In Progress Let's Play with Black Shark Avionics

[ScottishMartialArts]

DCS Black Shark 2 is one of my favorite games. Overtenemy and I play it coop usually a couple times a week. As an attack helicopter sim, everyone gets the basic concept: fly around and blow up tanks. What makes Black Shark unique however is the incredible depth of the simulation. Nearly every switch, system, and avionics setting is fully simulated. Entirely separate from surviving on the battlefield, there's always more to learn about the aircraft. You can get airborne and blow shit up fairly easily, but to truly master the aircraft demands study and dedication. I've decided to learn more of the inner workings of the Black Shark, one system at a time, and I thought there might be some interest if I shared what I learn about the helicopter.

Towards that end, I'm starting with the ABRIS Advanced Moving Map System. It's one of several navigational systems onboard the Black Shark, and by far the most fully featured and powerful. Other navigational systems include the PUI-800 navigation computer, the ARK-22 Automatic Direction Finder, and a backup gyroscopic compass. Today I'm going to mess around with creating a full flight plan in the ABRIS.

The Black Shark cockpit:

First up, I need some power. The Black Shark is equipped with batteries, and the engines have electrical generators, but since I'm not going to be turning on the engines, I'm going to use external ground power to power the aircraft so as not to drain the batteries. Towards that end, I'm going to ask the ground crew to connect ground power:

Now that ground crew has connected power to the aircraft, I need to start letting that power flow:

With external DC and AC power switches in the on position, the aircraft now has power. Next I turn on the Inertial Navigation Unit:

And now to turn on the ABRIS:

While I wait for the ABRIS to boot up and run a built in test, I turn on the K-041 Flight and Targetting system, so that there is power to the barometric and radar altimeter, both of which the ABRIS uses for navigational data:

The ABRIS is still running its BIT:

The ABRIS is done loading and its MENU page.

Let's take a look at the three other main pages of the ABRIS. The NAV page, which is the page you generally spend the most time on when navigating a route:

The ARC page, which is essentially the NAV page but without the terrain map:

And finally the HSI page, which is a digital repeater of the Horizontal Situation Indicator:

Now today, I'm going to be creating a complete new flight plan from scratch in the ABRIS, so let's go to the MENU/PLAN page:

The MENU/PLAN page allow you to save, load, unload and edit flight plans, and to mark up the moving map with troop positions, landmarks, forward edge of the battle area lines, etc. Since we're going to create a new plan, lets first save the default flight plan so we don't lose it:

Now that the original flight plan is saved to ABRIS memory, lets unload it so that we can make a new plan of our own:

Now that the original flight plan is unloaded, lets hit the DRAW option so that we can start designing our own flight plan:

After hitting the ADD button, a starting waypoint is created at my current location -- airfield GLDZ:

I zoom out a bit to get a better view of the region, and to pick a destination airfield -- KRMS, which is due north, looks good:

Let's start adding waypoints to get from point A to point B:

I'm going to follow a river valley through the coastal mountains until I reach the northern plain where Krmsyk is located:

Now that the flight plan has been drawn, it's time start filling out its details. First up is SPEED:

The SPEED page, lets me adjust my assigned airspeed for each leg of the flight plan, and the ABRIS will calculate the corresponding ETA to each waypoint. The Black Shark has an economy cruise speed of 180km/h so lets adjust the true airspeed of each leg to reflect that:

Additionally, I've set the starting flight time to 12:30L to reflect when I'll actually get in the air. Now lets go to the VNAV page to adjust altitude for each leg. The ABRIS will calculate the corresponding vertical speed necessary to reach the assigned altitude of each leg. Since this isn't a combat mission, I'll assign the route altitude to 300m above ground level:

Now that vertical navigation data has been entered into the flight plan, it's time to go to the METEO page. METEO lets you input weather data, and the ABRIS will calculate course adjustments based upon that data:

I'm going to need wind data if I'm going to adjust the METEO page settings, so lets turn to the PUI-800. I set it to operate:

I then press the wind pushbutton to get the data. Since there is no wind today (bearing 000 degrees/at 00 meters per second) I won't need to enter any data into the METEO page:

Finally I go to the FUEL page, where the ABRIS calculates fuel consumption for each leg of the flight plan based upon inputted data. I enter the current fuel quantity of the aircraft (1470kg):

And then enter the average cruising fuel consumption rate:

Now the ABRIS generates data on how much fuel I will have at each waypoint of the route:

My flight plan is complete so lets save it:

I'm finally ready to set the flight plan to ACTIV, go the NAV page, and start flying the route:

And that concludes this overview of the route planning functions of the ABRIS. Maybe next time I'll actually get off the ground and fly the route.

 

[Yeesh]

I'm going to keep this sequence in mind next time I hear a lamentation over streamlining.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Fucking around with formation flight online. Flying formation is actually much easier when you have forward velocity, where as in this case we were in a hover. The trick to formation flight is to always match bank with your leader -- leader's wings are your horizon is the axiom -- and to use rudder to control your lateral separation from your leader. Of course in a hover, applying rudder just cause you to spin rather than inch closer or further from your leader. Plus, my leader had her head buried in the Shkval (targeting camera) so she was drifting a bit in her hover position, which meant I had to constantly adjust to maintain position on her wing. In this case I'm a bit far forward.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Today I'm going to show off some of the map markup features of the ABRIS, specifically as it relates to bullseye calls. Bullseye calls are a target reporting system used by military aviators. The system is simple: an easily recognizable landmark is designated as the Bullseye, and all targets are reported in relation to that bullseye. So "Tally Armor, Bulls 012 for 3", means there's armor on a 12 degree bearing from the bullseye and 3km distant from the bullseye. Let's see how it works:

First we make note of the bullseye position in lat long coordinates in the mission planner:

Back in the saddle again:

Let's go to the MENU/PLAN page so we can mark the position of the Bullseye:

Having selected the ADD INF option, I can place the bullseye on the map:

I select the DIRECTLY option to place the bullseye where the cursor is. Note that the Lat-Lon coordinates match those in the mission planner.

The Bullseye is placed. Notice that a friendly flight has just made a bullseye call.

Let's mark one of those Bullseye calls on the map using the RELATIVE function.

Here I've selected the BULLS waypoint as the point which our bulls call will be related to. I've also entered the bearing and range of the bulls call.

And now I've entered two separate bulls calls, both of which appear as triangles on the ABRIS map.

The advantage of the Bullseye system is that it allow flights to communicate target information even if they don't have a datalink. Additionally, any enemy that is listening in won't be able to determine what they're talking about because the Bullseye is unique to a given operation. Bulls 012 for 3 is pretty meaningless if you don't know where that Bullseye is.

 

[spectre]

That's some serious cockpit porn right there.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

That's some serious cockpit porn right there.

It's rather intimidating at first but you quickly learn the essentials and after a month or two, you'll know the cockpit as well as any actual Black Shark pilot. I can tell you what pretty much every switch does in the cockpit, except for the handful which are non-functional.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Bullseye calls are a target reporting system used by military aviators.

Not only aviators, tankers use it too.

Keep it up, this is interesting. I've always had a soft spot for simulators, even though lack of proper joystick has always prevented me from enjoying them fully.

 

[spectre]

It's rather intimidating at first but you quickly learn the essentials and after a month or two, you'll know the cockpit as well as any actual Black Shark pilot. I can tell you what pretty much every switch does in the cockpit, except for the handful which are non-functional.

Yeah, I suspect that once you get the hang of it it actually feels simple and intuitive. Still, just looking at it makes me feel at the same time humbled and anxious to start flipping the shit out of all the switches, see what they do.

Keep it up, this is interesting. I've always had a soft spot for simulators, even though lack of proper joystick has always prevented me from enjoying them fully.

Same here. I always stuck with the simpler ones for this reason (strike commander, top gun (the 1996 one), jane's atf - surprising how far you could go with keyboard and mouse in it).
My fling with flight sims ended with the 90s, but since then I'm constantly amazed with how the genere progressed go despite its niche nature.

Anyways, will be dropping by, surely we'll be seeing some "action" within a month or two? :-P

 

[GarfunkeL]

Falcon 3.0 and F-22 Lightning II, alongside Gunship 2000 and Comanche were some you could play with KB+mouse fairly successfully. I got Falcon 4.0 Allied Force recently and tried but even though it's technically possible to play without joystick, in reality it's impossible. Oh well, when I finish my PhD and hopefully get a decent job, I'll build a monster desktop and get all the gadgets. Oh, Il-2 Sturmovik was playable without joystick, depending on what plane you used. Some were far too iffy with keyboard, like Me-109 IIRC.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Anyways, will be dropping by, surely we'll be seeing some "action" within a month or two? :p

Sure. The one thing that makes action difficult for a screenshot LP is that you're so busy flying the aircraft that you can't concentrate on getting good screenshots. You can only hit PrtSc a few times as you're flying and hope some of them turn out.

But since you asked for action, here's a rocket run. The mission is to escort a ground convoy through a valley that guerrillas are known to operate in. Here's the friendly convoy:

Let's configure the PUI-800 Weapon Status and Control Panel (the panel with 4 yellow lights and a digital counter that says 24) for a rocket run:

First let's turn on the Master Arm (top left switch surrounded by zebra stripes):

Now let's select our inner hardpoints (the switch for this is actually on the collective):

Note the green lights that turned on. They indicate that the corresponding hardpoints have been selected. Likewise, HP indicates that this store contains rockets, and 40 indicates that there are 40 rockets remaining in the store.

The convoy is now in contact with the enemy. If you look closely you can see tracer fire at the top center of the screen. When I took the shot I was trying to capture both the position of the convoy and and the full volume of tracer fire but it didn't turn out. Basically the enemy (dismounted infantry so they're impossible to see) is firing from the tree line at the edge of the village. If you follow the tracers off screen that leads you to the position of the convoy which has turned off the road to allow the BMP escorts to assault through the ambush.

I'm making my attack run and have just fired a volley of rockets (the volley size is configurable from the PUI-800 -- I have it set to medium or 10 rockets per pod per volley). If you look carefully you can see tracer fire coming from the cluster of trees to the right. The circle on the HUD represents the targeting reticule for the rocket pods. Since I couldn't actually see what I was firing at -- only their tracers -- I was unable to lase the target ahead of time to get accurate ranging data. As such the reticule isn't completely accurate.

And the explosion of rounds on target. I made 3 total passes like this one and killed 38 enemy infantrymen.

I think video is probably the way to go for showing action in Black Shark, given the difficulty of taking good screenshots while flying at the same time. Anyone have any recommendations for video capture software?[/quote]

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Another thing to note about my attack run is that I'm not employing especially good tactics. If the guerrillas had a stinger team with them I would have been in trouble. When you make a head on attack like this, you release your weapons from about 800m to a 1km away and then turn off, releasing flares as you turn. What you don't want to do, and what I'm doing in this attack, is to overfly the target, because it exposes you to the full volume of ground fire and air defenses. Use your ability to outrange the enemy to your advantage, fire from a distance, and TURN OFF. The reason why I'm overflying the target area generally has to do with terrain. The convoy is moving through a valley with rather steep walls, so I don't have the full freedom of maneuverability. Additionally, the terrain is such that there is a bend in the valley at the ambush point, which prevents me from engaging at longer distances.

Ideally, the Black Shark is a sniper. Its primary weapon are Vikhr ATGMs with a standoff range of 8km. At that range, you can engage way outside the threat envelop of MANPADs, small arms, crew served weapons, ground vehicles, and short range air defense. Cannons and rockets have a much shorter range (2km) which means you generally only employ them if you're certain the enemy has limited air defense capability, as in this mission, or if you've exhausted your supply of ATGMs and the mission is important enough to justify putting your helicopter at risk. In this case, the enemy will have at most a MANPAD team for air defense, and is composed of dismounted infantry, so the area effect of a volley of HE rockets is far more devastating than the precision accuracy of an ATGM.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Suppression of a bunker with an ATGM :



Sorry that the narration is basically inaudible. I'm still working out the kinks with recording video.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Yeah, increase the boost in the microphone. That should help.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

I'll need to rerecord the video if I'm going to improve the audio level of the narration. It seems to be a problem with FRAPS.

Some commentary:

The mission is to suppress enemy bunkers so that friendly ground units can enter and clear an insurgent held village. The video starts with my helicopter hovering a little over 5km away from the objective. The PVI-800 nav computer has the coordinates of the enemy bunker preprogrammed as a target point, so I select that target point, and then uncage and slave the SHKVAL targeting camera to that target point. Locking and lasing a target is as simple as pushing a button, which is what I do once I have the bunker centered in the SHKVAL display. From there, I select outer hardpoints which carry ATGMs, and activate automatic turn to target. At that point, it's as simple as placing the launch constraint circle on the HUD over the target (marked by a smaller circle on the HUD) and holding the weapons release key. The missile fires, and a few seconds later you can see the bunker explode on the SHKVAl.

The rest of the mission consisted of me locking up the remaining two bunkers and putting missiles into them. Then I slowly crept forward, scanning the target area with SHKVAL for enemy infantry, and destroying them with 30MM HE cannon rounds. As I did that, friendly vehicles moved into the town and mopped up. Using the 30mm cannon with the SHKVAL is very similar to using ATGMs. You lock a target with the SHKVAL, then position the target within the slew limits of the cannon, and the cannon automatically elevates and traverses to put rounds at the designated target. The 30mm has an effective range of 2km, but I was engaging from further out than that -- at 3km a burst of cannon fire won't be accurate to penetrate armor, but it will create a beaten zone where any infantry in that zone will be torn apart by HE rounds.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Last Helicopter sim I played was Apache Longbow 20 years ago. This game scares me.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

In this mission, your FARP (Forward Air Refuel Point) comes under attack by the enemy. In order to save the helicopters, you have to quickly get the aircraft started, and then take off and fly to a divert FARP 50km away. Had I been smart I would've recorded the start up sequence so you can see what that involves, but I didn't think of that until I was well into the mission.

Night attack:

I quickly get airborne, although my wing man doesn't make it. This is a great time to show off another feature of the ABRIS however. Since I was taking off under fire, there is no preset flight plan for this mission. Accordingly I need to use the ABRIS's search function to locate the divert FARP and create a flight plan to it. First I select the SEARCH function on the NAV page:

FARPs are listed under the AIRPORT option so I select that and then highlight the divert FARP Skala:

I then hit the TO function select key, and a route is automatically generated from my current position to the FARP and made my active flight plan. Additionally, I can go to the INFO page for the divert FARP which lists its Lat-Long coordinates. With those, I can create a waypoint in the PVI-800 navigation computer as well. The PVI is useful because the PVI feeds navigation data to your HUD and analog HSI, where as the ABRIS is completely separate.

I put the PVI in edit mode, selected waypoint mode, picked waypoint 1, and now am ready to enter coordinates:

Then I just hit enter, set the PVI back to OPER mode, and then select the waypoint as normal.

Video of a night time landing, hopefully with audible narration in a few minutes.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Narration is going to be a no-go. My headset apparently isn't fully compatible with Win7 64 bit and as a result I can't adjust microphone gain globally. In other words, the recording software needs to have mic gain boost, or I'll be really fucking quiet, and FRAPS unfortunately does not have that. Until I can figure out how to layer another audio track onto an .avi file that already has audio, I'm going to just have to provide commentary in text.

This is a night time landing after at the divert FARP Skala. I'm coming in a bit high, so I'll need to overshoot the FARP and execute an 180 degree turn to get myself lined up for landing. This actually works to my advantage because the ATC is reporting that wind is coming in from 210 degree, which means once I execute the turn I'll be flying into the wind which is the ideal landing configuration. I execute the turn continuing to bleed off altitude and speed. Now ideally, I should be 70m up gong 120-130kmh at 1km out from the landing pad, but my approach is kind of fucked so I'll just be winging it. Note that I'm keeping my vertical velocity at -3m/s: this is to avoid entering a vortex ring state.

A vortex ring state is a very nasty property of helicopter flight, where excessive descent speed causes a column of upward traveling air to pass through the rotor disc. Ordinarily air moves down through the rotor disc, so where the downward and upward moving air meet vortexes are created. These vortexes dramatically reduce the lift producing properties of the rotors, causing you to descend more rapidly, in turn causing the situation to grow worse. You get out of the vortex ring by initiating forward flight, which causes translational lift to take effect, enhancing the lift production of your rotors to the point that you stop descending and can resume normal flight.

Once I get over the target landing pad, I transition into a hover at a few meters altitude, and gently set the aircraft down.

 

[Krraloth]

Jesus. How does the helicopter controls - keyboard layout works? I'm sure there are way more switches than buttons.
How complicated it is to hit the switches and buttons you need while under fire or during manouvers?

And lastly, how cool is this shit!

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Jesus. How does the helicopter controls - keyboard layout works? I'm sure there are way more switches than buttons.
How complicated it is to hit the switches and buttons you need while under fire or during manouvers?

And lastly, how cool is this shit!

Well every switch and button has a keyboard bind but NO ONE actually memorizes all of those. You've got maybe 20-25 binds that you memorize and use regularly, and the rest you just use the clickable cockpit functionality for. As you might imagine it takes some getting used to, but once you know where stuff is you can click on stuff pretty rapidly. Learning some of the binds only accelerates your ability to handle the pilot workload. As for flying and messing with switches at the same time, you generally try to avoid that, but fortunately it's pretty avoidable. Like I said in an earlier post, the Black Shark is primarily a sniper with an 8km range. Ideally you're hovering behind a terrain feature, unmask, lock up a target, fire a missile, and then terrain mask again. As such, enemy fire ideally shouldn't be an issue: if you're getting shot at, you're doing something wrong. If you close to within the enemy's threat envelop to engage with cannon or rockets, you generally configure avionics beforehand, start your attack run, release weapons, and then break off. The process of engaging the enemy is such that you generally are not engaging in defensive maneuvers, targeting and firing your weapons, and configuring systems all at the same time. Finally, the Black Shark has an excellent trimmer that makes hands off flight very easy. You simply hold down the trim button when starting a maneuver, execute the maneuver, stabilize the helicopter in forward, level flight, and then release the trimmer, setting a new neutral position for the cyclic, letting you fly completely hands off. Once you've mastered trim, you'll find that you only need to actively fly the helicopter in take off and landing, when turning to a new steerpoint, when engaging in defensive maneuvers, or when flying nap of the earth; the rest of your time can be spent scanning for targets, configuring avionics, or operating your weapons systems.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Narration volume is still problematic, but I'm getting closer to a solution.

 

[Krraloth]

Jesus. How does the helicopter controls - keyboard layout works? I'm sure there are way more switches than buttons.
How complicated it is to hit the switches and buttons you need while under fire or during manouvers?

And lastly, how cool is this shit!

Well every switch and button has a keyboard bind but NO ONE actually memorizes all of those. You've got maybe 20-25 binds that you memorize and use regularly, and the rest you just use the clickable cockpit functionality for. As you might imagine it takes some getting used to, but once you know where stuff is you can click on stuff pretty rapidly. Learning some of the binds only accelerates your ability to handle the pilot workload. As for flying and messing with switches at the same time, you generally try to avoid that, but fortunately it's pretty avoidable. Like I said in an earlier post, the Black Shark is primarily a sniper with an 8km range. Ideally you're hovering behind a terrain feature, unmask, lock up a target, fire a missile, and then terrain mask again. As such, enemy fire ideally shouldn't be an issue: if you're getting shot at, you're doing something wrong. If you close to within the enemy's threat envelop to engage with cannon or rockets, you generally configure avionics beforehand, start your attack run, release weapons, and then break off. The process of engaging the enemy is such that you generally are not engaging in defensive maneuvers, targeting and firing your weapons, and configuring systems all at the same time. Finally, the Black Shark has an excellent trimmer that makes hands off flight very easy. You simply hold down the trim button when starting a maneuver, execute the maneuver, stabilize the helicopter in forward, level flight, and then release the trimmer, setting a new neutral position for the cyclic, letting you fly completely hands off. Once you've mastered trim, you'll find that you only need to actively fly the helicopter in take off and landing, when turning to a new steerpoint, when engaging in defensive maneuvers, or when flying nap of the earth; the rest of your time can be spent scanning for targets, configuring avionics, or operating your weapons systems.

So to speak, if the Black Shark gets in a dogfight you're pretty much screwed.
Are there missions that simulate fuckups and such?
When you approach a target heavily fortified what kind of options do you have (air support and such)?

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Well attack helicopters aren't really designed to shoot down other helicopters. They can definitely do it, and in fact probably the single biggest threat you face in the stock Georgian Oil War campaign is enemy helicopters employing ATGMs against you, but a Black Shark, or a Hind, or an Apache, would never be assigned a combat air patrol mission -- that's what fighters are for. If you do engage enemy aircraft, generally you hit them with an ATGM while they're in a hover, blissfully unaware of your presence. If somehow you get in an actual dogfight with another helicopter, you boresight the cannon, manually aim, and let 30mm rounds do the rest.

Against fixed wing fighter aircraft though, you're completely screwed, so the best defense is to stay low to the ground where you are hard to spot both visually and on radar.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by simulate fuck ups. Do you mean aircraft system failures? Mission designers can set up triggers for random system failures, and you definitely experience system failures due to battle damage. If you mean tactical fuck ups, those tend to be of your own making and don't require any prior planning on the part of a mission designer . Some of the missions in the Georgian Oil War campaign are brutally hard -- in fact the guiding design principle seems to be to simulate modern mechanized air-land battle as opposed to creating game like scenarios that the player can win. In other words, some missions make you feel like you did your job as well as you could if you killed 3-4 tanks before you were killed. Ultimately, that's the mathematics of war -- if you kill more enemy before you yourself are killed then you did your job; you surviving and winning aren't realistic outcomes. That's not to say the game is impossible or isn't fun, just that it can be a bit sobering at times.

Although Black Shark 2 supports communications with friendly air and ground forces, most missions were designed before that functionality was enabled so you generally can't talk directly to the ground forces that you're supporting or any friendly flights in the air. Generally though you are fighting as part of a combined arms team, consisting of armor, mechanized infantry, field artillery, air defense artillery, and aviation assets. You don't directly control those friendly AI forces, but they are fairly competent when it comes to performing their mission. So what does this all mean when you're attacking the main line of enemy resistance? It means that your best chance of success lies in working as a team with the AI. As an attack helicopter, your strength is that you can kill tanks from 8km away. Your weakness is that you only have light armor, and you have difficulty seeing small, camouflaged targets such as dismounted infantry. With that in mind you need to use your strengths to best aid the AI ground forces, and let the AI on the ground make up for your weaknesses. In general this means engaging enemy tanks, which are the biggest threat to the friendly ground AI, from stand off range, and then let the attacking ground forces sweep through the objective. Friendly ground forces will be able to see things like a ZU-23 (AAA) emplacement, or a stinger team, and kill them easily, making it safe for you to get closer to the objective. What you don't want to do is get way out ahead of friendly ground forces and expose yourself to the stuff you're weak against. Instead let friendly ground forces protect you, just as you protect them.

 

[Krraloth]

That's very interesting. thanks for the detailed answers.
Also MOAR

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

A (unsuccessful) demonstration of the response to an engine fire.

 

[spectre]

Nice. Good thing you figured out the mic, it's way better with a commentary.

Sidenote: given all the attention to detail (did the pilot cross himself or what?) I was genuinely surprised how simplistic the parachute physics was.