Wrecking Crew Projects

Wow, RIP Blooze. How sad to hear.

1 Like

I read this last night on the ED forums. The man was always one of the kindest, nicest virtual pilots you could hope to meet.

RIP Blooze.

1 Like

The Wrecking Crew Projects site has freshly saved v1.5 missions to take advantage of the latest fixes and Mist code. These missions were saved with Model Enlargement = Large. I do like this Model Large feature for spotting aircraft. It does make ground objects stand out from many miles away as large blocks – which is rather odd at a distance, while in close there is much less need to use Labels - if you like those.

I have been bumping up the DCS Options Display settings and took the Cockpit Display from 256 (why was it even there?) to the max 1024 Every Screen or whatever it is called. We were commenting in the last Tuesday flight as to how hard it was to pick out Tunguskas among the armor, well that display change made a huge difference in my A-10C MFCD - now I can easily tell the units apart where before the units were very blocky.

2 Likes

Soo many settings…
Soo little time :sunglasses:

Hueys have a Flare Quantity now! The ‘Huey Apocalypse’ mission got the update to v1.5. I must be the worst Huey driver for takeoffs, maybe I make it upstairs one time out of ten. Some advice if updating older missions - go through the Loadout page for all aircraft. I see lots of “Loadout Not Saved” warnings. When it shows up, save it so all of the same a/c types are fixed. It depends on the a/c tasking, too. To keep the custom loadouts straight I will name them like -
'A-10C Huey Apocalypse CAS 01"
I’m also seeing a strange red character in the Max % field when the total weight is over 99%, just pull back the Fuel Quantity slider to fix it.

3 Likes

My Huey skills are best when flying level at altitude, but take-offs are tough and landings are near impossible. If someone has Huey skills to share then I’d appreciate a lesson or two.


I’d be up for organizing a four-flight workshop on Hollo Pointe along with making a Huey startup briefing, just need an instructor.

2 Likes

I’d like to join as a trainee! Although it’s been some months since I last flew the UH-1, I don’t need altitude to be safe in the Huey, I can fly NOE and zig-zag below powerlines but once my speed drops below 50 kilometres per hour things get dangerous, and landings are practicly impossible for me.

1 Like

Just found out this thread!
Everyone got a healthy dose of ‘like’ and … wow Wrecking Crew! Nice stuff! :smile:

I’d love to be at my pc this weekend…
Argh- transitioning phases. :weary:

2 Likes

I’ve got some skillz, would love to share. Just gotta figure out the when.

1 Like

Just wait til’ you try the Gazelle. I’ll just leave this here:

2 Likes

Hee hee, alright, I will create a nice little Huey training mission with four slots and start a briefing for it. The May 14th weekend would be good for me. Weeknights will work, too. @EinsteinEP, if you are up for instructing, that would be great! It will take maybe two weeks to put together the mission and briefing - I want to show pics of the Huey Options screen, and the cockpit switch panels, and some mission maps.

I’ve ridden in US Army Blackhawks, and those are fun - at Fort Lewis flying along the Columbia River. A few years ago at the town parade a Huey came in above Main Street and popped up, did a 180° and roared back down the street. I can’t stop and hover for anything. My landing attempts are more like sliding into third base. And you don’t want to be nearby on the ground when I take off.

I’ve got a training mission already, @WreckingCrew. It’s got all three helos, troop embarking, sling loads, soft targets, moving targets, etc.

As for a briefing - the mission is a sandbox and should be fine for learning basics. We can look at advanced topics once we get the basics down.

1 Like

OK @EinsteinEP - let me know a time. I’d like to learn take off and hover, with a review of the Huey’s Special settings, esp Trim options. I have these four checked - Autopilot Availability, Central Position Trimmer Mode, Rudder Trimmer and TrackIR Aiming.

  • Autopilot Availability: This is good to have, but not required. Be sure you know what your autopilot toggle button is!
  • Central Position Trimmer Mode: I hate this mode with a passion, but agree this is a user-choice. Be warned: in this mode it’s possible for the controls to apparently “lock up” and be completely unresponsive up until you arrive at your crash site.
  • Rudder Trimmer: Excellent choice!
  • TrackIR Aiming: I’m meh on this one, but we won’t be doing much gunning while learning to hover, so this should be fine.

This Tuesday night works for sure, otherwise I can check for you on the Mudspike TS3. If you’re on Steam add me as a friend ( EinsteinEP ) and we can check for each other’s availability there.

In the meantime, you might find some good tips in this video by ExcessiveHeadspace (also the guy who made the now-defunct TARS):

3 Likes

very nice video @EinsteinEP! I’m only missing one little thing. That would be mast bumping. It’s something that killed me a lot when I was new to the Huey, but a state I can recognize and prevent now. Every once in a while while flying I would hear a couple of loud knocks, followed by falling out of the sky like a brick and my rotors performing a cosplay of a Destructo Disc.

A TL/DR explanation would be that if you are par example doing terrain following flying. You’d pull up to clear a treeline, a hill or a crest and then push the stick forward. While pushing forward you reach (close to) 0G. When the rotor is at 0G the rotor disc becomes unloaded. With the main rotor ineffective, the tail-rotor, wich sits high above the center of mass, induces a roll. If you move the stick to counter this roll, the unloaded main rotor will strike the safety mechanism that prevents you from cutting off your own tail hard enough a few times for the whole thing to get destroyed, and you fall out of the sky and die.

Since it occured fairly rarely, for a long time I didn’t understand what killed me and how. At first I actually thought I was overloading the disc, something that killed me a lot in the Ka-50. This video helped me understand, who could possibly explain it better than the army aviation itself.

3 Likes

Going to try to do a helo clinic tonight, if you’re around @WreckingCrew. I’ll be on TS3 about 8pm PDT.

2 Likes

Wow @Sryan that video cleared quite some stuff!!!
:smile: Thanks a LOT

1 Like

Flew last evening with @Peaches in the Witches Hollo mission. In this one the target area is socked in with clouds so finding the targets means flying under 8,000 feet. But the AAA and Iglas made that quite difficult and the mission was frankly a disaster :thunder_cloud_rain: both times.
So today I took out most of the truck mounted ZSU AAA and the IGLAs at the four Red targets. There are still some IGLA teams arriving in a Red Mi-8T every couple of hours to watch out for. Another 200 meters was added to the ceiling to give the pilots a bit more room. The Briefing now lists the target coordinates of the Red HQ and the three Red camps so you can try dropping some ordnance from above the cloud cover, but if you take the A-10Cs with GBU-12s then you’re still going to need a Combined Arms JTAC boots on the ground.

@Peaches got nailed by one of those nasty IGLAs in this screenie, right before I met the same fate. But now most of those guys are gone, when they do arrive then messages do announce the threat. Have flares ready with CM Program C or D.

The updated Witches Hollo mission is running – give it a go. It’s a good one for Combined Arms with M1-A2s to drive around. There are A-10A/Cs, Su-25A/Ts, Black Sharks and Hueys to fly. Look for the Illumination Bomb that marks the location of Witches Hollo. Watch out for Buffs dropping massive quantities on the enemy forts.

3 Likes

Further tweaking to Witches Hollo - IGLAs are greatly reduced to 1 per Red supply helicopter. Took out more AAA, and Red vehicles are pared down to MTLBs, Bowmans, BMP-1’s - stuff that Hueys can handle except keep your distance around the heavily defended HQ target.

@Kombat_Karl dropped a bunch of GBU-12s through the clouds to impact on my laser -

Target identified, Karl is heading NE to align with the laser pointing to 7° -

Wow! Direct hit, must have impacted the ammo storage -

Target identified, laser on and pointing to 22° -

Another direct hit!

F10 View is Allies Only and Labels are off. TGPs are not available in this mission.

2 Likes

After getting some PGTs from @EinsteinEP in flying the Huey, I’m able to drive it around and park it. Also took in the advice elsewhere here and reduced the Y axis in the rudders to 60, and flattened out the other axis curves.

Who let their dog sit in the pilot’s seat? There is dog hair all over this windshield pillar!

2 Likes

It always looks like someone sneezed on the windshield to me.