I've got quite a few hours as a helicopter pilot under my belt now, and, while I'm not the best, I thought I'd offer some advice for those who have gotten the hang of taking off and landing and are ready for the basics part 2. This is going to seem REALLY obvious to anyone with more than a few hours flying choppers, or any of you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ flight sim otaku ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, who I'm sure will point out all of my glaring inaccuracies in the comments. This is targeted for people who are like, "♥♥♥♥, I want to fly the chopper too ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥". This post won't explain how to take off or land. If that's what you need, open up the helicopter training mission and practice that for an hour or two and them come back.

And, of course, before you start reading this, go turn on advanced flight model. Advanced doesn't mean "harder" it means "better".

Before I get started, let me mention real quick a couple of terms that you probably know but might not: cyclic, collective, and anti-torque pedals. Cyclic is the roll and tilt of the chopper, controlled with the arrow keys and mouse. Collective is the "throttle" (it's not really a throttle because it doesn't alter engine or even rotor speed, it only alters blade angle of attack). Anti-torque pedals control your yaw via the tail rotor, typically on Q and E. This guide is mostly about the collective.

When you jump in the chopper, one of the gauges you will notice is a speed gauge which has two needles. The long, unmarked needle is your engine speed. It will decrease when your engine is damaged but otherwise you can do nothing about it. The stubbier needle with a big H is your rotor speed. This is arguably the most important instrument in that entire panel bar none. If you're falling out of the sky for no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason after you make a turn in a Cobra, it's because you're not watching the little H.

The rotor speed is the rotation rate of your blades. It has a little green section which shows you the speeds you can operate within. If the rotor speed falls below the green section, you will fall out of the sky (probably). Rotor speed is influenced by drag on the rotor blades, which is in turn influenced by a couple of factors, and mediated by the collective:

1. Engine damage. If the engine is damaged, the rotors cannot be turned by the engine any faster than the engine can turn, which means the max rotor speed under normal flight is reduced. Further, a damaged engine makes it harder to recover lost rotor speed.
2. Rotor damage. Damaged rotors provide less lift and create more drag. They are harder to spin fast enough to fly, and they make less lift when they're spinning.

When performing maneuvers like turns and climbs, you're forcing the rotors to keep you aloft under higher G-forces, which means they have to work harder to provide the same lift. The engine (especially in the Cobra) is not powerful enough to keep the rotors spinning fast enough during these maneuvers, so the drag on the rotors overcomes the power produced by the engine and they slow down. If they slow down too much, they don't produce enough lift, you fall out of the sky.

You might notice I keep mentioning the Cobra. The Cobra is the only chopper that will without question allow you to perform daring acrobatic maneuvers that bleed off all of your rotor speed. The Huey and Bushranger handle sort of like a boat and are reluctant to let you do stupid ♥♥♥♥ that you can't recover from. The Loach, with that big-ass rotor speed green zone, will fly with the blades stopped if you have a strong headwind. The Cobra is the most dangerous. It maneuvers like a Loach but is heavy like a Huey, and will let you do crazy ♥♥♥♥ that leaves you with no lift when you come out. None of these is impossible to crash, but the Cobra is the easiest.

When maneuvering, it's important to keep an eye on your collective and rotor speed. Reducing collective reduces the drag on the rotors and causes them to turn faster, sometimes faster than even the engine can turn them. Adding collective increases drag on the rotors and causes them to spin slower, sometimes so slow they produce very little lift at all.

If you find yourself in a position where you're bleeding rotor speed recovery is very very simple: stop doing whatever stupid ♥♥♥♥ you're doing. Cut collective and just fly straight. Regain some rotor speed, and maneuver less aggressively. This is _especially important_ if your main rotor and/or engine are damaged. If both are damaged, you need to fly like your copilot is the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ President and is currently dry-heaving into their lap. Very, very, very gentle.

Your helicopter will get damaged, and you will die, a lot, unless you're godlike or the other team is terrible. Most of the time, there isn't a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing you can do. Your pilot dies, your main rotors are destroyed, or your whole helicopter gets hit by an RPG and goes up like a roman candle. However, there are two major catastrophic situations you can actually recover from.


The first is a tail rotor outage. Remember how the pedals are called the "antitorque" pedals? That's what the tail rotor does. When the main rotor is going, so too is Newton's Third Law. The torque of the engine on the rotors makes the helicopter body want to spin the other way. The tail rotor produces a force that counteracts this torque. When the tail rotor is damaged (yellow), you'll notice the chopper wanting to spin a bit more. When it's destroyed (red), well... you've seen the results, in the form of a chopper going round and round like some kind of demented amusement park ride.

When you're flying, you might notice that at higher speeds, the anti-torque pedals don't do much at all. The chopper just flies straight. That's because the aerodynamic forces on the chopper make it fly more like a plane when its moving forward. The airflow along the chopper produces enough force to keep it straight no matter what inputs you give to the pedals. In fact, this aerodynamic force is enough to counteract any main rotor torque altogether. See where I'm going with this?

The torque produced by the main rotor is proportional to its angle of attack, which is of course controlled by the collective. Higher collective makes you go up but spin more. Lower collective makes you fall but spin less. This is the key to recovering from a destroyed tail rotor.

If your tail rotor goes out, the approach is simple

1. Swear, loudly, into voice chat. This is very important, because it mentally prepares you for the task to come.
   
2. If you're already moving forward, keep moving forward. You are fine. Skip to step #landing
   
3. If you're in a hover or on the ground, slam your collective to max and gain altitude. Enjoy the dizzying blur of all the scenery melding together as you spin rapidly. The only place you care about going is "Up"
   
4. Once you have some altitude, cut back on the collective, you will start falling (bad) but you will stop spinning (good).
   
5. When you've stopped spinning, you have some control regained over the chopper. Pitch forward to gain forward speed. This will cause the forementioned aerodynamic forces to start working in your favor.
   
6. Once you have some forward speed, gently ease up on the collective to the point when you're not falling anymore. You're now back in control of the helicopter. You may at this point, optionally, shout "eat ♥♥♥♥ VC" into public chat to celebrate your recovery. Fly back to the chopper base. You can't actually fly like this, hotshot, go get yourself fixed.
   
7. Land carefully. When you've just gotten the hang of the chopper, it's temping to come in for a landing by stopping in a hover and then coming down. This will not work because you will spin again. Instead, you need to land with some speed. Come in low and with forward momentum, come off the collective entirely, and gently ease pitch back to lose speed. Your goal is to land at about 20km/h.
   
8. Now that you have landed and repaired the helicopter, brag that you're an unstoppable god and that nobody can kill you.

There is one exception to this rule set, which is if the whole rear boom of the chopper is destroyed. Without the rear boom, the aerodynamic force of moving forward is not enough to overcome the rotor torque at any speed, although with collective all the way down you do have a small measure of control. If the tail rotor boom is destroyed and you're near the ground, just land and bail. If you're in air, come off the collective entire to turn your rapid nauseating spin into a haphazard, confusing spin, and try your best to put the helicopter down wherever you can.


Just like planes can glide, so too can helicopters. When you "dive" in a helicopter, instead of the blades turning to move the wind, the wind moves to turn the blades. And as long as the blades turn, the helicopter has lift. Don't ask me about the physics, it's all voodoo ♥♥♥♥. The point is that even with no engine power, the helicopter doesn't just stop and fall; it enters a state called "autorotation".

Remember how rotor speed is influence by the collective? That hasn't changed. If the main engine is destroyed, the only thing turning the blades is the wind. The angle of attack works against the wind, and you want work with it.

To recover from a main engine outage

1. Come off of the collective entirely. You will start to lose altitude, but at this point you're falling either way at this point, so fall on your terms, not god's.
   
2. Find a spot to land. Aim for it. Don't just go straight down, even if it might seem like the most logical choice. A helicopter moving forward produces more lift than one which is in a hover.
   
3. Come in for a landing just like you always would. You're coming in too fast, oh, ♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ you're coming in too fast! Jam the collective up to max. Isaac Newton is your friend this time; the rotors have rotational inertia, which means they can deliver power for a short while. This is enough to turn your fatal impact into a rough but survivable slam.
   
4. Brag loudly into voice chat. The VC can't kill you! Nobody can kill you! You piss on god!

Everyone plays video games to have fun, and for everyone to have the most fun possible, it's important to be a good teammate and a good sport. A few small tips to help you, the up-and-coming chopper pilot, be the best teammate you can be:

1. Apologize when you crash, but don't apologize for trying. Only one way to get better, and that's through practice. Some people might give you crap for flying badly. Ignore those people. You're out here trying, and they are not. That said, please practice on a pub server. If you get on Bloodbath and start crashing the cobra on takeoff on Resort, I'm 100% going to complain about it and vote kick you.
   
2. Practice with transport choppers, not attack choppers. Flying transport choppers is both more difficult and less vital to the success of your team. Attack choppers just rooty tooty swoop n shooty. Transport choppers take off and land in a bunch of sub-optimal conditions, under fire. You will get better faster. owever, if you're being bad as a transport pilot, you're probably not hurting your team as bad as you would be if you were being bad as an attack pilot.
   
3. When flying the attack chopper, take turns with your copilot. When the chopper dies, switch off who's pilot and who's gunner. It's easier and more fun if you approach this sportsmanlike.
   
4. The Loach is a recon plane. No ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, it spots both enemy soldiers and tunnels. The gun on it is stupid and hard to aim. Don't bother with it until you've got quite a bit of flying time under your belt. Instead, especially on maps with another attack chopper, focus on making low, fast passes to spot tunnels and troops, so the big guns can take them out. It's a hunter-killer pair, and you're the hunter, not the killer.

Now get out there and fly helicopters!