My pilot sits exhausted, after seven or eight attempts to land. Dave B...it seems the Helldiver has inherited the Typhoon's propensity to bounce on landing.
Another thing - I don't know whether there's a fault with the throttle scalar but the last few millimetres of throttle movement ( Saitek X-52 Pro ) produces a huge boost in MP. That might sound like a good thing if you're waved off a carrier landing, but I'm finding the power output isn't proportional to the throttle position below that. In the approach, with everything fully down, I seem to be battling to stop the aircraft sinking, and then just a touch more throttle produces a huge boost in power, I sail upwards and it's round again for another stab at it. I'll watch the SOH thread, and see if others have the same issue.
blanston12 wrote: Certainly the early Helldivers were awful, they eventually improved it to a very effective aircraft, well after the FAA decided against it. But by then the need for a dedicated dive bomber was going away, hard to recover from those bad first impressions.
Yep, Joe , in all seriousness I suppose you're right - it's just that after watching a lot of Father Ted, I like saying 'shite'.
WH, the take-off roll is a bit short, to say the least, but I'm not carrying any weapons, so it could be correct. I've just been flying her a bit more and I had a quick read through the manual ( yes I know...call me crazy ). One of the things I was missing was the supercharger position. I thought it was set to low, but in fact it was off altogether. That has helped enormously in the approach - I have more power in hand, as you would expect. From bouncing earlier on, I've just done one of my best landings ever in an aircraft of that size - but I was concentrating so much on keeping her lined up I didn't notice the speed. It was pretty low, I'm sure. Another thing - she trims to perfection. I had her at about 140 knots and the VSI barely moved off zero for about ten minutes,until I hit turbulence.
Cast your memory back to such films as The Battle of Midway where they show a lot of real footage and very few Helldivers are NOT off the deck before the bow. Seems almost impossible looking at them but they did get off in good order. Not a great deal of airspeed either if I remember right. They certainly didn't shoot off the deck.. more a slow-motion lift off.. enough to make you wonder if they'd ever stall
Dave, do you remember the ultra short take-off run of the Just Flight Chipmunk ? This Helldiver is very similar; you've hardly got the throttle full open before it's off the ground. As I say, I'm flying without any weapon load, but I still think this is unrealistic. On the plus side, you only have to take off once per flight, so it doesn't spoil the enjoyment too much.
Ah yes.. and that was a leap off the deck like it had been electrocuted It does sound like the FD is off despite Baz's protestations. Maybe he'll relent if enough folk complain. Maybe he won't. I noticed a comment on the B17 thread by a user saying that the outside sounds were muffled and Baz said they could be tweaked to the individuals preference using the sound section in sim or the windows equalizer. That's poop. The outside sounds really ARE muffled and I have my FSX sounds setup as default. It's one of those things I never touch. Inside, the sounds are almost deafening and outside, it's like the aircraft was 5miles away Still.. after their fresh download, the 'F' and 'G' are already hangared on a different drive
I mentioned the short take-off run to Bazzar at SOH, and he states that everything is as it should be. It might well be a powerful engine giving fast acceleration to take-off speed, but it still seems a bit too lively. Anyway, it's not too much of an issue. Still enjoying the Helldiver, even though my landings have gone all to crap again - it's me, not the model.
If anyone's thinking of buying the Helldiver, it gets a from me. Better than the VS Avenger, I think.