptation of shooting I could try to be a scout with the occasional CSAR. Minutes after departing FARP “Bravo” I was low and fast near the forward line of troops in the southern suburbs of Aleppo when: “BURRRRRRRP!” loudly blasts through my removed right door. My forgotten Gunner! (Trying to fire through a building 
) It almost shocked me out of my gaming chair. I’d like to say that I survived but no. We killed some AK but quickly got taken out by a T-90. But after a few sorties I began to get a feel for how to use it. Having read Low Level Hell certainly didn’t hurt. The crazy thing is: not only am I killing more, I am dying less. Well, yes, it’s a cheat. The gunner sees stuff that would be impossible to see. But that’s true of the AH64 and Mi24 as well. Using buildings and hills is such a joy! This is what helicopters do that separates them from the masses. Getting shot in the face hovering will trying to get the “thing on the thing” isn’t. Also, the minigun is merciless against BMPs. Funnel above them with a 45deg angle-off and what shots they manage are consistently lagging. Meanwhile the gunner is toasting the vehicle, then, as personnel vacate, he…well you know what he does: “BRRRRRRP! BURRRRRRP! BURRRRRRRP”
I once hated the Gazelle with all the loathing I could muster (justifiably I still believe). Now though? She is the most maneuverable ship in DCS and flies very much like an R22 (minus the mast-bumping). Yes, tin-can delicate yet she’s managed to bring me back to the FARP more often than not. The DM is a bit generous I believe. Shhh. Keep this a secret please! The battle for Aleppo is now over on the server. But it was as good as DCS gets for me.
This is all to say that if you get tired of the drudgery of missile after missile OR you just don’t want to relearn helicopter X before flying it on the server, let your gunner do all the violence while you just fly. Of course this can be done even more effectively in the Huey or Mi8. But those are heavy mounts that lack the quick-stopping and instant cornering capabilities of the Gazelle. Plus, she’s faster and makes a smaller target. Long Live Pull For Power!
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I still feel like skid friction is an issue in DCS. Especially in the community OH-6. But I feel it in payware modules too. It’s better, but still not perfect. It must be extremely difficult to get right. Too little, and the aircraft wants to yaw sitting on the skids with zero collective. Too much and the thing can’t be slid around on the skids or landed during autorotation. My 0.2.
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Seems to me that this could ‘easily’ be addressed with having different drag values based on the direction of the loading and weight on the skid(s)?
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I agree. It’s Casmo’s biggest complaint as well. The safest and fastest way to land on an unfinished surface is with a touch of forward motion. But the skid friction modeling in DCS makes that difficult.
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I assume they use the same AI for the gunner as the Huey does and that is a beast … a while back we had a @schurem fight night with Huey’s and the door gunners where absolutely blasting everything …we had several take down fast jets … (read f14s for fast jets😀) that got anywhere near a Huey
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I am neither a programmer nor a helo pilot but I agree - it feels like the old sim racing games where the tyre contact patch is simulated by a single point upon which all the calculations are done, rather than a more advanced model.
Though honestly skids are probably simpler, you could likely get a good approximation knowing pitch angle (to know how much skid is touching the ground) and angle of yaw (to know how much friction the skid should be exerting/experiencing).
But then you’d need friction coefficients for all the different types of ground and I guess it quickly gets complicated?
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