I have the Flight Link helicopter setup. I bought it on EBay, *after* I
got my private helicopter rating. (I have about 140 hours in
helicopters, more in seized-wingers.)

It's a nice setup, but the control feel is very different than that of a
real primary training helicopter (e.g. the Schweizer 300, which is what
I learned in). Both the cyclic and the pedals have more resistance than
the real thing, and I find the cyclic spring forces to be excessive and
tiring after a while. (It reminds me of the time I flew an S300 with one
of the trim motors burned out - not very much fun in the pattern and I
called it a day after less than an hour of flight time.)

I have quite a few helo hours in FS2004, and a few in X-Plane. FS2004
has a number of deficiencies, including a porked autorotation model (in
particular, the R22 is impossible to autorotate successfully) and also
no modeling of trim, which is used to relieve control forces in the S300
and most other helicopters (the Robinson R22 is a little different in
that it only has lateral trim, and that's not controlled via a "coolie"
hat as in other helos). Probably its most critical shortcoming is an
almost total lack of requirement to put in some counter-acting pedal as
you raise the collective - if you are gentle and slow, you can lift off
with no pedal input at all. Totally unrealistic. In any light training
helicopter, you'll be dancing on the pedals at times, especially with
certain rear-quarter tailwinds.

X-Plane has its own foibles, and even though I keep hoping the flight
model will get better (I've been waiting for this through three full
versions - 6, 7, and now 8 which I just bought but that will be the
last one I buy unless this is addressed), I find it very irritating to
fly its included helicopters for any length of time - it feels far less
like the real thing (harder to fly!) as compared to FS2004 despite the
things I said above. I've tried some of the freeware add-ons and I don't
find them to be much better. I WANT to like X-Plane but despite paying
for three versions it still feels quite unpolished/finished.

Your question was really about the Flight Link controls - I like mine,
but I spent quite a bit of $ on them (about 1/2 of the cost if bought
new from them) and in retrospect I probably should've spent that on
real flight hours. I will continue to use them, probably mostly for
practicing instrument flying (in pursuit of the helicopter add-on inst.
rating to my fixed wing one), but really, you can get 80% of the
experience for 20% of the bucks - just buy the CH Products 568 joystick,
Pro Throttle, and Pro Pedals. That is a wonderful setup for sim flying
and it takes up a lot less room to boot. Although these bits don't
*look* like helicopter controls, you can develop the basic responses of
cyclic, collective (be sure to reverse the direction of the throttle
axis), and pedals.

I will close by opining that no amount of sim flying (on a PC anyway)
will get you past a certain point in terms of Looking Good in your first
few hours of real-life flying. As I said, the sims will give you a rough
idea of which control does what, and to some degree an idea of how they
interact (there is a lot of interaction!), but I wouldn't put any money
on whether a bunch of hours on a PC sim will get you hovering sooner.

Oh - one more thing - I *do* find that practicing confined/pinnacle
approaches (e.g. landing on top of a building) to be helpful in FS2004.
These kind of maneuvers take considerable planning ahead in terms of
airspeed and descent control, and the sim seems to model that quite
well. But, those are maneuvers that are not required for the private
checkride, as they are for the commercial rating and above.



As always, the above is my .02 and my experience. YMMV.

Dave Blevins

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 03:14:02 GMT, "retired-allen"
wrote:

I am looking for someone who has used the Flight Link hardware with either
X-Plane or MSFS 2004 (R-22 simulation) and whether or not they would
recommend it for a prospective heli pilot.