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One ot the things I haven't done yet on the FishProfiles board is put up a post in the Recovery Room covering any of my non-fish passions. Well, with this review of one of my favourite pieces of software, I'm now going to rectify that omission.

Games aren't normally high on my 'wish list' of purchases, but there is one exception, and that is flight simulators. Especially helicopter simulators. There's something that's always got under my skin with regard to helicopters, especially attack helicopters, which is why pride of place in my photo album goes to the shots I had taken by a friend when I visited RAF Mildenhall for an air show, and managed to wangle, courtesy of my A-Level in bare-faced cheek, time sitting in the cockpit of an AH-64 Apache.

So, when a helicopter sim appeared in, of all places, the CD-ROM section of my local Morrisons supermarket, I just had to snap it up. And the sim in question? Say hello to Comanche Gold 3.

For those who have never encountered the RAH-66 Comanche light scout attack helicopter before, this is a machine to be reckoned with, which makes the US Army's decision in March 2004 to cancel its appropriation of Comanches a bit of a mystery to me. Let's face it, what we have here is the world's first true stealth helicopter, with a radar cross-section 600 times smaller than an Apache, plus the ability to carry a truly awesome weapons load, deliver said weapons load with pinpoint accuracy on targets up to three miles away, and mix it with the best of the enemy's helicopters in air-to-air combat. The enemy can't even see the Comanche coming until it's practically breathing down their necks, and it doesn't need to get that close to unleash a deadly blow to anyone stupid enough to cross swords with it. As well as the Viper 20mm triple-barreled chain gun (variable speed, fires 750 to 1500 rounds per minute of depleted uranium tipped ammunition), it can carry Hydra 70 folding-fin aerial rockets (FFARs) in quad packs, twin packs of AIM-92 Stinger air-to-air missiles for air combat, and the truly wicked AGM-114C HellFire laser-guided anti-armour missile. In recon configuration (maximum stealth), a typical loadout comprises 4 HellFires and 4 Stingers, housed in two folding weapons bays on the underside of the helicopter. With the bay doors closed, the radar cross-section is at a minimum. The Comanche can open the bay doors, loose off a HellFire, for example, and close the bay doors, all in under 3 seconds, minimising the time that the enemy has to detect its presence. When firepower is more important than maintaining stealth, the Comanche can be fitted with a pair of stub wings, known as EFAMS (External Fuel & Armament Management System) which allows additional weapons to be carried. In heavy attack mode, a loadout can comprise 10 HellFires and 8 Stingers, enough to give the enemy a major headache. Not content with that, the Comanche has the ability to hand off GPS coordinates of its selected targets to waiting artillery units, and call in a Copperhead artillery strike. Copperheads are, for those who haven't seen them, 155mm howitzer shells, with steering fins on them that allow them to home in on a target zone. Yes, these are satellite guided shells. And they're tipped with depleted uranium penetrators for maximum armour-killing potential, and contain multi-stage warheads - a shaped charge for blowing a hole in the armour, with a secondary charge behind, comprising a copper slug surrounded by phosphorus and a superoxide combustion accelerant. When this hits a tank, the shaped charge pushes the penetrator through the armour, and the secondary charge follows on behind. When that detonates, it creates a fireball that reaches 8,000°C in under a second, spraying pieces of vapourised copper slug around the interior of the tank. Anyone in the tank when it hits is, basically, cremated on the spot. Similar unpleasant things happen to tank crews that get in the way of a HellFire. Modern warfare may look like a video game, but if you're the enemy on the receiving end of all of this, the results are not pretty.

So, fire up the simulation, and you're presented with a pilot roster, to add your name to, then a selection of mission options. Once a mission is selected, you're presented with a briefing of what you have to do (ranging from simple things such as learn to fly the helicopter in the training missions, through to hard tasks such as wiping out enemy SAM launchers in the later missions). Then, a mission map appears, which you can tour and check out to see where the likely nasties are, and then, there's the loadout screen, where you get to choose the weapon fitment. And then, it's time to fly ...

The first thing to note is that the flight physics is exquisitely modelled. Those nice people at NovaLogic were invited to the headquarters of Boeing Sikorsky First Team, the Comanche's designers, to hone the flight model. Consequently, all manner of interesting phenomena that affect helicopters in flight are accurately modelled. For those with the technical know-how, this includes dissymetry of lift, frontal blade stall on approach to never-exceed speed, and the requirement to alter collective inputs when executing turns. If you have a full-featured joystick with rudder pedals added, you get to play with tail rotor tricks. Among the neatest of these being the ability to fly sideways. As the manual says, try doing that in an F-16 ...

Second, the world is full of things to crash into. Trees, for example. Which is made all the more likely because of the nature of modern helicopter warfare. Even a Comanche can't get away with barrelling in at 500 feet, all guns blazing - this is a sure-fire way of being shot down. Modern helicopter warfare is a belly-crawling affair - sometimes you're flying just 10 feet off the deck - and the reason for this is simple. Stay close to the ground, and any radar echoes you produce are mixed in with ground clutter, making you all but impossible to detect. Hover below treetop level, and the enemy simply can't see you for the trees. But, of course, snag your rotors on a tree, and the effect upon your helicopter is less than happy. Crash and burn.

Then, you meet the enemy. Who may be fielding all kinds of interesting hardware that can ruin your day if you let it. Triple-A guns are unpleasant, but not too bad to deal with if you know what you're doing. You may think enemy tanks can't shoot down a helicopter, but you'd be wrong - modern main battle tanks have laser designators and computer-guided fire control systems that allow them to do just that if they see you. If you're travelling too fast for the turret traversal to catch you, you get away with it. If you sit there and wave your tush at the tank, say hello to a 120mm armour-piercing shell rearranging your facial features. Not a good idea.

Worse, MUCH worse, are enemy SAMs. And some of these are vicious. The 2S6M Tunguska, for example. This piece of kit from the Soviet inventory is extremely nasty. A tracked chassis with a gun turret on it, boasting radar-guided 30mm cannons that fire 4,800 rounds per minute. The cannons alone can inflict a lot of damage, but on the side of the turret are launch boxes for the SA-19 Grison surface-to-air missile. This beast contains a large warhead (with fragmentation charges to add to the damage inflicted), mated to a guidance system that comprises multi-mode millimetre-wave radar mixed in with laser guidance. It can home in on a supersonic bomber from 10Km away and hit it. It's equally adept at taking out helicopters hugging the ground. If it sees you, you're dead. Check out this bit of kit via Google and see some nice photos of the real thing.

Enemy helicopters are properly modelled too. Mi-24 Hinds are unpleasant. Mi-28 Havocs even more so if you let them loose off their air-to-air missiles at you. Worst of the bunch, however, is the Ka-50 Werewolf. Known to NATO by the reporting name of 'Hokum', this was designed as a dedicated anti-helicopter helicopter for the Red Army, and packs laser-guided air-to-air missiles that can seriously trash your social schedule. Its radical design includes such features as two sets of rotor blades, mounted co-axially, doing away with the need for a tail rotor, which makes it fast and manouevreable. Mixing it with these in your Comanche takes skill and a lot of courage. Again, go hunt this piece of kit via Google, and discover that one of its other claims to fame is that it's the only helicopter with an ejector seat ... and if that sounds positively mad, it's [1] a clever system, and [2] it works. Took the Russians a long time to perfect it, but it works.

Not content with providing 78 built-in missions, NovaLogic supplied a Mission Editor. This isn't the friendliest of tools, but it does the job. And allows you to create all manner of mayhem, limited principally by the deviousness of your imagination. And after 700 flying hours and a LOT of mission design practice, some of my User Missions are singularly devious. If you think you're hard enough, I'll mail you the files, but you might not like me when you try completing the missions

Then, when you've managed to complete a mission, you can play it back. And this feature is a serious ego boost. Mission Playbacks come with all manner of director's cut camera angles to select from at the touch of a key - which means you can make your compelted mission look like a Tom Clancy novel turned into a film. Choose the right camera angles, and you get to make Jean-Claude Van Damme look like the prize wimp in the playground. Suddenly, you're a hero, and the studio moguls at Hollywood are lining up Tom Cruise to play you.

Okay, after that, it's down to earth time. This isn't some mindless shoot-em-up that takes about five minutes to master. This is a proper flight simulation, and getting to grips with it takes LOTS of practice. It helps if, like me, you spent time during your university mathematics course studying helicopter flight dynamics, but even then, you only start to look good after you've racked up around 500 hours. Which is more or less the kind of flight time that the people who do this for real have to rack up before they're considered front-line ready. Patience and determination are needed to master this. And, when you finally do, and you get to replay your moment of glory with all those camera angles, pause for a moment and think how long it took you to reach that stage. And dispense huge amounts of respect to the people who serve in uniform for real, who spend three years training to do this, and who have to get it right because failure for them doesn't involve 'Game Over' appearing before their eyes, it involves a one-way ticket to Arlington. Some of the inbuilt missions are tough - seriously tough - and give you an insight into the kind of mayhem real military helicopter pilots have to face, with the bonus that your mistakes don't land you with a Purple Heart, or a pine box with a flag draped upon it as your transport home. To give you an idea what awaits, some of the missions are so hard that even now, with over 700 hours logged, my success rate for the real pig-ugly ones is around 1 attempt in 4. Juggling four different sets of flight controls at once, while navigating at the dead of night and trying to select the right weapon system to deal with the hail of lead coming your way, not to mention enemy choppers, and keeping yourself hidden from SAMs while doing all of this, is quite a workload, believe me. And, to make things even harder, you have a team-mate to hand off orders to as a squad leader. Bringing both yourself and the computer-moderated team mate home at the end of some of the missions is a real work of art, believe me.

One aspect of the simulation I haven't tried is the multi-player option. However, if I get broadband at home, I'll happily act as tutor to anyone here who fancies themselves as the next rotary-winged Top Gun. I won't make it easy though!

How do I rate this? First class. Accurate flight physics, accurately replicated difficulty of tackling determined and very hostile enemy units, quite a few of whom can manifest a surprising degree of intelligence for computer-controlled units, and although your team-mate has his AI limitations, if handled correctly, he's a real bonus, a useful force multiplier that you should look after and not throw away casually. Plus, you get to design devious and difficult missions of your own, fly them, and replay your antics afterwards, complete with camera tricks that make you look hotter than Cindy Crawford in an immodest state of undress with a wanton glint in her eyes. Believe me, when you trash an entire enemy armoured regiment while flying sideways, and play it back with the right camera angles, the ego boost is colossal. "Hey look at me, Ma!" It only remains to add the salutory note of caution, that pretending you can do this for real afterwards will invite scorn and derision from actual serving Army pilots, some of whom turn up on the NovaWorld multi-user site to show the civilians how it's really done. Even after 700 hours logged flight time, I suspect they'd teach me some painful lessons if I turned up announcing myself as the helicopter equivalent of Baron Von Richthofen

All I need now is a PC capable of running Comanche 4 ...




Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

And somebody had the nerve to call those of us participating in the D+D thread nerds...

PM/email/msg me if you have any questions/comments regarding me or my knowledge or if you want me to read a thread.

wow. that is alot of text. ]

It's fun to do barrel rolls in 747's on flight sims

Either that or climb to >10,000', adjust the trim so it's diving as steep as it can, and then roll the thing over on it's back...it'll turn and do a steady climb up and up and up (since it's upside down the controls are reversed). And if yer in MS Flight Sim 2004 you can switch to any other planes while you're in the air...so you can climb to 20,000' and switch to the Wright Bro's plane and watch it break

This is why I shouldn't be allowed to get a pilot's license

Cal, nice one. Atleast I dont think you're a nerd! I'm into all that aswell, especially fond of Eurofighter sims and the like. I'm actually looking for a helicopter sim at the moment but can't find one I like. Can you recommend any others? preferably with the Apache? Yes it is a shame they cancelled the RAH-66 but I think the US Army decided that for the same price of buying a fleet of Commanche's (some $14 billion) they could solve other problems like upgrading protection systems on their apaches and getting in some new chinooks and blackhawks. Also the commanche isn't exactly stealthy when its flying low over urban war zones! But it is still a shame. Thanks for the informative post And if I do get Commanche 3 we can hook up online and save the world together

Check it out- http://profile.myspace.com/bigtone85

Only Apache Sim I've encountered is an old one from MicroProse - called Gunship!. Only proble is, controls are awkward and quirky, and since it was written at least 3 years before Comanche Gold 3, it's a bit primitive in some areas. However, if you can live with the quirky flight controls (which you can't change - sigh) and other glitches, it not only allows you to fly the Apache, but Soviet helicopters too such as the Havoc and Hokum.

If anyone out thre knows of a DECENT Apache sim I'd be interested too, because I sat in the cockpit of one of these things at an air show at RAF Mildenhall in 1997, and believe me, this is one fun piece of machinery to sit in ... take a look at this photo (one of my 'pride and joy' photos ... heheheheh ...):

http://groups.msn.com/CaliLasseiasGiantPhotoCompendium/shoebox.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=106

Oh, by the way, I have more hair now. I'm slowly mutating into one of the ZZ Top guitarists



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Although I can't claim to be any good at flying flight sims, i do like flying, and I am currently practicing for my forst aerobatics competition, which is going to be in april (near leeds in england if anyone is interested)

piccies....


low level fly by at an airfield (not saying which one)


north east coast of england


me looking at a scarry looking cloud


firefly cockpit, during aeros
notice the toppled AI (artificial horizon) and G meter in the bottom left reading +5 to -1g

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why didnt those pictures work?

If you're not a premium (i.e., paying) member Bill, they won't ...

Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002