The #1 thing you need to focus on learning for flying the DCS Apache | DCS World

hey everybody Cosmo here and today we're going to talk about the age 64 and trim and how to use the trimmer and what the difference means [Music] right out all right guys let's talk a little bit about trim because this word gets used a lot and sort of interchangeably and we'll try to break it down into just normal layperson talk so a lot of times what you'll hear about is put the aircraft and trim which generally refers to leveling out the aircraft and and you do that based on a relative wind and you're going to pay attention to your trim ball right so that's going to tell you that the aircraft's in trim and it's more of an aerodynamic state that the aircraft is in if you look up the word of aerodynamic trim you're going to find some stuff about uh the aircraft being level and control inputs and things like that yes but but also no okay when you hear about an aircraft being in trim and you're looking at the trim ball it's essentially leveling off the aircraft based on the winds and the conditions that the aircraft is flying in which then brings us to the trimmer or the force trim helicopters use something called Force trim which is essentially uh holding a control input into the controls so when we look at a fixed Wing aircraft of course we have a fixed Wing the wing is not moving it has control surfaces on that Wing So if you put in some left or right stick you're going to see those ailerons roll if you pull back or push forward on the stick you're going to see the elevator move and it's going to pitch the nose forward and down but the point is you've got these control surfaces that I can then use the trimmer inside the aircraft to essentially move those control inputs those control surfaces to a fixed Point without actually moving the stick right if I hold the trimmer down long enough those ailerons and those elevators will eventually move to the position just like if I held the control in that position and that's how we trim the aircraft to maintain an attitude or a bank angle or you know whatever we're working with so when we talk about Force trim and a helicopter what we're essentially doing is locking our controls into a certain place because we don't have control surfaces on the wings our wings are the control surfaces they're small skinny whatever you want to call them wings that are spinning around a central point and they themselves actually move and change the lift component across that rotor disc so as we put in left or right cyclic we're going to see those those blades flap up and move down and they're going to change and create a decimetry of lift which is then going to roll that rotor disc and then when we use the collective we're going to collectively increase the pitch angle of the blades across the rotor disc which is going to collectively increase the lift and that's essentially how we go up and down but as you watch here at the Swatch plate you're going to see as I move cyclic left and right we're changing those inputs and so we don't have control surfaces to affect with a trimmer like we do in a fix-wing aircraft so effectively the only thing we can do is either hold the control in that opposition to maintain that pitch angle that lift Vector whatever you want to call it or we've got to have something to lock that control in place all right so here we are in the cockpit you can see I'm moving the cyclic left and right forward and back and you can see that the blades themselves are sort of flapping uh based on that cyclic input and then when I raise the collective you can see all of the blades are pitching up together collectively uh to create lift so again what we're doing here is using the cyclic to change uh the the variation if you will of the pitch across the rotor disc which is going to change that lift uh it's going to create some decimetry of lift across the rotor disc which is going to cause the aircraft to roll or or pitch forward uh and then as we increase the collective we're just we're just increasing the overall lift of the rotor disc itself all right so right now I just have the stick moving around and it is wants to be locked in place right the force trim the aircraft has come to life and the force trim has got the stick here in the central position I stick forward and I release the stick it's going to come back to center now of course the challenge that we have is DCs Apache Pilots is the fact that we have Hardware that is not necessarily linked to our software what I mean by that is some of you have a long stick with an extension some of you have a short stick up on your desk some of you have heavy Springs like I do some of you don't okay so some of you if you have no springs you could probably push your stick and just let go of it and it'll just stay there I have pretty heavy Springs so no matter what it wants to come back to Center all right so we have to understand that there is not necessarily a one-to-one ratio between what's going on in the game and what's going on in the real world and if you don't understand that then the rest of what we talk about the rest of what we do is not going to make any sense all right so here's our trimmer switch you can see them interrupting the force trim okay that's the force trim release switch so in fact you can almost see like there's a little r there we're releasing the fourth string because the trim switch the force trim is always on the trim switch disables it momentarily so now I'm going to move the stick forward and left and it's going to Spring a little bit but I'm going to release that button my stick in the real world is back to Center my stick in the video game world is forward and left okay so right now I've essentially changed those control surfaces we've talked about by changing the blades where they are as they go through the rotation okay now what I highly recommend you have mapped is the trim reset button just pops it back into place this is not a real thing in the aircraft but in the DCS uh Universe I definitely think you should have it I don't think you should use it in Flight that much because it might kill you all right so we have to understand that we are essentially trimming the aircraft out just like you are in a fixed Wing when you hit your little trimmer switch and you you trim it out for left or right roll or you know climb whatever you're trying to do it's the same concept but you have to physically move the stick and then the stick is going to continue to hold that position for you okay I'm seeing a lot of bad advice out there guys saying well I just don't use the trim well then you're not flying the aircraft properly and you're gonna have challenges with other things as you fly it so once again I've covered this a million times before I'm gonna do it again we're in our hover symbology I have not trimmed the aircraft okay I've hit the trim reset button like five times right now okay I'm gonna bring the aircraft light on the wheels we're gonna see that torque Spike just a little bit because it's DCS and you can see the aircraft's wanting to roll to the right okay I don't let it do that so if it starts to roll to the right I'm gonna go ahead and put in a little bit of left cyclic to counter that on the aircraft started to roll forward a little bit so I pulled back on the side I hit the brakes a little bit but basically my point is let the aircraft start to tell you what it wants to do and then prevent it from doing that so if it's going to the left then take it to the right if it's going to the right take it to the left and now I'm going to continue to gently pull in the power and make minute Corrections and maintain my position now I have not hit the trimmer at all we can sit here and hover like this all day long but the moment I let go of my stick we're gonna start sliding because that's just the nature of how the controls are set up right now so I'm going to rest that movement get us back to Center as best I can what I'm gonna do is as I'm doing this I'm going to click that trimmer meaning I'm going to put in little corrections to the stick and I'm just going to click it just a little bit okay so I'm gonna click right now and it's a little going to the right I'm gonna click it again that's a little bit too much I'm gonna pull it back to Center I'm going to keep clicking it until right now my hand is completely off the cyclic it's going to drift forward so I'm going to pull back just a little bit click it again a little bit to the right click it again okay I'm just making my new Corrections based on what my stick position is getting me and then I'm just trimming it as I go now this is not a a method by which you're meant to just trim it out so that hovers by itself okay you can just get it close and then you can turn on the hold modes and then she'll eventually do the work for you okay but at a hover you're not really meant to trim it out but you can trim it out to the point that it's not super wobbly on you all right you should be making small Corrections now in game we have the central trimmer and the instant trim I have a long stick on my gunfighter ultimate okay it's got the long I guess 20 centimeter stick I use instant trim I have tried to use Central trim it works for certain situations and in other situations it's kind of garbage if you have a short stick up on your desk it seems to me from flying with people that having the center trim is better so just play with both and understand that both of them are decent in certain situations and in other situations both of them are hot garbage okay there is no perfect solution to this problem you have to practice and this is the part where I start to get a little bit frustrated with people because they picked this thing up and they think that well it doesn't do exactly what I want ergo it is broken okay you actually have to practice you have to learn the system and you have to understand the system if you don't understand what force trim is actually doing for us in a way that I've described it then that can be your first problem and I've done a lot of lessons with people and I've discovered that most of you just don't understand that it's not because you're stupid you just don't understand that no one's explained it to you hopefully I've explained it to you now all right so we've got the aircraft trim and I've had my hands off the controls uh the entire rant here by the way okay my heading hold is on so if I put in some pedal aircraft's gonna want to fight me on that because it wants to maintain that heading hold okay if I hit the trimmer right now I'm going to reset that heading hold but since I'm in DCS it's probably gonna send me on a little bit of a loop so I don't want to put in a lot of motion okay I'm just putting in just a tiny bit and I hit the trimmer okay but I'm gonna lose all that stuff that I had set for the cyclic as well okay so things are going to get a little bit squirrely that's okay that's it's doing what it's supposed to do just understand that you're in the video game world and you don't have that perfect one to one okay so all you've got to do is keep messing with the trimmer keep making those small my new Corrections and if things get really squirrely put it back down okay if I can't if I can't get it back under control where I want just put it down and reset the trimmer reset all the trim for everything and start over okay there is no perfect solution there's no way that I or anyone else can tell you if you do this then you will be successful and everything will be perfect you've got to play with it and understand your limitations and understand when things are going to work and when things are going to be a little bit messy and honestly if I'm hovering for a short period of time I'm probably not trimming it out that much I'm probably not messing with the trim at all but if I want to take off I'm going to start trimming as I go okay I'm gonna make that transition mode and look for my flight path Vector I'm gonna put that fly path Vector where I want to fly and I'm going to make my new Corrections and hit the trimmer as I do okay and it's going to get a little squirrely at times that's just the nature of flying this aircraft in DCs okay I'm gonna make small my new Corrections fly in the direction I want to fly and the last thing I'm going to point out right now is we've been talking about the trimmer but remember when I first started talking about was aerodynamic trim we are not an aerodynamic trim we can see our trim ball down there is to the left that's okay because I'm down low I'm at 50 feet I want to make sure that I have nose to tail trim meaning that the nose and the tail are lined up in the direction of flight and I can tell that's happening because my flight path vector is basically lined up right in front of me I've got the head tracker that diamond plus I've got my acceleration Q velocity Vector in a pretty much straight up line if I want to be an aerodynamic trim then yes I'm going to put the trim ball between the goal posts you see the aircraft's kind of flying a little bit sideways it's a little bit exacerbated in DCs but even a real aircraft flies a little cockeyed all right it's it's not symmetric there's different airflows going across that it's just kind of the nature of the Beast and that's okay if it looks like this you're fine you're flying the aircraft correctly you are aerodynamically trimmed while I've been talking I've been maneuvering the controls and clicking the trimmer my hands are completely off the controls right now the aircraft is trimmed to fly I could tell I'm descending because the flight path factor is just a little bit below the Horizon I'm gonna just nudge the collective just a little bit and get that flight path Vector climbing back up also I can look over at the right at my vertical scale and see that we're climbing just about 100 feet per minute so I'm just going to make some little massages there but from a cyclic standpoint my hand has been off the cyclic for the past I don't know a minute two minutes because I've got it trimmed I don't even have the hold modes on now I'm going to turn on hold modes now she should work even better practice guys practice that's what you got to do don't watch YouTube videos and figure out well if so-and-so says this then this is what I'm supposed to do none of us can be held responsible to that standard okay you've got to practice you've got to get in there you've got to talk to other people who maybe have a better understanding than you have them show you some things okay but the best thing you can do is jump in start flying around start pushing buttons and stop being frustrated because it's not doing what you want to do the first time this is hard okay flying helicopters is not like flying jets and I'm telling you as a guy who's done both flying helicopters is harder than flying jets 100 percent hopefully this helps we'll talk about it more in the future I'm sure I'll talk to you guys later take it easy

Channel: CasmoTV

Views: 46,752

Keywords: DCS, DCS World, Digital Combat Simulator World, Real Military Pilot, Real pilot flies, real pilot plays DCS, combat, flight simulator, real pilot flies flight simulator, kiowa pilot, apache pilot, matt wagner, grim reapers, learning dcs, dcs beginners, new to dcs, dcs helicopters, dcs blackhawk, dcs apache, dcs hind, dcs gazelle, dcs huey, dcs tutorial, dcs tutorials, dcs how to, how to dcs, growling sidewinder

Id: YLTndxHUOEk

Length: 14min 34sec (874 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 25 2023