Jumping into a whole new DCS World module in this next flight journal! This time out I’m in the Polychop Simulations DCS: OH-58D Kiowa Warrior. I’ve been interested in flying this helicopter for ages but just hadn’t had the time to get into it. After a quick familiarization flight, I made my own training mission just to get a feel for some of the weapons and the flight dynamics and this is how things are looking after a first flight!
Getting airborne
After a quick cold and dark familiarization with the DCS: OH-58D, I did what I always do and set myself up with a very quick mission just to get a feel for the helicopter. My sortie took me from a helicopter base in the eastern side of the DCS: Afghanistan map over a built up area and into a mountain pass where I’d setup some static trucks on the road. The mission wasn’t designed to be challenging, just interesting enough to try things out.
After bringing the Kiowa into a hover, I pulled back on the collective and got the helicopter airborne.
I’m not sure if its just the years of experience starting to make me more comfortable with helicopters or its just the Kiowa being relatively easy to fly but despite a few spicy moments I managed to get the Kiowa stabilized and ready to fly.
This was not my first flight in it and I have to report that I did have a bit of trouble on the first flight. Most of that was trim related and I learned through some searching that you may need to go into the DCS control panel and turn off force feedback (default on) if you don’t have a FFB controller.
Off to the target zone
Back to the sortie at hand, after a little goofing around, it was time to get on task and so I took the helicopter up to the north west following a major road through the settlements in the area.
On my right pylon, I had equipped a rocket pod with HE rockets. On the left, a .50cal heavy machine gun. Nothing fancy, nothing requiring the MMS (mast mounted sight) just yet. Just point and shoot.
Once arriving at the waypoint I located the trucks on the road where I had placed them. I armed the left pylon with the .50cal and opened up on the first target.
The sights on the Kiowa are…. primitive. It’s basically a pen mark on the windscreen but it and the tracers off of the .50cal are good enough to walk your shots onto the target with a reasonable degree of precision at this close range.
I picked off a couple of trucks with this method. Time to switch it up! Went to the right pylon where the rocket pod is and let loose with a couple of shots.
Surprised with the accuracy of my shot, I managed to get it on target in the first go.
After that, I fired a few more rockets and some more .50cal and before long there were large smoke columns everywhere in the target zone and all of my test targets were destroyed. Mission accomplished.
And fin
After that, all it took was a quick jaunt back to the helicopter base and a landing.
This was the moment of truth, could I land this thing?
And the answer? A surprising yes! I’ve crashed a lot of DCS helicopters on landing and awkwardly landed most of the rest of them. But this time, I got it down more or less right on the mark. Wow!
I think I and the Kiowa are going to get along just fine!
Up next in the training syllabus is to get acquainted with the nav systems, the MMS, and then on to the Hellfire and APKWS rockets.
Stormbirds 
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