Basic Chopper Tips

[Soulis6]

Even though Fuzzhead and Caboose have already pointed out some of the finer details of chopper flying, i thought i would give my input as well for all choppers. These are more basic tips for people who may have not had much experience with choppers yet.


For all choppers:

1. Practice, practice, practice. There is almost no way your going to be a good PR pilot on your first trip. It takes some time to get a feel for each of the controls. Start a game by yourself or join a game with a small amount of people in it until you feel like your comfortable flying.

2. Communication with squad members is key. Doesn't matter what your flying in you need to be aware of where enemies are and where your friends are. This will help avoid teamkills, attempting to land in a hail of AA fire, and other such 'mishaps'.

3. On maps that contain jets, make sure you either coordinate with jet pilots to make sure your airspace is secure or have friendly AA units covering you. Those jets will make your trip a short one.

Attack Choppers:

1. DON'T FLY SOLO! Nothing is worse then a wasted apache with no gunner.

2. Constant communication with your gunner/pilot is a must. You have to coordinate together to spot, line up, and hit the targets, regardless of weapon.

3. Be very careful when attacking with the missiles. I can't tell you the number of times i have seen a pilot nosedive into the ground because he went out of control trying to line up his target. If the target is already too far below you, don't dive forward and accelerate. Just be patient and circle around.

4. Time your shots with the main cannon. Stay steady for your gunner to light up targets, but don't stay in one spot too long. The cannon is a very strong weapon and it doesn't take more then few rounds to destroy any inf or light vehicles.

5. Know what weapons to use against what targets. The gunner's main cannon is best for any soft targets, i.e. infantry, light vehicles. The gunner's guided missiles are excellent for taking out single tanks. The pilots missiles are great for any groups of vehicles, infantry or just instilling a little fear into nearby enemies.


Heavy Transport Choppers:

1.Whatever you do, whatever your in, don't try to land in a hot LZ. The number one mistake I see pilots make when dropping people off is they land right in the middle of a firefight or a hundred feet from an apc. This is also part of communication and your squad should let you know of any hostiles in the area of the LZ.

2. Don't fly directly in a straight line to an area if your squad (or anyone else your transporting) is being dropped off near an enemy controlled area. The main place enemies will be watching out for threats from is going to be the direction of your nearest flag or airfield. The longer way is better if it means your squad not all dying.

3. If you start taking any fire while landing, get out ASAP. This goes back to number 1 and if your taking fire, then the LZ is hot. If it's a few random pings from a pistol then depending on circumstance it might be ok, but anything more then that find another LZ.

4. Fly high but start your descent early when coming into the LZ. These thing descend slowly and you don't want to be a target for longer then you have to.

5. Keep your squads safety in mind when dropping them off. Wait a second or two after everyone disembarks before you take off, and when you take off try to go as straight vertical as you can till your about 10-15 feet in the air.

6. Land on even ground, otherwise hover a few feet above the ground and let your squad jump out from there. Your not going to help your squad out by landing on an angle, flipping over, and killing them all. Also you can drop them off from quite a bit higher if your over water. They won't take much, if any damage from higher falls if they land in water.

7. Stay away from sharp turns. These large choppers have much more weight behind them and will quickly spiral out of control if you let them. Easy, soft turns are your friends.

8. For more detailed tips about surviving in the deadly skies refer to Caboose's excellent Known threat evasion guide.


Small Transport Choppers:

1. Most of the same tips as heavy transports apply here but with a few changes. These smaller helos are much more fragile so you need to be extra careful about landing in a hot LZ.

2. See number 2 above for heavy transports but x3. Your passengers are very exposed on these so keep them away from ANY small arms fire because it will kill them.

3. These things accelerate and stop on a heartbeat, but take longer to ascend and descend. This means you can come in to the LZ at a steep angle fast then quickly stop right as you get near the ground.

4. Keep fast and mobile, and only stop when you are dropping off. You can't be shot down by AA missiles in these, but a .50 cal or AA emplacement will drop you out of the sky just as fast. Don't stay in one spot for longer then you have to and fly in a straight line towards or away from enemy fire.

5. If your not providing transport you can provide excellent recon for your squad in these, spotting out enemy armor and troop movements as you fly over. Just make sure you have a mic as it's a little more tricky to fly and type.




Thats about all I can think of at the moment and will continue to update this. Hope this helps!



*edit* sorry, I posted this in the wrong section. If you can move this to chopper tactics I will love you long time!

**edit** thank you!

[=WFL= Sgt Bilko]

Yes, admins pls move to Heli section!

Good post.

[nedlands1]

My helicopter tips:

1. Fly the attack chopper solo IF there is no one else to gun, no one spotting enemy armor and if you are a competent helicopter pilot. If no one is spotting the enemy tanks/AA and you are relying on your gunner to engage the enemy with TV missiles then your life will be very short as you will have to be within visual range to engage and probably will be noticed before you even see your target. In order to allow your gunner to fire his missile you must circle or hover making you a very easy target.

If you are by yourself you can use speed to your advantage in order to surprise enemy tanks and avoid their fire. Never underestimate a rocket barrage to the rear or a single rocket to the engineer/crewman repairing his vehicle.

If your team is on the ball spotting enemy armor or even better passing that information on to your commander who then places attack orders on the enemy then you are in business and definitely need a gunner so you can TV missile targets beyond visual range thus keeping your chopper out of harm's way.

2. NEVER attempt to land if turning or strafing since this will result in the helicopter flipping most of the time

3. Once your chopper has warmed up wait a few more seconds before taking off or it will be sluggish for 10-15 second more are you will fly very slowly.

4. Copilots in small helicopters are good only one thing which is spotting enemy forces.

5. Be a coward when flying but decisive once you have made a decision. eg return and repair if you take a bit of ground fire and land if you have already descended.

6. Don't fly if you have ping spikes, try to gun instead

7. Fly close to the terrain when possible, especially past hills, to avoid missile lock and other opportunities for other attack but make sure you have enough height if your gunner needs to fire off a TV missile.

8. Spot enemy helicopters to make your gunner or pilot's job easier.

9. Learn to lead with those dumb-fire rockets.

10. Avoid landing on surfaces which are sloped to the side or to the rear

11. Avoid over-enthusiastic attacks which plow your chopper inadvertently into trees/poles/the target Instead, let them sweat after the first pass, attack something else and then come back to finish the job once they have forgotten about you and let their guard down.

[sekiryu]

I'm having difficulty (no matter how much I practice) with the choppers. The problem is the sensitivity. It's way to high. A millimeter of movement on my joystick, translates to a huge overcorrection in the game--and it's not possible to move the joystick any less than a millimeter.

For instance, when I try to hover, particularly the Little Bird, it tilts to one side, so I move the joystick about 2 millimeters to the opposite side, and then instead of leveling out like it should, it tilts the other way.

Also, one thing that bugs me, is that when the HUD's crosshair is lined up with the artificial horizon, the chopper shouldn't have any movement at all, yet it still moves forward. When the crosshair is about a centimeter above the artificial horizon, to where the chopper should move backwards, it's still moving forward, and then slowly comes to a hover. This makes it impossible to take off without going forward and crashing into something after immediately leaving the ground.

Is my joystick just **** or what? The choppers in Flight Simulator 10, with 100% realism, max sensitivity, no null zone, are easier to fly than the ones in PR.

[Happy]

Turn down your sensitivity in the settings.


My tip:

Maintain a distance at a minimum of 1 feet from ground, trees, and/or other obstacles. Failing to do so can be hazardous to your health.

[Dunehunter]

Actually, drops in hot LZs -are- possible, if tricky, but can be rather devastating for the enemy. You just have to make sure that you approach from a high altitude, then dive straight down, aiming a bit short of where you intend to drop. Right before you reach the ground, pull up and decelerate. If you time it right, you can hover/touch the ground softly in a really short amount of time. At this point, comms are critical. Your passengers have to bail -immediately-, even before you touch down, and go straight to prone, so you can go in, drop, and get the hell out off dodge as quickly as possible.

[sekiryu]

Turn down your sensitivity in the settings.

It's at .10 (as far down as possible).

[Bonsai]

All choppers:

Everybody in your chopper (gunner/co-pilot/passenger) should scan the area all the time and report threats immediately. Especially when you`re about to approach for the drop-off you, as a pilot, focus on the LZ and the terrain and your passenger can use their time for spotting threats.

[sekiryu]

Odd...I just flew some choppers and they were much better. Especially the Seahawk. I was able to hold a hover for nearly a minute.

The Little Bird is still a little twitchy, the Cobra is super twitchy, and the Merlin was parked in such a bad spot (Ghost Train) that I flipped over on takeoff.

[fuzzhead]

Important Maneuvers to Practice

* Fast extraction - Fly at high velocity to an extraction point of your choice (preferably flags), land as quickly as you can, wait 3 seconds then take off and return to base/helicopter pad. Repeat.

* Ultra-low altitude flight - Fly between 1-5 meters off the ground at medium to high velocity. Try this through riverbeds and above jungles.

* Evasive maneuvers - Imagine someone is shooting at you and try to get away as fast as possible, doing various maneuvers to avoid the enemy "fire".

* Hovering - One of the most crucial skills for a helicopter pilot. You should preferably not exceed 10-20 KM/H.

* Circle strafing - Strafe in one direction while you yaw the helicopter in the opposite, try to keep your crosshair fixed on one spot.

* Flying under/very close to objects - Try flying under bridges or between tight passages. Very useful to learn the dimensions of the helicopter.

[Mora]

I disagree on the low flying part, for transport choppers its maybe good. But for attack choppers i think its not. attack choppers need to keep sight, when flying low you can only see at shot distance. i try to keep it high up in the sky somewhere in the clouds so your gunner have a good overview of the battlefield. I know AA danger.. you just need to be quick! hear tone drop flairs multiple times and get the hell of out there and let that area alone for a moment. but thats just what i think..

[Death_dx]

I disagree on the low flying part, for transport choppers its maybe good. But for attack choppers i think its not. attack choppers need to keep sight, when flying low you can only see at shot distance. i try to keep it high up in the sky somewhere in the clouds so your gunner have a good overview of the battlefield. I know AA danger.. you just need to be quick! hear tone drop flairs multiple times and get the hell of out there and let that area alone for a moment. but thats just what i think..

You should probably be releasing flares before the lock, with the new lock tone system.

[PlatinumA1]

i agree with mora , i have had success flying around 550-600 alt in a chopper and giving hell from above, but this very high altitude depends if the gunner has his view distance up to 100..

[Mora]

True, and Death_dx that why i said you have to be quick.. its mostly a matter of time.
Sure you can pop flares when in hot zones but what if you ran out of flairs and then your friend the aa missile shows up.. you're dead! however my tactic is not 100% secure
because aa missiles can still hit you when going through the flairs.. but as far as i know there is no 100% secure tactic.

[Cp]

I usualy deploy 1 batch of flares every 10 seconds or so when im in a hot zone/attack run, once I have deployed the 4th one I start bugging out and drop the last (5th) batch when im heading back for cover.

I would rather wait 30 sec for my flares to reload every 60 seconds than waiting 20 minutes for the chopper to respawn.

But this isnt perfect, I have to say, You still have a 16% chance that the missile will head for you and not the flares and flares wont do anything against AAA / AAV autocanon fire.

[Mora]

i rarely being shot by the AAV cannon its just the AA missiles that bothers me

[101 bassdrive]

barrel rolling helps most of the times since its still the bf2 engine and you know how we evased tvmissiles and aarockets back then
so the thing is to be upside down fast enough once youve been locked, confusing the rockets.. really whirl at the highest pace you can. obviously goes best for attack helos when you fly high and for LB/AH6's at sort of any height. for LB's also highspeedpiruettes work

[GR34]

I have a question. Iam a n00b to being transport pilot but I was wondering is it better to fly tree top level and fairly fast or is it better to fly really high then Decend when 300-400 m away from the LZ? I usually fly Low in the huey and as fast as I can control, mainly b/c it makes landing a bit easier and if We do get hit its not to hard for me to hit the dirt and let the squad out before the boom but I usually take some small arms fire going in and so I can duck behng a hill to avoid AA

[CodeC.Seven]

Everyone says its important for attack choppers that you fly extremly high... Maybe with different gunners its important... But i had one he is really amazing...

I flyed at arround 100 metres @ Kashan and we was behind the hills at the bunkers.we only came up if they spotted something... Just because we were at this low altitude my gunner were able to see the whole bunkers at once... He shoot his hellfires and than we were going under at the hills again till the next strike. I think one important thing is never hover at the same position always move a bit while he is searching something... or do you want to get hit by a HeavyAT or tank?

[Mora]

The reason why attack choppers should fly really high is because they need to be unseen. And it also gives the attack chopper the advantage over... well everything.. As long as you stay at cloud altitude the chances you will be seen are small.

My attack chopper tips..

For those who don't know, the gunner is always the squad leader.
If you see a tank/apc (it doesn't matter what) spot it put a attack marker on it then engage. And for gods sake use the laser-GUIDED missile.

And if you have no microphone don't fly at all, because communication is very important in attack choppers.

Anyway keep it high and stay out of trouble, you don't want to wait 20min all the time..