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Helicopter forum.

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 6:40 pm
by Stan
MIA now operates one of the largest fleets of Helicopters on FSA serving Oil rigs around the UK.
We have hubs at Aberdeen/North Denes/De Kooy/Blackpool serving oil rigs, and a hub at Penzance serving the Scilly Islands.
I have only recently learnt how to fly Helo,s since i found the gauge (rcbhhc22.zip) over at Avsim,dont know how i had missed this gauge since it has been around since 2007.What the gauge does is makes the aircraft a lot more stable below 1,000ft and so it is possible to approach real slow and touch down on the landing pads.
The gauge (easy_hap.zip) also on Avsim works above 200ft and 40mph and makes it a lot easier to do the cruise.
The main difference between the gauges is that the latter works similar to a normal Auto-pilot where you set the heading and altitude and then just sit back,whilst the first one mentioned uses the cyclic or joystick to control height and speed.IE.stick forward for forward speed and stick back for reverse.The throttle control on your joystick then controls your vertical speed,twist grip is used for turning and left and right to keep the helo level.
Scenery for the Oil rigs can be found over at the ODG Group(Offshore Developement Group).
The only drawback is that not all Helicopters will funtion using the 2 gauges together,but as luck would have it,the ones that will work are all the aircraft used by the Oil Industry.
I fly on FS9 and so dont know which FSX heli,s will work but i will list the ones that work on FS9 when i find time.

List of Helicopters

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 8:50 pm
by Stan
Below is a list of the aircraft i have currently managed to fly in FS9.

AS332 PUMA by Brian Franklin (puma.zip) Available on Flightsim.com
AS365 Dauphin by Antti Pankkonen (HH65ADOL.zip) Available on Flightsim.com
S-61N by Dave Hardcastle (sik61cou.zip) Available on Flightsim.com
S-76C by K.Furuya (s76pktv2.zip + s76gfsv1.zip) Available on Flightsim.com
AW139 by Brian Whitelegg (ab139v2.zip) Available from Hovercontrol

A word of warning, in the PUMA imformation the author states that in the L/R views in the 2D cockpit the virtual cockpit is visible and he says to get rid of it to alter the line SEE_SELF=1 to SEE_SELF=0 in the fs9 cfg. file.Dont do it,it sorts out the views in this helicopter, but it will also remove all your wingviews in all your other aircraft. That had me scratching my head for a while i can tell you.A better way is to open the panel.cfg file and remove the following 3 lines from the {views} section:-VIEW_REAR_WINDOWS=32
VIEW_LEFT_WINDOWS=30.Also removing :-VIEW_REAR_WINDOWS=32 gets rid of the black back view
Also what i do to minimise the conflict between the 2 gauges mentioned in the previous post is disconnect the easy_hap autopilot when i am about 900ft and about 2 miles from my destination.I then hand fly using the rcbhhc22. gauge.

To get Heli,s Recognised by Client

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 9:22 pm
by Stan
Max Gross Weight atc_type= atc_Model=
AS332 18960 lbs Aerospaciale AS332
AS365 9370 lbs Eurocopter AS365
AW139 14109 lbs Agusta Westland AW139
S-61N 19000 lbs Sikorsky S-61N
S-76C 11700 lbs Sikorsky S-76C


Also add a dummy engine to each heli cfg.file as such:-in each heli [GeneralEngineData] section copy the engine.0 line and paste it lower down and rename it engine=1.
eg.
[GeneralEngineData]
engine_type=3
Engine.0=-0.833333, -20.0, 60.0
fuel_flow_scalar=3.0
min_throttle_limit=0.0
Engine.1=-0.833333, -20.0, 60.0

For the AS32D i copied the file from the AS332 because i could not find the model.I changed the atc_model line to AS32D.