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UTT AS350 flying behaviour

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hawk_sh
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UTT AS350 flying behaviour

Post by hawk_sh »

Has anyone been able to make the UTT AS350 fly local patterns (taking off and landing on the same AFCAD)?

I spent a few hours experimenting last weekend without any success.
My intention was to determine the minumim runway length for this AI helicopter.
I tested all this at my NAS Patuxent River scenery because I have different helicopters AFCADs available there and they work with other AI helicopters.

  • Take off behaviour of the AS350 is normal.
  • When using VFR flightplans the AS350 crashes into the ground when in the base leg and does not turn into final approach at all.
    It then taxies back cross country towards the AFCAD file
  • When using IFR flightplans the AS350 will descend in a large circle far away from the airport and finally crash.
  • The AS350 would take off from one AFCAD and do touch and goes on a different AFCAD file.
    However when returning to the first AFCAD where it took off it again crashed before turning into final approach.
I tried different runway lengths but it did not make any difference.
I also tried different altitudes in the flighplan but it also does not make a difference since the AI enters the landing pattern right after takeoff

It seems to me that this is related to the FDE of the UTT AS350.

Any ideas?
Hartwig
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Firebird
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Re: UTT AS350 flying behaviour

Post by Firebird »

The fact that it crashes to ground and then taxis back says to me that it gets too slow on approach. That is exactly what happens. It can also happen if the approach speed is slower than your taxi speed on the ground, so if you have set that quite high that could be the issue.
Select and watch the aircraft in traffictoolbox and see how slow it gets. This will give us an idea.

Now the reasons can be many but if you are getting it consistently at one afcad you may find that the circuit height is set up for normal aircraft. You need to half it for helos to be comfortable, as they are slower. In simple terms the higher the circuit, the slower the helos get to try and make the LZ.

If you can't workout a cause pm me your plans and afcads that you are using and I will have a look on Wednesday, as I am out tomorrow.
Steve
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Re: UTT AS350 flying behaviour

Post by hawk_sh »

Thanks for the tips Steve.
I will do some further test as soon as I find the time. I will be away from home during the next few days.
When observing the AS350 shortly before the crashes I had the impression that it gets too slow.

I actually did my trials on on different AFCADs.
But even on the AFCAD were it had done succesful touch and goes previously when taking off from somewhere else it crashed when it was supposed to land there.
All these AFCAD files work perfectly with John Young's Blackhawks, Lakotas and Ospreys.
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Re: UTT AS350 flying behaviour

Post by Firebird »

Incidentally a nice side effect of reducing the circuit height is that the circuit itself is much smaller and tighter, a better look for helos I think.
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Re: UTT AS350 flying behaviour

Post by jgowing »

Didn't UTT do something unusual with at least some of their helicopter models in order to achieve an allegedly realistic approach and hover to landing? Although a seemingly attractive feature, I recall it came at the price of a major downside in requiring even more unusual bespoke Afcad files without which the trick didn't work, at least that was my experience.

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Re: UTT AS350 flying behaviour

Post by Joseph29 »

jgowing wrote: 04 Dec 2018, 16:09 Didn't UTT do something unusual with at least some of their helicopter models in order to achieve an allegedly realistic approach and hover to landing? Although a seemingly attractive feature, I recall it came at the price of a major downside in requiring even more unusual bespoke Afcad files without which the trick didn't work, at least that was my experience.

Jon G
Their S-76 models landed and took off realisticly. I don't remember if their Mi-8 or EC-120's did or not.
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Re: UTT AS350 flying behaviour

Post by hawk_sh »

I finally found the time for some further testing last night.

Thank you Steve for leading me into the right direction.

The reason for the crashes is that on my system I am using a slightly increased AI taxi speed of 25 knots (default = 17 knots) and a runway speed of 40 knots (default = 25 knots).
After setting back these two speed values to default the AS350 can fly local patterns properly without crashing.

I have been using the increased speed values for more than ten years now and have not touched them during this time at all until last night. They improve the AI traffic flow on large civilian airports and reduce the amount of go arounds.

Since I will keep these increased values I replaced the UTT AS350 FDE with the JYAI Lakota FDE.
This works quite well and I have not observed any strange behaviour so far.
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Re: UTT AS350 flying behaviour

Post by Firebird »

No problem.
I found the same issue some years ago with the Caribbean package we did and decreased my speeds slightly to compensate, but still above normal settings.
Steve
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