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ChopperSchool · 06-21-2003, 02:19 PM

Chopper School

Helicopters – Intro

Helicopters can be extremely agile weapons of mass destruction or hovering Hit Me signs waiting to be blown from the sky. It all depends on the pilot.

Comparing the flight of a helicopter to a plane is like comparing the flight of a dragonfly to a bird. A bird can only fly forward, beak into the wind; a dragonfly can tilt, stop in mid air and fly off in any direction. Birds eat dragonflies though; it’s a cruel world.

Basic Training

Single player in BF/DC is good for one thing and one thing only … practice. If you set up a local CO-OP game with high AI settings you will find a good practice environment for helicopter training. While life on the ground in single player is a joke, life in the sky is quite different. The Bot anti-air defense (AA-guns, tanks, etc) and offense (planes, not helicopters) pose a good challenge, especially for the helicopter newbie. The Bots are not very good helicopter pilots though. You will very often see their helicopters dropping from the sky … much like you see online with human newbies.

I recommend setting up a local CO-OP game on the Bocage map for basic training. The number of tanks, anti-aircraft guns and vehicles on such a small but interesting map make for a good challenge. All three helicopters are available. The clear sight lines also help the enemy and since the AA guns can shoot farther than the helicopter can you’re in for a tough fight. Come around that windmill unprepared and you’re AA cannon fodder.

The Controls

First off … I use a joystick. I have no idea how people are able to fly with the keyboard but some can. I find I simply can’t control all the lateral forces acting on a helicopter without. I’ve got the twist handle rudder control which is probably a must have too. Get a good joystick, its worth it just for the immersion effect.

Also … the throttle on my joystick doesn’t work so I use the left keyboard Ctrl button with one hand and joystick in the other. It might be nice to have a slider throttle that works but I’m not spending the cash. I’ve often heard throttles in BF/DC don’t work well anyways because the half way point is off and the all the way off point is reverse. I find the button works well enough but it’s an all on or all off affair so it probably doesn’t work like it should. The only time this makes a difference is when trying to hover. For that you just have to find the right tapping rhythm.

The cyclic or joystick controls the lateral movement of the helicopter including forward, backward, and yaw - left and right. (I’ll be using the word tilt to refer to how the body of the helicopter appears to tilt relative to the ground to induce movement.) Pushing the cyclic to the right will tilt the helicopter to the right and it will move to the right.

The collective or throttle determines how fast the rotors turn and therefore how high you go. With the collective on high and your hand off the cyclic your helicopter will lift straight up. It’s a beautiful thing. Reducing the collective will make the rotors spin slower and you will begin a gradual descent. Unless of course you crank it off entirely, in which case the helicopter will plummet.

As with the planes in BF/DC you can choose a button to allow you to look around you with the mouse. I’ve made mine the left Shift button to go with the left Ctrl button. You won’t be using this much though as the forces acting on a helicopter require you to keep your hands on the controls at all times. To compensate for this I’ve set up the alternate fire buttons on the joystick with the Front and Rear chase views so I can quickly move from looking behind me and back to the cockpit with the touch of ergonomically placed button.

For weaponry, the pilot fires the missiles and the co-pilot fires the heavy machine gun. As pilot your primary fire button is Air-To-Surface Missiles and your secondary fire button lets loose kick-ass Air-To-Surface Hellfire rockets. A good pilot can hover in one spot while the co-pilot strafes the forward area with devastating cannon fire. When an AA-gun or tank drives up, let loose with missiles and rockets.

The Physics of Helicopter Flight

The physics of flying a helicopter is quite different from flying a plane; notice there are no wings to speak of. In fact, it is the rotors on top that are the wings on a helicopter. The air passing over the rotors as they spin around lifts the helicopter up just like they lift a plane.

When you first jump in the helicopter the rotors start spinning with flat or no pitch. They are turning but you are not being lifted. When you pull on the collective the rotors spin faster and are turned into the air more sharply and you rise up. This is collective pitch, turning the blades of the rotors into the air evenly all around their circle. When you push on the cyclic this turns the rotor blades into the air more dramatically on one side of the helicopter and not the other which pushes the helicopter that direction. This is cyclic pitch, turning the blades of the rotors into the air on one part of their circle.

When you push the cyclic forward the nose drops down and you begin to move forward. You will also drop in elevation. How much you drop depends on how far you push the cyclic forward.

What really happens when you push forward on the joystick is, the blades of the rotors are being turned into the air on the back half of the rotor circle more than the front half. They begin chopping the air at the back far more dramatically than on the front half of their circle. Therefore it’s applying more upwards thrusting power at the back than at the front. Thus, the tail of the helicopter is pulled up faster than the front so the nose tilts down and the helicopter moves forward. As soon as the rotors are no longer perpendicular with the ground though, the helicopter will begin to lose altitude.

If the rotor at the back of the helicopter was not there you would be spinning in a circle as soon as you left the ground. The torque the from spinning of the rotors on top would be forcing the body of the helicopter around and around. The tail rotor at the back counteracts this by holding the tail in place. Controlling this how you spin in a helicopter.

In a real helicopter you spin in one spot with the foot controls. With a game joystick this is what the twist handle control is for. Twisting one way speeds up the rotor at the back of the helicopter so it forces the tail around. Twisting the other way slows the rotor at the back down and allows the rotors on top to twist the helicopter around in one spot. You can exaggerate this with the cyclic by yawing left, right, up or down to give it some pitch which forces the blades to chop harder on one side of the rotor circle, forcing the body around that way. You will turn more dramatically but you will also lose some altitude.

One interesting thing to note when flying or landing the helicopters is the rotor blades will never hit anything. I’ve flown through forests and landed right beside the flag pole and the rotor blades don’t hit anything. If you hit something dead on with the windshield or the weapon arms though, say the trunk of a tree or the flag pole, you will feel it, take damage and probably crash. The tail of the helicopter is fully there so watch your backside when spinning in mid air.

Potential vs. Kinetic Energy

There is a section in the Flight School guide to flying planes on PlanetBattleField.com that explains the difference between Kinetic and Potential Energy. Potential Energy is the energy a body possesses at rest. If you remove the support keeping it at rest the body will move and the potential energy becomes kinetic. Kinetic energy is the energy a body possesses in movement. Momentum, a kind of Kinetic energy, is the movement a body retains after you remove the force that got it moving. Basically the mass of the body keeps it going when you remove the force that got it going. The heavier something is the more momentum is will generate.

When you hover in the air in a helicopter your potential energy is built up. When you crank off the collective you begin to fall straight down, turning your potential energy into kinetic energy, the energy of moving downwards. If you crank the collective on again your helicopter will continue to fall for a bit because it takes a while for the rotors to overcome the momentum of the helicopter falling. The time it takes to overcome the momentum and stop you from falling depends on how fast you were falling, which is tied to how heavy your helicopter is and how high you were, as well as how much upwards thrust you can generate with the helicopter you are flying. Each one is different of course.

Momentum in a helicopter is very useful and using it wisely is what keeps you alive. As in the Flight School manual for planes, you want to conserve your Potential energy so you can convert it to Kinetic energy to make the quick get aways. Maintaining control over your helicopter at all times is all important and maintaining control over momentum is the most important.

BF/DC Helicopters – The Players and Their Role on the Battlefield

The role of the helicopter on the battle field can be broken down four ways: transport, support, scouting and attack.

US AH64 (Apache) Attack Helicopter

The US AH64 Apache Attack Helicopter is not a transporter. As the smallest, lightest and therefore most agile (though not the quickest) of the three its best suited for surveillance and quick strikes. This doesn’t mean swoop in and blow your wad, although that can be highly pleasurable. It means rise up and patiently rain death from above. The Apache is far more stable than the Hind because it is not as heavy and therefore isn’t affected by momentum as much. It has the smallest footprint of the three and is not the easiest one to land. All in all though, the Apache is much more agile than the other two. Its light weight and large weapons bank make it a nimble killing machine.

Iraqi Hind Attack Helicopter

The Iraqi Hind Attack helicopter is adept at all four roles but can be quite challenging. Kept on a short leash it can be a extremely effective.

It addition to the pilot and co-pilot the Hind can transport up to 4 people. The Hind bristles with almost as many weapons as the Apache. The Hind is fairly heavy and requires a lot of last second thrust when landing so land it a little more slowly than the others. It’s also top heavy and rolls over easily.

One very important detail regarding the Hind helicopter is the momentum it generates because of its weight. It seems like the rotors are just a bit too small for its weight to compensate for the momentum but in the end this is what makes it the fastest helicopter of the three. The Hind drops like a rock. You can use this to your advantage to drop out of the sky and into a lightning fast attack or escape runs. You simply have to be aware that all movement by the Hind is more dramatic because of the momentum it produces.

Also note you have to be sitting in position 3 or 4 to open the back doors to be able to bailout from the back of the Hind. The pilot and co-pilot just need to press exit, but positions 3 and up have to open the back doors first. To open or close the back door press the Up and Down arrow keys.

US UH-60 (Blackhawk) Helicopter

The US UH-60 Blackhawk Transport helicopter is ideal for loading in a bunch of paratroopers, running them over to the other side of the map and supporting them with machine gun fire after they parachute down and attempt to take the flag. Hovering just off to the side of the flag the Blackhawk can suppress resistance all around from above allowing your paratroopers to move in and take the flag. One word of warning, hovering targets mean easy targets and the machine gunner hanging out the side of the Blackhawk is an open target for snipers. Stinger missiles are the bane of the Blackhawk’s existence.

The Blackhawk is quite slow actually and has only the machine gun on the one side. So it’s really not meant for all out attack. Keep moving and keep your distance because you won’t be able to get away quickly if you get into trouble hovering in one spot. Of the three the Blackhawk hovers the best, is the most stable and is quite easy to land as it has the widest footprint. It’s also the heaviest and slowest so don’t expect to do anything quickly in it.

The Blackhawk is the most stable because the larger rotors allows it to compensate for its weight far more so than the Hind can for its weight. You will also find that even if its weight is greater it doesn’t drop as quickly as the others when you crank off the collective, nor does it generate a lot of momentum. Once again the larger rotors act as wings and you will float downwards or forwards more slowly than the other two. Keep in mind though that the larger rotors take longer to get up to full speed and stop you from plummeting. What this means then is while it is falling more slowly (props acting as wings), it takes longer to stop it from falling (heavy and larger rotors slower). For me this means I tap the collective button a little more to keep the rotors turning near full speed at all times.

Weapons Systems

The Blackhawk is armed with one heavy machine gun on the pilot’s side. As I said above, it really isn’t meant for all out attack but it can be quite effective in a support role. Again, keep your distance and keep moving. If you have no gunner you have no weapons. So if your gunner falls out or is eliminated you better get away quickly as you have no defenses.

The Apache and Hind helicopters on the other hand, are a completely different story. One entitled Death From Above. Both come armed to the teeth with Air-To-Surface missiles and rockets controlled by the pilot and heavy machine guns controlled by the co-pilot. The Apache carries more rockets than the Hind. Both have two banks of ammunition. When you exhaust the first set you will hear some clicking and eventually another rack of missiles and rockets will load up. You have to blow off both sets before they will reload though. Meaning, if you use up all your rockets you have to blow off all your missiles before it will reload both of them.

The heavy machine guns are extremely effective infantry suppressants. A co-pilot will get a lot kills if the pilot can keep it stable enough for him to aim properly. On the less armoured vehicles like planes and APC they are quite lethal as well. They are still effective against the hardware but of course it takes a little while to penetrate their armour. That’s what the missiles and rockets are for.

The missiles are not as effective as you might hope or expect. They do the job if you are very accurate or if you blow off a whole bunch at one target but they are not nearly as effective as the rockets. You know when you look up and see a rain of death pouring down on you from an Apache? It’s usually the rockets that take you out and not the missiles. You could have them land all around you and still live. Unless you hit something dead on you are not going to take them out with a missile.

However, the missiles are much more lethal against air targets. In air-to-air combat you will need them so it’s best not to waste them on ground targets. (Yeah, right) It takes more than a couple to take down an opposing helicopter. It takes ALL of them to take out the AC-310 but it’s also lots of fun to blow missiles into the open back door.

The Hellfire rockets are simply devastating. Hover over a spawn point and drop one on the crowd as soon as they pop up. There’s no better way to take out a whole troop with one shot and this is why you see the chopper pilots with the huge scores. The rockets are mostly for tank suppression of course. Indirect hits cause a lot of splash damage and a direct hit will take out a tank in one shot.

This is a challenge when the tank is moving. You have to account for the speed you are going, the speed the tank is going, the distance to the tank, your elevation, the trajectory of the missiles and rockets and your ping rate. (A high ping means more latency. This means the tank where you see it now is not really where it is. This is increased if your ping rate is higher.)

Repairs and Re-Loading

It takes a long time to repair and reload.

Helicopter repairs can be done at the airport hanger, the chopper pad you may have taken off from or at a vehicle repair pad. It depends on the map though. On Gazala for instance, you can’t repair at the hanger. You have to land on a vehicle repair pad to get fixed up but you can hover over the hanger or chopper pads. More often than not you will land on top of the hanger to repair, but think of what a juicy target you make. Generally you can only repair at your own buildings, but again, it depends on the map. Of course you could always play as an engineer and land and repair yourself. Landing anywhere is what helicopters are good at.

In addition to reloading at the hanger, chopper pad and repair pads you can also reload at the airfield and some but not all reload boxes. Once again, it depends on the map.

You’re best bet is to land inside the hanger. Inside the hanger you are safe from tanks and airborne predators above. (Can’t fly into the hanger? Keep practicing … ) By the time you float in and out you should be all fixed up, loaded and ready to go.

Flight School

Hovering – Lesson 1

Hovering is the first thing you will attempt. In real life you wouldn’t go too high on your first attempt because the very next thing you will want to try is landing.

Pull on the collective (increase thrust) and the helicopter will lift off the ground. Lower the collective and the helicopter will drift back down. Since, for me, the collective is all on or all off I have to tap it to hover in one spot. If I don’t have the rhythm correct it makes it appear I’m bouncing in the air. Boing Boing Boing. Once you get the rhythm its just fine.

If you crank up the collective and hold it there you simply go straight up until you hit the ceiling. The Hind has the advantage because it can rise faster.

Landing – Lesson 1

Lesson 1 is to lift off the ground a bit then gently bring her back down and land. Try doing this till you can do it from a significant height, say a tall office building. If you bring it down too hard you will take damage or even crash. (Imagine that.) So practice landing gently for a minute. Get to know where the ground is compared to your cockpit because it’s slightly different for each helicopter.

If you are hovering and crank off the collective to drop down and land you can do so without damage from a height of about 3 or 4 stories (40 feet). The harder you hit the ground, the more damage you take. Since the Hind is heavier and not held aloft by big rotors it hits the ground the hardest.

If you happen to be twisting the handle to adjust when landing you will notice you will hit the ground on that side first. If you come in straight down you land on all three tires. If you are twisting when you hit the ground you are landing on one tire first and this may affect how the other two tires connect.

Flying – Lesson 1

When you think you are ready to fly, lift off the ground and push the cyclic forward a bit. The nose of the helicopter will dip down and you will begin to advance forward. Your elevation will also drop depending on how much you tilt forward.

Try this … crank up the collective to get in the air. Push the cyclic to the right a bit so you tilt to the right and begin moving sideways to the right. Ease off the cyclic. Remember you just want to get moving, not do a barrel role. You only need to push it enough to tilt a bit and then ease off. You should be moving sideways to the right now with the helicopter titling over that way. To stop moving right, move the cyclic to the left for a bit until the helicopter is titling left now. You will slow down and then stop in mid air. When you come to a stop tap the cyclic right for a second and then off and you should be stopped and hovering in mid air again.

Turning – Lesson 1

There are two ways to turn in a helicopter. You can spin in one spot or you can do a banking turn while in motion, yaw man.

To turn while hovering twist the joystick handle all the way, one way or the other. You will feel the rotor at the back kick in and the tail will be brought around the direction you twist the joystick, pointing the nose. If you just twist the handle and don’t apply any pitch the rotors on top will stay level as will the horizon.

Turning while flying requires a few more moving parts. You can turn the body of the helicopter by twisting the joystick handle all the way one way or the other and it does turn the tail around for you but it takes longer and makes you roll over. (If you are turning left by twisting the cyclic to the right you will come around rolling over to the right.) The faster you are going the longer it takes and the more roll over. So what you need to learn now is a banking turn.

Try this … lets say you want to make a U-turn. Lift off and get going forward. When ready push the cyclic to the left to tilt left then ease off. Now that you are leaning over to your left pull the cyclic straight back. Still tilting left the helicopter nose will now come up and around and you will be pointing the other way, leaning to your left side. When you’ve come all the way around and are now heading in the opposite direction push the cyclic to the right so you lose the left leaning tilt, even out and get the rotors above you to regain any lost altitude. You just drew a half circle with your joystick.

You can exaggerate banking turns by twisting the handle as well so the tail swings around a little more dramatically but keep in mind this will bring your tail up, your nose down and you will begin losing altitude. Nose down, tail up, you will be swooping down but moving forward out of the turn in the opposite direction.

If you pay attention to the patterns you draw with your joystick and practice them you can eventually execute them without thinking about it and know exactly where you will end up in the air. One hundred percent control.

Bailing Out – Lesson 1

Bailing out of the helicopter can be challenging sometimes. The helicopters really don’t have that much armour so when you are getting hit it hurts, the health meter drops quickly and you have less reaction time to jump out than in a plane. You’re usually not as high as in a plane so there is less hang time to deploy your parachute. You tend to get caught up in the rotors or weapon arms. Since you are not moving as fast you tend to land near where the chopper hits the ground and are killed by the explosion.

When you bail it’s usually to the left side. (On the Blackhawk the pilot seat is on the right so you jump out on the right.) So if the shit hits the fan and its time to bail, set yourself up to get out safely. Push right on the cyclic and the helicopter will tilt right. When you jump out you will be on top of the left side of the body. The rotors stop when you bail so if you are on top you can point yourself in the right direction, uh, left actually. If you turn yourself left the helicopter will be floating away on its rotors behind you. You should now be falling forward in the opposite direction.

When you land a bit uneven it sometimes helps to jump out. The rotors stop and the helicopter stabilizes. Just jump back in quick and you are set. Or you can fixer upper, take the flag, remove infantry off your chopper pad, whatever. This doesn’t always work. If you land on a slope the helicopter will roll over on top of you.

Flying Faster – Lesson 2

Once you get flying around you will want to learn how to go faster. Simple cyclic pitch isn’t enough. When you push the cyclic forward you do go forward but very slowly. There really isn’t anything you can do about this because pushing the cyclic forward more or longer doesn’t help. Your nose drops forward and you drop from the sky after it. What you want to do is get some momentum going.

Try this … crank up the collective to get in the air, push forward hard on the cyclic to get moving, crank off the collective for two seconds so you begin dropping, transfer the downward momentum to forward momentum by pulling back on the cyclic while cranking up the collective again to stay aloft. You will be dropping quickly and then the nose will come up and you will be carrying forward rapidly now. You will be lower but you will be going a lot faster.

When you plummet you get a lot of momentum going, straight down. By pulling out of the dive and then pushing forward on the cyclic a bit to stress forwardness you will be going a lot faster because the momentum from the dive is now behind you. You are still being pushed forward by cyclic pitch but you are traveling way faster. The cyclic pitch is now concentrating on pushing you forward instead of keeping you aloft.

Try this … get going forward in a straight line as fast as you can. If you twist the joystick to the right you will roll over to the right as well as have the tail come around. If you do it quick the rollover happens first and you can soak up the tail coming around with the cyclic. This way you are moving forwards still but sideways, tilting to your right and able to shoot at the ground.

Slowing Down to Hover – Lesson 2

Very simple, pull back on the cyclic and point your nose skywards, stop the collective for a second or two, then crank it full to stop and level out to hover. Think about the arc of a long jump. You run forward, jump up and then come down with a stop. No hover though.

It’s usually best to pull back on the cyclic to point the nose up just before you crank off the collective. This little hop makes up for the time the collective is off. When you crank it off you lose the force pushing you forward and only have momentum to work against now. With your nose in the air and tail down, when you now crank up the collective again to make the stop the rotors are only working on stopping your momentum, which is first forward and then downwards. When you’ve soaked up all the forward and downward momentum push forward on the cyclic to level off and come to a hover.

Landing Faster – Lesson 2

There are three kinds of landings: three point, tail first and rolling stop.

If you go up a bit, let go of the collective and land again, all three tires will hit the ground at the same time; a perfect three point landing. Basically you are landing straight down.

When you are flying into a base to land you are not coming in straight down. In this case you can either point the nose to the sky to slow you down and hover above your landing spot, then ease off the collective to drop down and land on all three tires. Or you can swoop in, point your nose to the sky to slow down but not stop, then ease off the collective to begin your descent with nose still up a bit, still moving forward. Your tail tire will contact first at which point the nose will come down hard and the front two tires will contact as well. Not as graceful but a lot faster.

Unless you come straight down, a lot of the time you will come in to land moving forward. Since the helicopters in BF/DC have tires instead of skids you can touch down and come to a rolling stop. Rolling on the tires that is … barrel rolls along the ground on the rotors, while impressing the bystanders, will get you killed and are best not attempted.

The tail on the Blackhawk is a lot longer than the Apache or Hind so you don’t want the nose too high to do a tail first landing. In fact with the Blackhawk you will generally land three point anyway. Blackhawks have a super wide footprint so you can even land rolling on your tires like a plane and it won’t flip over. The Apache has a tiny footprint so you will probably use the tail first landings more often. I recommend the three point landing for the Hind because it is so top heavy. Its foot print is only slightly larger than the Apache but it is taller and heavier which means it doesn’t land as easy nor is it very stable on the ground. It tends to roll over a lot easier than others, especially when landing on uneven surfaces.

Try this … take off, fly to the end of the runway, turn around, come back and try and land. Try a three point, a tail first and a rolling stop.

Try this … take off and try and land on a vehicle repair pad. Since there isn’t a lot of room you will need to do a three point landing. Generally you will be landing on the hangers to repair and reload but that’s just too easy.

Flying Backwards – Lesson 2

With practice you will be able to fly backwards. To do so follow the instructions for Slowing Down To Hover. Flying forward you pull back on the cyclic to point your nose to the sun. If you keep it there you will eventually drift backwards. With nose in the air you won’t have any landmarks or horizon so watch the mini map to navigate. Depending on how high your nose is you will lose a lot of altitude so watch the hills behind you. In general it’s best to try flying backwards when you are fairly high up.

Tactics – Lesson 3

Know You Maps: an offensive and defensive necessity. If you know all the ins and outs of each map you know where to hide, where to attack from, where to run to, which direction the enemy attacks from etc. Know your terrain. Know your enemy.

Looking Down: an offensive tactic. The main advantage for the helicopter in general is its ability to hover in the air. In a plane you fly “around the battlefield”, you cover the whole map. In a tank you cover a localized area but can only suppress what you can see. With a helicopter you can stay in one area and keep it covered, and you are doing so from the air where you can get a good look at everything around you. Not only can you see farther but you can also see things tanks and planes can’t because they are too low, too high or going too fast. Not only can you see more targets you can also do something about them. When you hover though, unless your target is on the horizon, you won’t be able to shoot down. And of course you’re just sitting there where everyone can see you waiting to get hit.

Keep Moving: a defensive technique. If you keep moving it’s a lot harder to hit you. Ground weapons especially love a hovering chopper. If you are not moving, you will find it a lot harder to make a quick get away when necessary. You won’t be able to hit ground targets anyway if you are hovering above them so unless you are taking a flag what’s the point. (Remember is takes 20 seconds to turn a flag.)

Got Co-Pilot?: the best defense is a good offense. If you wait for a co-pilot or go pick one up, your team will be well rewarded. Waiting for one is taking a chance of course if there are jet fighters about. You don’t have to land completely to pick someone up but of course online players can’t jump 30 feet in the air like the bots in single player can so you will have to fly low. I like to pick up a co-pilot because they can concentrate on infantry and I can concentrate on surveillance and armour suppression. They are also handy to parachute out, take a flag and then pick up again. Or if you are hovering over an enemy flag they can take out the spawns without you having to worry about getting the right shot angle and screwing up your hover.

Masking: a defensive technique where you hide behind buildings and terrain. This is probably the most effective tactic you can employ. Rise up to take a look, eliminate anything you see, and then sink down to hide again. Ground targets can’t hit you and planes will have harder time finding you. When they do they have to deal with the terrain issues to get at you. Get to know your maps and plan out your attacks because you don’t want to rise up directly in front of AA gun if they are ready for it.

Stay Low: a defensive way of flying across the map. Many people believe its best to stay low to avoid AA fire and planes. The AA vehicles can’t shoot level and the stationary AA guns have sand bags around them. If you can stay low they can’t hit you. However, if you are on their horizon in front of them they will be able to hit you straight on and any movement won’t be enough to avoid their fire. So if you are coming in low, don’t come straight in.

Fly High: a defensive way of flying across the map. Other people believe its best to stay high, really high, to avoid AA fire and planes. The idea is that the AA won’t be able to hit you as easily if you are higher because of the distance. The planes won’t see you because they are a bit lower and looking down for targets. If they do see you then you have the advantage because you are higher and can drop straight down to avoid them if necessary or strafe their flight path with missiles.

Swoops: an offensive technique where you swoop in past a target, pull a quick 180 and take it out from behind. The back is always less shielded than the front so this is where you want to hit people quickly. Since you want to keep moving anyway use this technique to get in the most advantageous position. You will be doing a lot of “swooping” in a Hind because of its momentum.

Dives: an offensive tactic where you dive nearly straight down at your targets. Most of the AA weapons in BF/DC cannot fire straight up. If you get above them you can tilt the nose straight down, aim and fire. You will end up losing a lot of altitude at the same time so you will want to end up your dive with a swoop in behind the target or to some other juicy spot.

Jinking: a defensive movement from side to side to avoid AA fire or jet fighters. Jink from side to side to keep moving forward avoiding fire then swoop in behind your assailant. You don’t want to hover too long in one spot because you are an easy target. Jink side to side to keep moving over one area.

Sideswiping: an offensive or defensive tactic to keep you moving and still aim on target. Once you’ve got your target in your sights keep them there by circling around them from above or by moving side ways. The idea is to keep the target in your sites but also keep moving so they have to adjust their aim to shoot you back. Moving sideways is something helicopters are good at. If you tilt over and get moving side ways then twist the handle the other way you will move sideways with the tail coming around, tracing a sights circle around your target.

Dusting: an offensive tactic designed to crush the enemy … literally. You can land on or fly through enemy infantry to kill them or knock them off a cliff or building. Pick someone up with the nose then drop them from on high. Run out of weapons? Run over the bastards, chop some heads off on your way back to base!!

Tactics vs. Anti-Aircraft Guns – Lesson 4

Everyone else in the world seems to be able to shoot accurately with these things; I can’t seem to hit anything. So when I’m flying the helicopter I feel like an AA gun target and I avoid them like the plague. Nothing one Hellfire rocket can’t fix though.

The AA guns can shoot farther than you can and can be quite accurate because a helicopter really doesn’t move that quickly. (The AA guns on BattleAxe can see you all the way across the battlefield as soon as you lift off and can take you out.) Generally you want to approach AA guns from the side and keep moving. If they constantly have to adjust their fire they won’t be able to hit you as easily. If you come in head on they have a good chance of getting your first. You really don’t have that much armour when they get the bead on you. If you are one on one with an AA gun, you have to hit them first.

This is where knowing your maps will keep you alive. You have to know where all the gun placements are, where the AA vehicles will start driving from and what route they will generally take. If you stay low you can stay below their range of fire but there’s ways they can compensate for that so you might not want to depend on it. However there is plenty of terrain to hide behind so staying low and unmasking behind the AA can be simple enough. If you stay high you can swoop in behind them or straight down from above where they can’t see or hit you. You will also need to learn how to jink. Pop out from behind the windmill, let loose and pop back behind it again. As with most ground targets use your Hellfire rockets to take out AA, quickly and effectively.

Tactics vs. Tanks – Lesson 4

One on one battles with tanks are my favourite, from either cockpit. There are many chopper pilots who swoop in low behind you and go for the back door. If you know this is coming you just swivel around, wait for the guy to even out and hover a second then blow them out of the sky. You don’t get many shots though.

So as the helicopter pilot I don’t even out. I like to do circles around tanks because they can’t swivel the turret fast enough, get confused and then eventually hesitate or stop to aim. The tanks are a lot easier to hit when one or both of you are stationary.

Generally I don’t worry about tanks on the ground shooting up at me. There are some tankers out there who can aim but it’s such a long shot it isn’t worth the sweat. Once again, since tanks can’t shoot straight up its best to come from above and swoop in behind them. While missiles may take one out eventually, and are fine for eliminating the machine gunner on top, it’s the Hellfire rockets you want to smack down with. One dead on is perfect, two near misses are usually enough.

Tactics vs. Helicopter Dogfights – Lesson 4

Eventually you will find yourself up against another helicopter. Most of the time you won’t see them coming because you are not looking for them, you’re looking down for targets. They don’t see you coming for the same reason. To take one out, your best bet is to get above them and strafe around them with missiles. Even better is having a co-pilot who can keep the smack on with machine gun fire. Aim a little in front of them. It generally takes a few missiles or rockets to take out a helicopter so be prepared for a somewhat extended dogfight.

If you run out of missiles you need to escape. If you rise straight up you can avoid their missiles easier as they won’t be able to shoot up for long as tilting up to shoot at you means they will lose altitude pretty quick. Rise up into the clouds so you can’t see the ground anymore. When your opponent gets as high cut the collective, push the cyclic forward all the way to point the nose at the ground and do a power dive away from them. If you travel underneath them towards your base they won’t be able to turn around fast enough to see where you go. If they are so high they can’t see the ground they will have lost you completely.

Tactics vs. Chasing Planes – Lesson 4

Believe it or not the helicopters can be somewhat effective against the jet fighters. The co-pilot machine guns work quite well as planes don’t have a lot of armour either. Usually this is only effective when the plane is coming straight at you, which is usually too late unless you can jump out of the way. Since planes can only go straight forward at you they are easy to anticipate. The hard part is they are going a lot faster so they are harder to hit. As with helicopter opponents your best bet is to get the height advantage. When they come at you sight in front of them, let loose a hundred missiles and tilt out of the way early. Keep your eye on them because if you lose them they will quickly get the advantage.

Final Exam - Gazala Valley Bridges

My favourite challenge is the valleys and bridges on the Gazala map. There is one long valley with extremely steep sides that runs through the middle of the map. Over this are three bridges. You’ve passed my chopper school class when you can travel up the middle through the valleys at full speed, under the bridges, take out any tanks in the main choke point, travel up the hill to the first flag and land on the vehicle repair pad to take a flag.

Acknowledgements:

- My wife for putting up with all my practicing and swearing.
- Flight School Strategy Guide on PlanetBattleField.com by Caelib.
- Heli Flying Guide on Forums.BF42.com by Sgt Boyd (if you can read Gibberish).
- HowStuffWorks.com (http://travel.howstuffworks.com/helicopter.htm)
- History of Helicopters (http://www.flight100.org/history/helicopter.html)
- All things helicopters at Helis.com (http://www.helis.com/howflies)

Updates:

Created by FreudsMothersRage June, 2003.

I’ll be posting updates and following a number of forums to keep this up to date. I can be emailed directly at ChopperSchool@hotmail.com with any suggestions for the document.

I will also be updating it with the Hueys from the EoD mod soon, stay tuned please.

06-21-2003, 02:19 PM	#1 (permalink)
ChopperSchool Private Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 6	Chopper School Chopper School Helicopters – Intro Helicopters can be extremely agile weapons of mass destruction or hovering Hit Me signs waiting to be blown from the sky. It all depends on the pilot. Comparing the flight of a helicopter to a plane is like comparing the flight of a dragonfly to a bird. A bird can only fly forward, beak into the wind; a dragonfly can tilt, stop in mid air and fly off in any direction. Birds eat dragonflies though; it’s a cruel world. Basic Training Single player in BF/DC is good for one thing and one thing only … practice. If you set up a local CO-OP game with high AI settings you will find a good practice environment for helicopter training. While life on the ground in single player is a joke, life in the sky is quite different. The Bot anti-air defense (AA-guns, tanks, etc) and offense (planes, not helicopters) pose a good challenge, especially for the helicopter newbie. The Bots are not very good helicopter pilots though. You will very often see their helicopters dropping from the sky … much like you see online with human newbies. I recommend setting up a local CO-OP game on the Bocage map for basic training. The number of tanks, anti-aircraft guns and vehicles on such a small but interesting map make for a good challenge. All three helicopters are available. The clear sight lines also help the enemy and since the AA guns can shoot farther than the helicopter can you’re in for a tough fight. Come around that windmill unprepared and you’re AA cannon fodder. The Controls First off … I use a joystick. I have no idea how people are able to fly with the keyboard but some can. I find I simply can’t control all the lateral forces acting on a helicopter without. I’ve got the twist handle rudder control which is probably a must have too. Get a good joystick, its worth it just for the immersion effect. Also … the throttle on my joystick doesn’t work so I use the left keyboard Ctrl button with one hand and joystick in the other. It might be nice to have a slider throttle that works but I’m not spending the cash. I’ve often heard throttles in BF/DC don’t work well anyways because the half way point is off and the all the way off point is reverse. I find the button works well enough but it’s an all on or all off affair so it probably doesn’t work like it should. The only time this makes a difference is when trying to hover. For that you just have to find the right tapping rhythm. The cyclic or joystick controls the lateral movement of the helicopter including forward, backward, and yaw - left and right. (I’ll be using the word tilt to refer to how the body of the helicopter appears to tilt relative to the ground to induce movement.) Pushing the cyclic to the right will tilt the helicopter to the right and it will move to the right. The collective or throttle determines how fast the rotors turn and therefore how high you go. With the collective on high and your hand off the cyclic your helicopter will lift straight up. It’s a beautiful thing. Reducing the collective will make the rotors spin slower and you will begin a gradual descent. Unless of course you crank it off entirely, in which case the helicopter will plummet. As with the planes in BF/DC you can choose a button to allow you to look around you with the mouse. I’ve made mine the left Shift button to go with the left Ctrl button. You won’t be using this much though as the forces acting on a helicopter require you to keep your hands on the controls at all times. To compensate for this I’ve set up the alternate fire buttons on the joystick with the Front and Rear chase views so I can quickly move from looking behind me and back to the cockpit with the touch of ergonomically placed button. For weaponry, the pilot fires the missiles and the co-pilot fires the heavy machine gun. As pilot your primary fire button is Air-To-Surface Missiles and your secondary fire button lets loose kick-ass Air-To-Surface Hellfire rockets. A good pilot can hover in one spot while the co-pilot strafes the forward area with devastating cannon fire. When an AA-gun or tank drives up, let loose with missiles and rockets. The Physics of Helicopter Flight The physics of flying a helicopter is quite different from flying a plane; notice there are no wings to speak of. In fact, it is the rotors on top that are the wings on a helicopter. The air passing over the rotors as they spin around lifts the helicopter up just like they lift a plane. When you first jump in the helicopter the rotors start spinning with flat or no pitch. They are turning but you are not being lifted. When you pull on the collective the rotors spin faster and are turned into the air more sharply and you rise up. This is collective pitch, turning the blades of the rotors into the air evenly all around their circle. When you push on the cyclic this turns the rotor blades into the air more dramatically on one side of the helicopter and not the other which pushes the helicopter that direction. This is cyclic pitch, turning the blades of the rotors into the air on one part of their circle. When you push the cyclic forward the nose drops down and you begin to move forward. You will also drop in elevation. How much you drop depends on how far you push the cyclic forward. What really happens when you push forward on the joystick is, the blades of the rotors are being turned into the air on the back half of the rotor circle more than the front half. They begin chopping the air at the back far more dramatically than on the front half of their circle. Therefore it’s applying more upwards thrusting power at the back than at the front. Thus, the tail of the helicopter is pulled up faster than the front so the nose tilts down and the helicopter moves forward. As soon as the rotors are no longer perpendicular with the ground though, the helicopter will begin to lose altitude. If the rotor at the back of the helicopter was not there you would be spinning in a circle as soon as you left the ground. The torque the from spinning of the rotors on top would be forcing the body of the helicopter around and around. The tail rotor at the back counteracts this by holding the tail in place. Controlling this how you spin in a helicopter. In a real helicopter you spin in one spot with the foot controls. With a game joystick this is what the twist handle control is for. Twisting one way speeds up the rotor at the back of the helicopter so it forces the tail around. Twisting the other way slows the rotor at the back down and allows the rotors on top to twist the helicopter around in one spot. You can exaggerate this with the cyclic by yawing left, right, up or down to give it some pitch which forces the blades to chop harder on one side of the rotor circle, forcing the body around that way. You will turn more dramatically but you will also lose some altitude. One interesting thing to note when flying or landing the helicopters is the rotor blades will never hit anything. I’ve flown through forests and landed right beside the flag pole and the rotor blades don’t hit anything. If you hit something dead on with the windshield or the weapon arms though, say the trunk of a tree or the flag pole, you will feel it, take damage and probably crash. The tail of the helicopter is fully there so watch your backside when spinning in mid air. Potential vs. Kinetic Energy There is a section in the Flight School guide to flying planes on PlanetBattleField.com that explains the difference between Kinetic and Potential Energy. Potential Energy is the energy a body possesses at rest. If you remove the support keeping it at rest the body will move and the potential energy becomes kinetic. Kinetic energy is the energy a body possesses in movement. Momentum, a kind of Kinetic energy, is the movement a body retains after you remove the force that got it moving. Basically the mass of the body keeps it going when you remove the force that got it going. The heavier something is the more momentum is will generate. When you hover in the air in a helicopter your potential energy is built up. When you crank off the collective you begin to fall straight down, turning your potential energy into kinetic energy, the energy of moving downwards. If you crank the collective on again your helicopter will continue to fall for a bit because it takes a while for the rotors to overcome the momentum of the helicopter falling. The time it takes to overcome the momentum and stop you from falling depends on how fast you were falling, which is tied to how heavy your helicopter is and how high you were, as well as how much upwards thrust you can generate with the helicopter you are flying. Each one is different of course. Momentum in a helicopter is very useful and using it wisely is what keeps you alive. As in the Flight School manual for planes, you want to conserve your Potential energy so you can convert it to Kinetic energy to make the quick get aways. Maintaining control over your helicopter at all times is all important and maintaining control over momentum is the most important. BF/DC Helicopters – The Players and Their Role on the Battlefield The role of the helicopter on the battle field can be broken down four ways: transport, support, scouting and attack. US AH64 (Apache) Attack Helicopter The US AH64 Apache Attack Helicopter is not a transporter. As the smallest, lightest and therefore most agile (though not the quickest) of the three its best suited for surveillance and quick strikes. This doesn’t mean swoop in and blow your wad, although that can be highly pleasurable. It means rise up and patiently rain death from above. The Apache is far more stable than the Hind because it is not as heavy and therefore isn’t affected by momentum as much. It has the smallest footprint of the three and is not the easiest one to land. All in all though, the Apache is much more agile than the other two. Its light weight and large weapons bank make it a nimble killing machine. Iraqi Hind Attack Helicopter The Iraqi Hind Attack helicopter is adept at all four roles but can be quite challenging. Kept on a short leash it can be a extremely effective. It addition to the pilot and co-pilot the Hind can transport up to 4 people. The Hind bristles with almost as many weapons as the Apache. The Hind is fairly heavy and requires a lot of last second thrust when landing so land it a little more slowly than the others. It’s also top heavy and rolls over easily. One very important detail regarding the Hind helicopter is the momentum it generates because of its weight. It seems like the rotors are just a bit too small for its weight to compensate for the momentum but in the end this is what makes it the fastest helicopter of the three. The Hind drops like a rock. You can use this to your advantage to drop out of the sky and into a lightning fast attack or escape runs. You simply have to be aware that all movement by the Hind is more dramatic because of the momentum it produces. Also note you have to be sitting in position 3 or 4 to open the back doors to be able to bailout from the back of the Hind. The pilot and co-pilot just need to press exit, but positions 3 and up have to open the back doors first. To open or close the back door press the Up and Down arrow keys. US UH-60 (Blackhawk) Helicopter The US UH-60 Blackhawk Transport helicopter is ideal for loading in a bunch of paratroopers, running them over to the other side of the map and supporting them with machine gun fire after they parachute down and attempt to take the flag. Hovering just off to the side of the flag the Blackhawk can suppress resistance all around from above allowing your paratroopers to move in and take the flag. One word of warning, hovering targets mean easy targets and the machine gunner hanging out the side of the Blackhawk is an open target for snipers. Stinger missiles are the bane of the Blackhawk’s existence. The Blackhawk is quite slow actually and has only the machine gun on the one side. So it’s really not meant for all out attack. Keep moving and keep your distance because you won’t be able to get away quickly if you get into trouble hovering in one spot. Of the three the Blackhawk hovers the best, is the most stable and is quite easy to land as it has the widest footprint. It’s also the heaviest and slowest so don’t expect to do anything quickly in it. The Blackhawk is the most stable because the larger rotors allows it to compensate for its weight far more so than the Hind can for its weight. You will also find that even if its weight is greater it doesn’t drop as quickly as the others when you crank off the collective, nor does it generate a lot of momentum. Once again the larger rotors act as wings and you will float downwards or forwards more slowly than the other two. Keep in mind though that the larger rotors take longer to get up to full speed and stop you from plummeting. What this means then is while it is falling more slowly (props acting as wings), it takes longer to stop it from falling (heavy and larger rotors slower). For me this means I tap the collective button a little more to keep the rotors turning near full speed at all times. Weapons Systems The Blackhawk is armed with one heavy machine gun on the pilot’s side. As I said above, it really isn’t meant for all out attack but it can be quite effective in a support role. Again, keep your distance and keep moving. If you have no gunner you have no weapons. So if your gunner falls out or is eliminated you better get away quickly as you have no defenses. The Apache and Hind helicopters on the other hand, are a completely different story. One entitled Death From Above. Both come armed to the teeth with Air-To-Surface missiles and rockets controlled by the pilot and heavy machine guns controlled by the co-pilot. The Apache carries more rockets than the Hind. Both have two banks of ammunition. When you exhaust the first set you will hear some clicking and eventually another rack of missiles and rockets will load up. You have to blow off both sets before they will reload though. Meaning, if you use up all your rockets you have to blow off all your missiles before it will reload both of them. The heavy machine guns are extremely effective infantry suppressants. A co-pilot will get a lot kills if the pilot can keep it stable enough for him to aim properly. On the less armoured vehicles like planes and APC they are quite lethal as well. They are still effective against the hardware but of course it takes a little while to penetrate their armour. That’s what the missiles and rockets are for. The missiles are not as effective as you might hope or expect. They do the job if you are very accurate or if you blow off a whole bunch at one target but they are not nearly as effective as the rockets. You know when you look up and see a rain of death pouring down on you from an Apache? It’s usually the rockets that take you out and not the missiles. You could have them land all around you and still live. Unless you hit something dead on you are not going to take them out with a missile. However, the missiles are much more lethal against air targets. In air-to-air combat you will need them so it’s best not to waste them on ground targets. (Yeah, right) It takes more than a couple to take down an opposing helicopter. It takes ALL of them to take out the AC-310 but it’s also lots of fun to blow missiles into the open back door. The Hellfire rockets are simply devastating. Hover over a spawn point and drop one on the crowd as soon as they pop up. There’s no better way to take out a whole troop with one shot and this is why you see the chopper pilots with the huge scores. The rockets are mostly for tank suppression of course. Indirect hits cause a lot of splash damage and a direct hit will take out a tank in one shot. This is a challenge when the tank is moving. You have to account for the speed you are going, the speed the tank is going, the distance to the tank, your elevation, the trajectory of the missiles and rockets and your ping rate. (A high ping means more latency. This means the tank where you see it now is not really where it is. This is increased if your ping rate is higher.) Repairs and Re-Loading It takes a long time to repair and reload. Helicopter repairs can be done at the airport hanger, the chopper pad you may have taken off from or at a vehicle repair pad. It depends on the map though. On Gazala for instance, you can’t repair at the hanger. You have to land on a vehicle repair pad to get fixed up but you can hover over the hanger or chopper pads. More often than not you will land on top of the hanger to repair, but think of what a juicy target you make. Generally you can only repair at your own buildings, but again, it depends on the map. Of course you could always play as an engineer and land and repair yourself. Landing anywhere is what helicopters are good at. In addition to reloading at the hanger, chopper pad and repair pads you can also reload at the airfield and some but not all reload boxes. Once again, it depends on the map. You’re best bet is to land inside the hanger. Inside the hanger you are safe from tanks and airborne predators above. (Can’t fly into the hanger? Keep practicing … ) By the time you float in and out you should be all fixed up, loaded and ready to go. Flight School Hovering – Lesson 1 Hovering is the first thing you will attempt. In real life you wouldn’t go too high on your first attempt because the very next thing you will want to try is landing. Pull on the collective (increase thrust) and the helicopter will lift off the ground. Lower the collective and the helicopter will drift back down. Since, for me, the collective is all on or all off I have to tap it to hover in one spot. If I don’t have the rhythm correct it makes it appear I’m bouncing in the air. Boing Boing Boing. Once you get the rhythm its just fine. If you crank up the collective and hold it there you simply go straight up until you hit the ceiling. The Hind has the advantage because it can rise faster. Landing – Lesson 1 Lesson 1 is to lift off the ground a bit then gently bring her back down and land. Try doing this till you can do it from a significant height, say a tall office building. If you bring it down too hard you will take damage or even crash. (Imagine that.) So practice landing gently for a minute. Get to know where the ground is compared to your cockpit because it’s slightly different for each helicopter. If you are hovering and crank off the collective to drop down and land you can do so without damage from a height of about 3 or 4 stories (40 feet). The harder you hit the ground, the more damage you take. Since the Hind is heavier and not held aloft by big rotors it hits the ground the hardest. If you happen to be twisting the handle to adjust when landing you will notice you will hit the ground on that side first. If you come in straight down you land on all three tires. If you are twisting when you hit the ground you are landing on one tire first and this may affect how the other two tires connect. Flying – Lesson 1 When you think you are ready to fly, lift off the ground and push the cyclic forward a bit. The nose of the helicopter will dip down and you will begin to advance forward. Your elevation will also drop depending on how much you tilt forward. Try this … crank up the collective to get in the air. Push the cyclic to the right a bit so you tilt to the right and begin moving sideways to the right. Ease off the cyclic. Remember you just want to get moving, not do a barrel role. You only need to push it enough to tilt a bit and then ease off. You should be moving sideways to the right now with the helicopter titling over that way. To stop moving right, move the cyclic to the left for a bit until the helicopter is titling left now. You will slow down and then stop in mid air. When you come to a stop tap the cyclic right for a second and then off and you should be stopped and hovering in mid air again. Turning – Lesson 1 There are two ways to turn in a helicopter. You can spin in one spot or you can do a banking turn while in motion, yaw man. To turn while hovering twist the joystick handle all the way, one way or the other. You will feel the rotor at the back kick in and the tail will be brought around the direction you twist the joystick, pointing the nose. If you just twist the handle and don’t apply any pitch the rotors on top will stay level as will the horizon. Turning while flying requires a few more moving parts. You can turn the body of the helicopter by twisting the joystick handle all the way one way or the other and it does turn the tail around for you but it takes longer and makes you roll over. (If you are turning left by twisting the cyclic to the right you will come around rolling over to the right.) The faster you are going the longer it takes and the more roll over. So what you need to learn now is a banking turn. Try this … lets say you want to make a U-turn. Lift off and get going forward. When ready push the cyclic to the left to tilt left then ease off. Now that you are leaning over to your left pull the cyclic straight back. Still tilting left the helicopter nose will now come up and around and you will be pointing the other way, leaning to your left side. When you’ve come all the way around and are now heading in the opposite direction push the cyclic to the right so you lose the left leaning tilt, even out and get the rotors above you to regain any lost altitude. You just drew a half circle with your joystick. You can exaggerate banking turns by twisting the handle as well so the tail swings around a little more dramatically but keep in mind this will bring your tail up, your nose down and you will begin losing altitude. Nose down, tail up, you will be swooping down but moving forward out of the turn in the opposite direction. If you pay attention to the patterns you draw with your joystick and practice them you can eventually execute them without thinking about it and know exactly where you will end up in the air. One hundred percent control. Bailing Out – Lesson 1 Bailing out of the helicopter can be challenging sometimes. The helicopters really don’t have that much armour so when you are getting hit it hurts, the health meter drops quickly and you have less reaction time to jump out than in a plane. You’re usually not as high as in a plane so there is less hang time to deploy your parachute. You tend to get caught up in the rotors or weapon arms. Since you are not moving as fast you tend to land near where the chopper hits the ground and are killed by the explosion. When you bail it’s usually to the left side. (On the Blackhawk the pilot seat is on the right so you jump out on the right.) So if the shit hits the fan and its time to bail, set yourself up to get out safely. Push right on the cyclic and the helicopter will tilt right. When you jump out you will be on top of the left side of the body. The rotors stop when you bail so if you are on top you can point yourself in the right direction, uh, left actually. If you turn yourself left the helicopter will be floating away on its rotors behind you. You should now be falling forward in the opposite direction. When you land a bit uneven it sometimes helps to jump out. The rotors stop and the helicopter stabilizes. Just jump back in quick and you are set. Or you can fixer upper, take the flag, remove infantry off your chopper pad, whatever. This doesn’t always work. If you land on a slope the helicopter will roll over on top of you. Flying Faster – Lesson 2 Once you get flying around you will want to learn how to go faster. Simple cyclic pitch isn’t enough. When you push the cyclic forward you do go forward but very slowly. There really isn’t anything you can do about this because pushing the cyclic forward more or longer doesn’t help. Your nose drops forward and you drop from the sky after it. What you want to do is get some momentum going. Try this … crank up the collective to get in the air, push forward hard on the cyclic to get moving, crank off the collective for two seconds so you begin dropping, transfer the downward momentum to forward momentum by pulling back on the cyclic while cranking up the collective again to stay aloft. You will be dropping quickly and then the nose will come up and you will be carrying forward rapidly now. You will be lower but you will be going a lot faster. When you plummet you get a lot of momentum going, straight down. By pulling out of the dive and then pushing forward on the cyclic a bit to stress forwardness you will be going a lot faster because the momentum from the dive is now behind you. You are still being pushed forward by cyclic pitch but you are traveling way faster. The cyclic pitch is now concentrating on pushing you forward instead of keeping you aloft. Try this … get going forward in a straight line as fast as you can. If you twist the joystick to the right you will roll over to the right as well as have the tail come around. If you do it quick the rollover happens first and you can soak up the tail coming around with the cyclic. This way you are moving forwards still but sideways, tilting to your right and able to shoot at the ground. Slowing Down to Hover – Lesson 2 Very simple, pull back on the cyclic and point your nose skywards, stop the collective for a second or two, then crank it full to stop and level out to hover. Think about the arc of a long jump. You run forward, jump up and then come down with a stop. No hover though. It’s usually best to pull back on the cyclic to point the nose up just before you crank off the collective. This little hop makes up for the time the collective is off. When you crank it off you lose the force pushing you forward and only have momentum to work against now. With your nose in the air and tail down, when you now crank up the collective again to make the stop the rotors are only working on stopping your momentum, which is first forward and then downwards. When you’ve soaked up all the forward and downward momentum push forward on the cyclic to level off and come to a hover. Landing Faster – Lesson 2 There are three kinds of landings: three point, tail first and rolling stop. If you go up a bit, let go of the collective and land again, all three tires will hit the ground at the same time; a perfect three point landing. Basically you are landing straight down. When you are flying into a base to land you are not coming in straight down. In this case you can either point the nose to the sky to slow you down and hover above your landing spot, then ease off the collective to drop down and land on all three tires. Or you can swoop in, point your nose to the sky to slow down but not stop, then ease off the collective to begin your descent with nose still up a bit, still moving forward. Your tail tire will contact first at which point the nose will come down hard and the front two tires will contact as well. Not as graceful but a lot faster. Unless you come straight down, a lot of the time you will come in to land moving forward. Since the helicopters in BF/DC have tires instead of skids you can touch down and come to a rolling stop. Rolling on the tires that is … barrel rolls along the ground on the rotors, while impressing the bystanders, will get you killed and are best not attempted. The tail on the Blackhawk is a lot longer than the Apache or Hind so you don’t want the nose too high to do a tail first landing. In fact with the Blackhawk you will generally land three point anyway. Blackhawks have a super wide footprint so you can even land rolling on your tires like a plane and it won’t flip over. The Apache has a tiny footprint so you will probably use the tail first landings more often. I recommend the three point landing for the Hind because it is so top heavy. Its foot print is only slightly larger than the Apache but it is taller and heavier which means it doesn’t land as easy nor is it very stable on the ground. It tends to roll over a lot easier than others, especially when landing on uneven surfaces. Try this … take off, fly to the end of the runway, turn around, come back and try and land. Try a three point, a tail first and a rolling stop. Try this … take off and try and land on a vehicle repair pad. Since there isn’t a lot of room you will need to do a three point landing. Generally you will be landing on the hangers to repair and reload but that’s just too easy. Flying Backwards – Lesson 2 With practice you will be able to fly backwards. To do so follow the instructions for Slowing Down To Hover. Flying forward you pull back on the cyclic to point your nose to the sun. If you keep it there you will eventually drift backwards. With nose in the air you won’t have any landmarks or horizon so watch the mini map to navigate. Depending on how high your nose is you will lose a lot of altitude so watch the hills behind you. In general it’s best to try flying backwards when you are fairly high up. Tactics – Lesson 3 Know You Maps: an offensive and defensive necessity. If you know all the ins and outs of each map you know where to hide, where to attack from, where to run to, which direction the enemy attacks from etc. Know your terrain. Know your enemy. Looking Down: an offensive tactic. The main advantage for the helicopter in general is its ability to hover in the air. In a plane you fly “around the battlefield”, you cover the whole map. In a tank you cover a localized area but can only suppress what you can see. With a helicopter you can stay in one area and keep it covered, and you are doing so from the air where you can get a good look at everything around you. Not only can you see farther but you can also see things tanks and planes can’t because they are too low, too high or going too fast. Not only can you see more targets you can also do something about them. When you hover though, unless your target is on the horizon, you won’t be able to shoot down. And of course you’re just sitting there where everyone can see you waiting to get hit. Keep Moving: a defensive technique. If you keep moving it’s a lot harder to hit you. Ground weapons especially love a hovering chopper. If you are not moving, you will find it a lot harder to make a quick get away when necessary. You won’t be able to hit ground targets anyway if you are hovering above them so unless you are taking a flag what’s the point. (Remember is takes 20 seconds to turn a flag.) Got Co-Pilot?: the best defense is a good offense. If you wait for a co-pilot or go pick one up, your team will be well rewarded. Waiting for one is taking a chance of course if there are jet fighters about. You don’t have to land completely to pick someone up but of course online players can’t jump 30 feet in the air like the bots in single player can so you will have to fly low. I like to pick up a co-pilot because they can concentrate on infantry and I can concentrate on surveillance and armour suppression. They are also handy to parachute out, take a flag and then pick up again. Or if you are hovering over an enemy flag they can take out the spawns without you having to worry about getting the right shot angle and screwing up your hover. Masking: a defensive technique where you hide behind buildings and terrain. This is probably the most effective tactic you can employ. Rise up to take a look, eliminate anything you see, and then sink down to hide again. Ground targets can’t hit you and planes will have harder time finding you. When they do they have to deal with the terrain issues to get at you. Get to know your maps and plan out your attacks because you don’t want to rise up directly in front of AA gun if they are ready for it. Stay Low: a defensive way of flying across the map. Many people believe its best to stay low to avoid AA fire and planes. The AA vehicles can’t shoot level and the stationary AA guns have sand bags around them. If you can stay low they can’t hit you. However, if you are on their horizon in front of them they will be able to hit you straight on and any movement won’t be enough to avoid their fire. So if you are coming in low, don’t come straight in. Fly High: a defensive way of flying across the map. Other people believe its best to stay high, really high, to avoid AA fire and planes. The idea is that the AA won’t be able to hit you as easily if you are higher because of the distance. The planes won’t see you because they are a bit lower and looking down for targets. If they do see you then you have the advantage because you are higher and can drop straight down to avoid them if necessary or strafe their flight path with missiles. Swoops: an offensive technique where you swoop in past a target, pull a quick 180 and take it out from behind. The back is always less shielded than the front so this is where you want to hit people quickly. Since you want to keep moving anyway use this technique to get in the most advantageous position. You will be doing a lot of “swooping” in a Hind because of its momentum. Dives: an offensive tactic where you dive nearly straight down at your targets. Most of the AA weapons in BF/DC cannot fire straight up. If you get above them you can tilt the nose straight down, aim and fire. You will end up losing a lot of altitude at the same time so you will want to end up your dive with a swoop in behind the target or to some other juicy spot. Jinking: a defensive movement from side to side to avoid AA fire or jet fighters. Jink from side to side to keep moving forward avoiding fire then swoop in behind your assailant. You don’t want to hover too long in one spot because you are an easy target. Jink side to side to keep moving over one area. Sideswiping: an offensive or defensive tactic to keep you moving and still aim on target. Once you’ve got your target in your sights keep them there by circling around them from above or by moving side ways. The idea is to keep the target in your sites but also keep moving so they have to adjust their aim to shoot you back. Moving sideways is something helicopters are good at. If you tilt over and get moving side ways then twist the handle the other way you will move sideways with the tail coming around, tracing a sights circle around your target. Dusting: an offensive tactic designed to crush the enemy … literally. You can land on or fly through enemy infantry to kill them or knock them off a cliff or building. Pick someone up with the nose then drop them from on high. Run out of weapons? Run over the bastards, chop some heads off on your way back to base!! Tactics vs. Anti-Aircraft Guns – Lesson 4 Everyone else in the world seems to be able to shoot accurately with these things; I can’t seem to hit anything. So when I’m flying the helicopter I feel like an AA gun target and I avoid them like the plague. Nothing one Hellfire rocket can’t fix though. The AA guns can shoot farther than you can and can be quite accurate because a helicopter really doesn’t move that quickly. (The AA guns on BattleAxe can see you all the way across the battlefield as soon as you lift off and can take you out.) Generally you want to approach AA guns from the side and keep moving. If they constantly have to adjust their fire they won’t be able to hit you as easily. If you come in head on they have a good chance of getting your first. You really don’t have that much armour when they get the bead on you. If you are one on one with an AA gun, you have to hit them first. This is where knowing your maps will keep you alive. You have to know where all the gun placements are, where the AA vehicles will start driving from and what route they will generally take. If you stay low you can stay below their range of fire but there’s ways they can compensate for that so you might not want to depend on it. However there is plenty of terrain to hide behind so staying low and unmasking behind the AA can be simple enough. If you stay high you can swoop in behind them or straight down from above where they can’t see or hit you. You will also need to learn how to jink. Pop out from behind the windmill, let loose and pop back behind it again. As with most ground targets use your Hellfire rockets to take out AA, quickly and effectively. Tactics vs. Tanks – Lesson 4 One on one battles with tanks are my favourite, from either cockpit. There are many chopper pilots who swoop in low behind you and go for the back door. If you know this is coming you just swivel around, wait for the guy to even out and hover a second then blow them out of the sky. You don’t get many shots though. So as the helicopter pilot I don’t even out. I like to do circles around tanks because they can’t swivel the turret fast enough, get confused and then eventually hesitate or stop to aim. The tanks are a lot easier to hit when one or both of you are stationary. Generally I don’t worry about tanks on the ground shooting up at me. There are some tankers out there who can aim but it’s such a long shot it isn’t worth the sweat. Once again, since tanks can’t shoot straight up its best to come from above and swoop in behind them. While missiles may take one out eventually, and are fine for eliminating the machine gunner on top, it’s the Hellfire rockets you want to smack down with. One dead on is perfect, two near misses are usually enough. Tactics vs. Helicopter Dogfights – Lesson 4 Eventually you will find yourself up against another helicopter. Most of the time you won’t see them coming because you are not looking for them, you’re looking down for targets. They don’t see you coming for the same reason. To take one out, your best bet is to get above them and strafe around them with missiles. Even better is having a co-pilot who can keep the smack on with machine gun fire. Aim a little in front of them. It generally takes a few missiles or rockets to take out a helicopter so be prepared for a somewhat extended dogfight. If you run out of missiles you need to escape. If you rise straight up you can avoid their missiles easier as they won’t be able to shoot up for long as tilting up to shoot at you means they will lose altitude pretty quick. Rise up into the clouds so you can’t see the ground anymore. When your opponent gets as high cut the collective, push the cyclic forward all the way to point the nose at the ground and do a power dive away from them. If you travel underneath them towards your base they won’t be able to turn around fast enough to see where you go. If they are so high they can’t see the ground they will have lost you completely. Tactics vs. Chasing Planes – Lesson 4 Believe it or not the helicopters can be somewhat effective against the jet fighters. The co-pilot machine guns work quite well as planes don’t have a lot of armour either. Usually this is only effective when the plane is coming straight at you, which is usually too late unless you can jump out of the way. Since planes can only go straight forward at you they are easy to anticipate. The hard part is they are going a lot faster so they are harder to hit. As with helicopter opponents your best bet is to get the height advantage. When they come at you sight in front of them, let loose a hundred missiles and tilt out of the way early. Keep your eye on them because if you lose them they will quickly get the advantage. Final Exam - Gazala Valley Bridges My favourite challenge is the valleys and bridges on the Gazala map. There is one long valley with extremely steep sides that runs through the middle of the map. Over this are three bridges. You’ve passed my chopper school class when you can travel up the middle through the valleys at full speed, under the bridges, take out any tanks in the main choke point, travel up the hill to the first flag and land on the vehicle repair pad to take a flag. Acknowledgements: - My wife for putting up with all my practicing and swearing. - Flight School Strategy Guide on PlanetBattleField.com by Caelib. - Heli Flying Guide on Forums.BF42.com by Sgt Boyd (if you can read Gibberish). - HowStuffWorks.com (http://travel.howstuffworks.com/helicopter.htm) - History of Helicopters (http://www.flight100.org/history/helicopter.html) - All things helicopters at Helis.com (http://www.helis.com/howflies) Updates: Created by FreudsMothersRage June, 2003. I’ll be posting updates and following a number of forums to keep this up to date. I can be emailed directly at ChopperSchool@hotmail.com with any suggestions for the document. I will also be updating it with the Hueys from the EoD mod soon, stay tuned please.