The contents of this article are based purely on the knowledge I have
gained by playing this fine simulation and through discussions with
others. Though I did participate in the beta testing for Apache, the
contents of this article should in no way be mistaken as "official,"
and are not endorsed by Digital Integration or Interactive Magic.
All inaccuracies are my own.
I personally still keep one eye on the vertical speed and AGL altitude indicators whenever I maneuver even though flying the Apache has become almost second nature to me. I've learned through experience that unless I'm just cruising steadily along, ignoring them for more than a second or two when low to the ground invites disaster.
To really be able to control your helicopter properly, it's important get a feel for how the various aerodynamic effects unique to rotary-wing aircraft that are described in the manual will affect your altitude. One practice drill I use to help drive these into my head is to start off on the ground then take off and accelerate as rapidly as possible to 150 knots without ever rising above 10' or so (make it 50' when you're first starting out--it will probably seem challenging enough!). Because you've got ground effect lift at low speeds and very low altitudes, you don't want to pull up too much on the collective on takeoff or you will immediately pop up through your target ceiling. Pitch forward immediately to get moving and prevent too much altitude gain. As you bring the collective up to 99% torque, you can lower the nose a bit further to counter that additional lift plus the onset of translational lift as you pass 20 knots or so. Keep the nose fairly steady until you pass 70 knots, then be prepared to nose up sharply by a small amount as translational lift maxes out and you must redirect some of the main rotor's thrust which you were using for acceleration toward just maintaining altitude. If you're not paying attention as you pass this critical speed, you stand an excellent chance of plowing right into the ground. From there on up to 150 knots, you need simply raise the nose very slowly until it is level with the horizon.
Reversing the drill so that you decelerate from 150 knots to a hover is in some ways even more informative. It is amazing how much collective you need to add to maintain altitude as you decelerate out of effective translational lift. Be prepared or be a pancake.
Once you've mastered level acceleration and deceleration, you should work on being able to do very tight level turns. You will be using these often in combat, so you want the technique to be automatic, though as always you should track the position of the vertical speed caret during turns. My technique is to bank about 45-50 degrees, raise the nose only a few degrees, apply full anti-torque pedal input in the direction of the turn, then modulate back cyclic and bank angle to maintain altitude. If I find myself too high and actually want to lose altitude, making a 90 or 100 degree bank will do this for me in a hurry.
The last essential piloting skill is nap of the earth flying. This shouldn't be too hard once you can do everything else I've just talked about, you just have to pay closer attention to the AGL altitude indicator than usual when going up and down slopes; the vertical speed indicator caret is less useful in these situations. If your IHADSS is disabled by damage, you'll have to eyeball it since your backup altimeter displays pressure altitude only. Using the diagonal and side views can help you determine how close you are to the side of a hill you're passing over.
When you encounter trees and buildings, you should ideally steer around them using level turns rather than fly over them, though if you're preoccupied doing other things or if you're navigating through thick fog at high speed then it's safer to fly higher. By trial and fatal error I've discovered that if you fly at 80' or higher you will clear the stands of trees in the game. The absolute limit may be lower, but not by enough to matter.
Once you've gotten this down, you can proceed on to making approaches with a constant angle of descent. These should be done into the wind if at all possible, and are excellent practice for shipboard landings even when you do them on land since the visual cues are similar. For a 15 degree descent, first line yourself up with your chosen landing point, preferably into the wind, then approach it until the point about half a rotor diameter beyond where you want to touch down is 15 degrees below the horizon (halfway between the -10 and -20 degree pitch ladder bars in the IHADSS). Descend steadily, pitching back a bit to decelerate and modulating your sink rate with your collective such that the spot on the ground you're focussed on remains stationary between the two pitch ladder bars. If the spot starts to move up, you're too low so add collective. If it starts to move down, you're above the 15 degree glide path and must reduce collective. How you control your deceleration rate so that you end up at 0 knots forward motion when you touch down is hard to describe, but with practice it's not too difficult to achieve.
When landing aboard the LHA Tarawa, you can use the same technique of keeping a spot on the ship just beyond where you want to land stationary at a fixed pitch angle, but since the ship is usually moving forward at about 19 knots, your actual descent angle will be shallower than it looks, requiring you to make a faster approach or descend more slowly or both. Barring head or tail winds, you should of course aim for 19 knots of airspeed as you touch down.
Crosswinds make landings much more difficult, and should really only come into play during shipboard landings (which are already hard) because on land you can almost always choose your angle of approach. I don't know how real helicopter pilots do it, but I've found I'm most successful if I can bias my cyclic into the wind enough to counter any sideways motion and then keep it there until just before I touch down, when I level out and drop onto the wheels. It's easier said than done, since it's hard to judge lateral motion when you're high off the ground. One way to do this is to switch to the F10 external view, which allows you to watch your Apache from a fixed point. From this view, any sideways drift is quite obvious.
When first learning how to do them, I think it's best to fly straight up with the nose level until the engines blow, since then you have a lot of time to pick a landing spot and mentally prepare for the moment of truth, though you do have to remember to immediately bottom out the collective control and nose down to accelerate to the ideal autorotation speed of 60 knots. Contrary to what the manual says, your descent rate at this speed will be about 50 fps, not 40 fps (it used to be 40 in earlier beta versions, so things happen a lot faster now). You'll have to keep your nose a degree or two below the horizon to stay at 60 knots. The best time to start your flare is after you pass through 100'. Pull back sharply, watching your airspeed and altitude closely. You don't want to pitch your nose so far back that you stop descending altogether, or you will end up too high. You want to start applying collective when you get down below 40 knots ideally at about 20-30' and at the same time pushing smartly forward on the cyclic to quickly level your nose. Gradually increase collective input and pull it all the way up as you settle down. This final phase takes maybe 2-4 seconds, so there's not a lot of time to think about it, and if you misjudge anything at all you will be killed or injured. It is usually best to keep a forward speed of about 20 knots or so on touchdown so you still have some translational lift working for you.
The most common situation in which you will be forced to do an autorotation during an actual mission is when you're flying low and fast and get both engines shot out. The end game is very similar to the case I just described above, but initially you must be prepared to immediately nose up to turn some of your forward momentum into lift or you will arc right into the ground when your engines quit. Keep nosing back, trying to maintain at least 20-30' until your speed drops enough that it's safe to land, then nose over as before as you begin to apply collective.
If you want a real challenge, try flying straight up then doing a purely vertical autorotation with no forward speed. Your descent rate will be truly scary, but it is actually possible to get a safe (barely) landing this way in the sim. I kind of doubt the Apache can do this in real life.
Often your attempts to exploit the Hellfire's long range will be stymied by obstacles in the way of you and a distant target detected on radar. You will see a "TARGET OBSCURED" message on the IHADSS display when this is the case. Fortunately, there are ways around this problem. First, you could climb up to a higher altitude to see if this allows you to get out from behind whatever is blocking your line of fire. This sometimes works except if the obstacle is close enough to the target then you will have to fly very high to see past it and gaining any altitude at all is normally a bad thing since it is like painting a bullseye on your aircraft for all SAM operators in the area. A second, more palatable solution is to loft your Hellfire to its target. With the obscured target selected, just pull back until it's just below the aiming box on the IHADSS then let go. The missile will fly up then immediately arc back down and eventually (hopefully) hit the target in a descending angle. This technique is very effective except when the target is blocked by a large object or one that is extremely close to it, such as another vehicle in the same convoy. In the latter case, even if your Hellfire misses your intended target, at least it will destroy something else nearby. You will normally gain a little altitude during the pull up if you're moving forward, but you can just dive back down again a second later. If you absolutely cannot afford to gain any altitude during the launch, zero your collective as you pitch back. You won't gain any altitude if you do it properly, but will decelerate rapidly until you can get your nose back down. Remember to pull up on your collective again as you level the nose or you will drop like a rock.
Although the Hydra rockets as modeled in the sim follow the path of launch precisely, they are still hard to aim, so accuracy outside of 4000 yards is not very good for vehicle-sized targets. They are generally most usefully employed against larger targets like ammo dumps and boats or against vehicles which do not shoot back like trucks and tanks. However, it is possible to get 100% accuracy against any target at around 2.5-2.7 nautical miles by taking advantage of the fact that the TADS display is exactly aligned with the boresight line if you don't pan it manually and don't have a target locked up, and that the IHADSS rocket aiming symbology is oddly linked to the TADS display. Just select a target, switch to the DTV TADS mode, and go to maximum magnification. At 2.5-2.7 nm, the target will appear so large that it will be easy to line it up inside the I-beam and make a shot you know will hit. If you think there may be obstacles in the way, just launch several rockets so the first ones can blow them out of the way. Good accuracy can be achieved up to the maximum 3.0 nm range of Hydra rockets using this method, but closer than 2.5 nm it is unusable due to the way the TADS magnification is implemented in the sim. Just keep in mind that you're cheating if you use this technique!
The Apache's flexibly mounted chain gun is one of your most valuable weapons because of its lethality and ammo load. Used properly, it can easily kill twice as many targets during a mission as a full load of 16 Hellfires. The modeling of the chain gun has been rightly criticized as giving it excessive lethality against heavily armored targets like tanks and too much accuracy at long range. On the other hand, there are so many enemy air defense vehicles in some missions that at the harder difficulty levels they would be almost impossible to complete if this were not the case. Instead of pursuing this debate, I will discuss how to use the chain gun as it is modeled to maximum advantage.
The stated maximum effective range of the chain gun is 4000 yards, but it is in fact almost totally accurate up to 5500 yards against non-moving targets and hits are possible at even greater ranges though accuracy drops off markedly. The only drawback to firing from farther away than 4000 yards is that you are not told if the target is obscured or not. Because the chain gun aims itself automatically at whatever target is selected on radar, it is possible to destroy many closely spaced targets in a short amount of time. You just fire at one until it blows up, then the gun will instantly train itself on the next target for the cycle to repeat. When you begin firing from 5500 yards, however, it takes a significant amount of time for your rounds to make it to the target, so there's a delay before the target blows up and the next target is autoselected. Using a technique I will describe, you can double or triple the rate at which you can destroy targets with the chain gun.
First, you need to know how long a burst a given target needs to be destroyed. For trucks, it's maybe 1/4 of a second. For tanks, it's over a second. For most other vehicles, including the ZSU-23s, SAM launchers, and APCs which together present the greatest threat to your personal health, about 3/4 of a second will do. Knowing this, when you open up on a group of targets at long range, you can fire a burst of lethal duration at the first target, manually select the next, fire a lethal burst at it, then manually select the next even before the first one blows up. There is no wasted time and little wasted ammo since you're holding down the trigger continuously and switching fire from target to target at just the right time intervals. Try this and you will be astonished at how effective it is. Sometimes your burst length will be a little too short and a target will survive. Just hitting "r" twice to switch to air-to-air radar mode and back again will cause it to reselect the highest priority (closest, usually) target so you can give it another quick burst to finish it off.
The chain gun can also be very effective against air targets, but only when they are not maneuvering. Save your ammo and wait until it's flying in a straight line, then open up and you're sure to get a kill.
Stinger missiles are really your primary air-to-air weapon, though against fast movers they are only accurate when fired from the rear quarter. Enemy helicopters can be engaged from head-on with about a 50-75% probability of kill. Since Stingers tend to be spoofed by flares fairly often, I usually switch to the chain gun if I think I can get a reasonable shot before the target flies out of range. Flares don't fool cannon shells. If a target is coming head-on, feel free to launch from beyond maximum range since by the time it gets to that range the target will probably have closed enough distance for the missile to reach. I routinely kill Hinds by launching at 3 nm in head-on engagements.
The Longbow radar is your primary means of detecting the enemy. Therefore, it makes sense to keep the radar and the Tactical Situation Display MFD modes available at all times. Though redundant in some ways, the TSD has a number of distinct advantages which complement the radar display. First, the TSD integrates air and ground radar returns into a single display. Second, it provides a 360 degree view for greater situational awareness. Last, it shows missiles in flight, so you can tell when your wingmen are attacking targets and you can better judge how to evade missiles targeted at you. When there are no enemies close by, I expand the TSD to its maximum radius so I can spot distant targets, especially incoming air threats, as quickly as possible. The resolution in this mode is kind of crude though, so I switch back to the smaller radius whenever I attack or must evade incoming missiles.
Only with the radar MFD can you set target priority levels to filter out uninteresting targets. This feature is critically important since it allows you to make sense out of the dozens of radar returns you might see when approaching a large concentration of enemy vehicles. Unless you have lots of extra ordnance, which is unlikely in most missions, it's usually best to keep the priority set to HIGH as you ingress to highlight only the enemy vehicles which are a threat to you. On the way back home you may wish to switch back to viewing ALL to sniff out any likely targets of opportunity en route. If your objective is to attack air defenses or APCs at the target area then you can just leave the priority set to HIGH. If destroying tanks is your objective, then as you near the attack waypoint you should switch back and forth between MEDIUM and HIGH, the former to find the targets you need to attack, and the latter to spot the defenses you'll have to go around or plow through to get close enough to attack your primary objective. Likewise if your goal is to hit a truck convoy then you'll switch between LOW and HIGH.
There are three modes of target selection supported by the game, and it can be confusing when you don't know which one you're using. They are BORESIGHT, radar, and TADS, and the mode you're in is always displayed in a lower corner of the radar MFD (for radar mode, the current priority level is shown). TADS appears only when you have locked up a target. The confusing part is that if you start out in radar mode but switch to the helmet or TADS views, you are automatically switched to BORESIGHT mode but you can't see the radar MFD anymore so it's not immediately obvious that this change has taken place. If you want to stay in that view but go back to radar target selection mode, just hit the "y" key. If you lock up a target while in one of these full screen view modes, you will be switched to TADS mode as usual. One thing the manual does not mention is that the view will become padlocked on the locked target in the TADS views just as it's done with the helmet view.
On certain missions you may be called upon to laser designate a target for friendly attack fighters armed with laser-guided bombs. All that is necessary to designate a target with your laser is to ensure it is the currently selected target using any of the three target selection modes. To ensure you don't accidentally switch to a different target at an inopportune moment, it's always safest to lock the target up with the TADS (hit the "l" key).
The Pilot's Night Vision System is indispensible for night and low light missions, but it can also come in handy in daylight and especially in fog. Though the image tends to get washed out in fog and the PNVS should not be used all the time, I've found it can sometimes enhance the contrast of the terrain, providing an extra margin of safety when navigating over and around hills.
Enemy helicopters are an everpresent threat in all three theatres. Fortunately, except in Cyprus you only have to deal with the relatively ineffective Mi-24 Hind. It is ineffective because its air-to-air missiles are virtually useless except from squarely head-on or from the rear, and it apparently does not have an articulating mount of its gun so it must point its entire fuselage to line up for a shot. If you want to preserve your Stingers for more wily prey, one safe and effective method of taking one out is to approach it obliquely, keeping the target centered in one of the diagonal cockpit views. When you get within chain gun range, just blow the Hind away. Ignore the many missiles it will launch at you since they will all miss. This method is not advisable if you happen to be escorting UH-60 Blackhawks, since the Hind's missiles do have a good chance of hitting them and forcing them down.
The AH-1W Supercobras you encounter in Cyprus are a whole different story. These things are absolutely deadly. Their missiles are accurate and very difficult to spoof with flares, and their gun armament is just as accurate and effective as your own. Avoid them if at all possible. If you spot one far enough away, I recommend using one of your precious radar-guided Hellfires for a long range shot and hope you get a kill before it comes close enough to launch its own missiles at you. If it does, jink and pray. If you do get into a gunfight, remember it will lead you, so you should constantly jink in such a way as to invalidate its lead calculations, normally by turning in the geometric plane perpendicular to the line between you and the Supercobra. Even if you win the fight, you are likely to limp away heavily damaged.
Enemy fixed wing aircraft like the MiG-27 and MiG-29 can be even more deadly than Supercobras. Their missiles are hard to spoof when you play at a high enemy difficulty level and they fire a lot of them at you. Staying low seems to help, but by much, so if you can find cover behind hills, trees, buildings, or whatever, go for it. Otherwise, there's no way you can run since they're way too fast. You just have to evade the missiles as best you can until either help arrives or the bad guys go winchester. Even then, do not ignore them entirely since they can and will strafe you with their guns. After one makes a firing pass (assuming you survive it), it's often effective to wheel around and try for a quick rear quarter Stinger shot. Chain gun attacks when a fighter comes head-on will usually get you a kill, but if the fast mover has missiles left, you can be almost assured of eating one if you try this.
Besides the threats from the air, you must obviously deal with the threats on the ground. If you stay low enough, SAMs will almost never fire on you unless you get close and hang around for too long. APCs will fire SA-7s at you under the same conditions, though I've found if I stay below 40' then this rarely happens. Therefore, your goal should be to stay below 40' as much as possible when hostile vehicles are anywhere nearby. If you happen to rise too high and a SAM is launched, make sure you dive as you evade or you'll just attract more of them.
If you stay low to avoid SAMs, you will find your most dangerous vehicular opponent will be the ZSU-23 Shilka with its four water-cooled radar directed 23mm cannon. APCs will also fire at you, but their hitting power appears to be much less than the Shilka's, which is as it should be. You will encounter many of these during a typical mission, usually too many to take them all out from a safe distance with Hellfires and still have enough to complete your objectives. Hydra rockets can be effective, but usually you will have to slow down to get enough shot attempts in from standoff range, and on many missions that's just not feasible. Skirting around them is also not often possible without going far out of your way. All that's left then is attacking it with your chain gun. Though the chain gun can kill targets at amazing ranges in this sim, the ZSU-23's range is greater. That means it gets the first shot in a duel.
The first thing to do when you've committed to a one-on-one with a ZSU-23 is to watch your FLIR display. If it's not facing you, it's worried about some other friendly aircraft and you can just waltz on up and blow it away. If you're looking down four barrels, on the other hand, then you can guarantee it will open up on you as you close the distance. Fly as fast as you can so as to minimize the amount of time it can fire at you but you can't fire at it. At long ranges it is not very hard to evade the tracers though it is absolutely necessary to jink since it will lead you and get hits if you fly straight, even if you present it with a deflection shot. The maximum range of a ZSU-23 is about 7500 yards. If you have the reflexes of a hyperactive teenager, then go ahead and wait until you see it spit tracers before you begin jinking. If you're like me, however, you'll start jinking violently from side to side as you enter its effective range just in case. Jinking up and down is actually more effective if you don't head right toward the Shilka, but you usually cannot afford to do this because of the risk of SAMs, not to mention smacking into the ground. When you get within chain gun range, open up but keep jinking until the target explodes. Your gun will continue to track the target accurately regardless of your maneuvers. Once you get good at this, you'll be able to take out ZSU-23s without taking any damage whatsoever. The same technique can be applied to APCs. Since they usually come in groups, it pays to become proficient at being able to switch targets as you fire the chain gun (the technique described in the Weapons Usage section above) while at the same time jinking back and forth using hard level turns, always staying below 40'.
You don't have to shoot everything yourself. Anything destroyed by other allied aircraft and ground units count toward your objectives as well. Until you hear your co-pilot say "mission accomplished!" you can be sure you haven't destroyed enough key targets yet. This message does not necessarily mean that the mission will be a success, since you can still screw up on some other objective before you land.
By the way, if your co-pilot says "let's get out of here!" then it's usually a good idea to take his advice and head back to base because it means you've taken so much damage you're barely flying.
In the debriefing screen, a set of cryptic numbers are listed which are not documented in the manual. Here are my best guesses as to what they mean. The numbers are displayed in the following format:
A/B M/N X/Y
As I noted above, some missions have special success criteria that are not reflected in these numbers, so occasionally they don't tell the whole story, but usually they do.
To tie it all together, here are how I think the mission results are defined.
ABORTED - you aborted the mission
FAILURE - you died OR
you did not fulfill the mission's special success
criteria, if any OR
A > B OR
M < N
SUCCESS - you fulfilled the mission's special success
criteria, if any AND
A <= B AND
M >= N AND
X < Y
OUTSTANDING - you fulfilled the mission's special success
criteria, if any AND
A <= B AND
M >= N AND
X >= Y