Issues I see with the bell helicopter 20210505

The biggest issues I am currently having with this heli:

  1. It breaks like a twig. you try to sit on the edge of power and a gust seems to break it and you lose power. Normally being in or beyond those limits will wear parts out faster, not snap the engine and frame immediately. Breaking limits tend to be much higher so you dont flirt with them.

  2. During flight, it oscillates quite a bit. I feel like the rotor disk inertia is not being modeled by the way it is reacting to my control inputs, but I feel like I am trying to catch a pendulum where the top is instantly moving and is not accounting for its haveing to accelerate its mass into a different direction and gyroscopic effects

  3. Ground effect feels next to nill. When I take off in a real heli, the cushion effect is a lot more pronounced then what I feel in the game right now. Currently, I can set a power level and it is the same climb rate from ground on up. In real life, you can set a hover power level at 6 ft, pull collective a little to bob up, and then return to 6 ft, and the helicopter will come right back down into ground effect at the same height (maybe dip a little) without any other input. I currently have to pull half collective to get it to lift off the ground when I should be closer to 1/4 where it starts getting extremely light on the skids

That is what I have so far, as they seem to be the most glaring I am noticing when flying it.

Hi @Malic and welcome aboard.

As quite a few people have been having issues that appear to have been fixed via physical and/or configuration changes to their controllers, could you please share details of what controllers you are using, along with how you have them set up in MSFS.

Cheers

Paul

Warthog with pendular pedals, settings set to 0 and 100% as the manager recommends.

Is just were the things that felt wrong compared to helis I have flown.

Try keeping it around 3ft. 6 ft is getting to the top of the ground effect cushion.

Tony

You feel the effect a lot further up in a real helicopter, is not like an airplane where you get into ground effect a wings span from the ground, helis are actively pumping a lot more air with the rotor disk so the effect is a lot stronger

Right now you dont even feel anything close to what a real one feels like even 2 inches off the ground.

It needs to be strengthened up a ton

You can set a power level in a hover, remember it, and then go flying, apprach with a 300 fps descent rate, and set the same power level that you had in a hover. About 3 rotors distance from the ground, your decent rate will start slowing down, and you will end excatly back in that hover distance.

I tend to fly around 7000ft, so the effect is weaker here as well, at sea level I should not be having to pull half collective to even lift off the ground

I’ll add mine to this list:

  • Control lag: By far the number 1 issue. If anything, the helicopter it too stable, but once you do have to make larger corrections, oh boy.

  • What I’m also seeing. is inconsistent power levels to pick it up.
    Sometimes it’s 19.5", other times (in same session), it’s 22.5". Same RPM.
    The pick-up is weird: I’'ll increase it maybe 1/4", hold, if nothing happens, increase another 1/4", it seems to ‘build up’ lift gradually. So, I’ll end at say, 19.5", I’ll be holding it there for a couple of seconds, it’ll then go light and then pick up, without any further power input and continue up several feet.

  • Left pedal eats way too much power and it’s very ineffective. I’ve done hundreds of pedal turns to the left and it doesn’t need a lot more pedal to turn and definitely doesn’t eat that much power.

  • RRPM inertia: It loses RRPM too quickly and is way too slow to spool up.
    Similarly, if you have slightly low RRPM in hover, you can bump the collective down a bit, further into ground effect and it’ll pick up the RPM. It works here, but it’s very slow. Same when doing autos, you have to be super quick to drop the collective to maintain RPM in the green and it’s harder to pick up the RPM again, especially at 45mph, which is the recommended speed for autos.
    This also shows on start-up. It needs way too much too spool up the rotor at a reasonable speed and it’s especially obvious with the governor on where it’ll pull 30"!!!. I never saw more than 15" when spooling up the rotor on the real thing.

  • Cruise power: You should get ~70mph@20". I get 50-55mph

I’ll also echo the comments above: typically for a steep approach (45 degrees), to maintain 300fpm and a straight line, you need to fly at ~3.5mph and typically, 22" (depending on load, temps, etc). That MP should, if flown correctly stay constant all the way to the hover and you should not need to add any more power.
You can see that here: Even though it’s over long grass and water, I don’t need to add any more power to maintain the hover.

I’ll state it again: I really want this module to be successful, because I would love to have 47 to play with at home. …but currently it’s quite far off and I think many of the Xplane & DCS modules are much better representations of what flying a helicopter feels like.

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I’m experiencing the same collective issues. Last night I was flying at Camarillo and I was pulling 23.5" to even get light on the skids. I did not check the weather though for density altitude and I am assuming that the presets are close to sea level standard.

I’ve changed the weight & balance numbers though and there are strange things happening with the menu. Not sure if that’s an issue.