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This guide walks through a flight from start-up to shutdown, and what to do when something breaks. For the key list, see the Controls Reference.

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Before You Fly

Battery A Helicopter Battery (CZ_HelicopterBattery) has to be fitted in the helicopter’s battery slot, not ruined, and with some charge left. Without it the Start Engine action never appears. The battery charges itself while the engine runs, and the lights drain it, so leave them off until you are in the air if it is low. Damage The damage panel shows six condition lights (Body, Engine, Chassis, Fuel, Main Rotor, Tail Rotor — on the Chinooks the rotors read front and rear, on the Ospreys left and right). Check them before you start. A damaged main rotor costs you lift, and a damaged tail rotor makes the nose hard to hold. Crew and the co-pilot seat The pilot and co-pilot can both fly, one at a time: whoever sits in a front seat first has the controls, and T hands them to the other front seat without anyone moving. DayZ 1.30 only lets the pilot seat control the helicopter from the player’s own PC, so when the co-pilot flies, the server flies it for them and it may not feel as smooth. We suggest flying from the pilot seat. The HUD’s control light shows green when your seat is the one flying. See Flying & the Co-Pilot Seat. Controller Flying works on a gamepad: cyclic on the left stick, collective on the triggers (right raises, left lowers), yaw on the shoulder buttons, and Autohover on Y. Everything is rebindable in the game’s control settings. See the Controls Reference.

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Starting Up

  1. Sit in the pilot seat — the co-pilot seat cannot start or stop the engine
  2. Hold the Start Engine action (hold time is flight.engineHoldTime, about 1 second by default)
  3. The rotor starts to wind up — watch it turn and listen to the sound build
  4. Wait for the rotor to reach full speed before you try to lift off
The action only appears with a fitted, unruined, charged battery, fuel above zero, and a working main rotor — a destroyed or sheared main rotor blocks the start outright. A wrecked helicopter cannot be started at all — a destroyed airframe, a dead engine, or a Chinook with its rear rotor gone. Let go of the key before the hold finishes and nothing happens; the start also fails if the battery is taken out or the fuel runs out during the hold. Each aircraft takes as long to wind up as its own start-up sound lasts:
Setting flight.spoolUpTime to anything above 0 overrides that and forces a fixed wind-up time in seconds. Left at its default of 0, the aircraft uses its own start-up sound. Change it when you want quicker turnarounds on a busy server.
The engine cannot be stopped while the helicopter is off the ground and moving faster than about 5 m/s. That is deliberate — it stops accidental engine cuts in flight.

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Take-Off

  1. Raise the collective with Shift gradually — do not slam it to full
  2. As the aircraft gets light, correct any swing with Q / E
  3. When you feel it lift, keep raising the collective to climb away
  4. Ground effect gives you extra lift close to the ground — between 5 m and 17 m up depending on the aircraft — so the first few metres feel easier than the climb that follows
  5. Once you are up, nose forward gently with W to build speed

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Forward Flight

As speed builds the rotor becomes more efficient and holding height gets easier. That is translational lift, and it starts to come in at about half of the aircraft’s ETL speed and is fully in at the speed itself — roughly 12 to 24 knots on an MD500, and 18 to 35 knots on a Chinook. Speed in any direction counts, so flying sideways or backwards earns it too, not just flying forward. Light scouts get there first and gain the most; the heavies get less of it, later. At cruise you need noticeably less collective than in a hover. Speed limit: every aircraft has a top speed. From 80% of it, drag builds up and stops you going faster. It only slows you — it never pitches the nose. Weathervane: at speed the nose swings itself into the direction of travel. It is strongest on the light aircraft and weakest on the Merlin, the Chinooks and the Ospreys, and it stands aside the moment you touch the pedals.

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Hovering

Hovering is the hardest part of helicopter flying:
  • Hold height with Shift (up) and Z (down)
  • Small Q / E taps to hold the nose where you want it
  • Ground effect gives you a steadier cushion low down, so hovering near the ground is a little easier
  • Press X for Autohover — the aircraft slows, settles, and holds its height, heading and position for you. Steering does not switch it off: its grip eases while you hold the stick and takes hold again where you let go
Autohover is the tool for cabin entries, crew swaps, or any time you need your hands free.

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Landing

  1. Bring the speed off with S
  2. Once slow, ease the collective down to start descending
  3. Coming through the last few metres, ground effect returns — you may need less collective than you expect
  4. Add a little collective just before touchdown to take the sink off
  5. Set it down gently and lower the collective once the skids or wheels are on the ground
Autohover makes a good approach: engage it over your landing spot, check you are clear of obstacles, then ease straight down on the collective.
On an aircraft with wheels, the brakes only bite once the wheels have been on the ground for about a second, so a flare cannot lock them. After a rolling touchdown, brake with S — see Taxiing.

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Rolling Landings (Ospreys)

An Osprey can land on a runway like the real aircraft, rolling on with the nacelles part-way forward. This uses the MV-22B’s default speeds; the CV-22B is much the same.
  1. At height, bring the thrust lever back (Z) and let the speed bleed off — below the middle the proprotors act as an airbrake. Pulling the lever back lets go of Simple mode’s height hold
  2. Below about 1.3 times the wing stall speed the height hold fades and the aircraft starts to sink
  3. Fly the approach with small pitch inputs at around 115–130 knots. Do not flare hard below about 105 knots while you are still high up — the wing stalls
  4. Lower the landing gear. Close to the ground the nacelles then come up by themselves to keep the proprotors clear. The Osprey looks ahead at how fast you are sinking and allows for pitch and bank, and a short message tells you when it takes over. You touch down part-converted, rolling, like the real aircraft. With the gear up it never moves them: the HUD shows a red PROP instead, and you have to climb or tilt them up yourself. Level off instead of landing and, about 2 seconds after you stop sinking, it lets go and the nacelles ease back to where you set them
  5. Brake with S once the wheels are on the ground. Once the wheels are down, the wing stops lifting unless the thrust lever is pushed well up, so it stays on the runway even after a fast touchdown. At rolling speed the nose can’t be pushed down into the runway, and S still lifts the nose right down to touchdown
On the ground the nacelles go no further forward than about 53° from straight up on flat ground (NAC 38), and less when the aircraft is banked or nose-down.

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Taxiing

Every helicopter on wheels — the Blackhawk, Merlin, both Chinooks, the Mi-24, both Ospreys and the Barrel Helicopter — can be driven along the ground with the rotor at flying speed:
  • W rolls it forward, up to about 14 knots, and S rolls it back, up to about 5 knots
  • Q / E turns it on the spot; at a crawl the nose wheel castors round smoothly to follow the turn
  • S while rolling forward, or W while rolling back, brakes the wheels
  • Let go of everything and a rolling helicopter slows gently by itself; a stopped one sits on its parking brake
  • On the wheels the cyclic will not tip the airframe onto its gear. Raise the collective to lift off
  • Taxiing works with Auto Hover off and the autopilot not flying
  • Helicopters on skids (UH-1H, MH-6, MD500, Gazelle) don’t taxi. Their skids slide rather than roll
See the Controls Reference.

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Autohover

Press X at any time from the pilot seat.
  • The aircraft slows smoothly and settles into a locked hover
  • It holds height, heading and position
  • Steering does not switch it off. Move the stick and its grip fades, then takes hold again where you stop — so you can reposition without toggling it
  • The collective still works while it is on. Climb or descend normally and it latches onto the new height when you let go
  • Pitch and roll are held inside 40° while it is engaged
  • To switch it off, press X again. It also lets go by itself when you land with the engine off, when the engine is cut in the air, when the main or tail rotor is destroyed, when someone new takes the pilot seat, and if the aircraft is destroyed
Automatic engagement: Autohover switches itself on if the pilot gets out in the air, uses Move to Cabin, or switches to the co-pilot seat (which cannot fly the aircraft), so the aircraft does not drift off unmanned. It needs the engine and rotor both above half power and at least 3.5 m of clear air below. If the pilot is killed in their seat the aircraft counts as having nobody flying it. The abandoned-aircraft handling holds it steady, then lands it after the server’s autoPilot.abandonedLandingDelay. Another survivor can still climb into the pilot seat and fly it out before that happens. Someone walking about in the cabin counts as crew, so the aircraft is not treated as abandoned. Some servers instead cut the engine as soon as the pilot dies, leaving the aircraft to come down in autorotation — ask your server team which way theirs is set.

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Autorotation (Engine Failure)

If the engine stops — out of fuel, engine destroyed, or shut down deliberately — the rotor keeps turning under its own momentum. That is autorotation, and it is your way down in one piece. The glide:
  • The aircraft settles into a controlled descent rather than dropping outright
  • You can steer it. Tilting the cyclic moves you along, so you can glide forward and choose where you put it down
  • How fast you sink is capped per aircraft — light ones glide gently, heavy ones come down fast
  • The rotor winds down gradually after the cut (autorotation.coastMinutes, default 4 minutes)
The flare:
  • On the last approach, pull the collective up. That spends the rotor’s momentum on a short burst of lift and takes the sink off for the final few metres
  • Time it right and you can land safely with a dead engine
The sink limit (autorotation.descentCap) is set per aircraft in knots — 8.0 kn on the MD500 and MH-6 (about 4 m/s), 13.5 kn on the Merlin (about 7 m/s). It is editable per variant in each helicopter’s JSON file, and the full table is on the Flight Model page.

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Emergencies

Low fuel A warning beep starts at 20% fuel (configurable) while the engine is running, and gets more insistent as the tank empties — roughly every 4 seconds at first, every 2.5 below 15%, every 1.5 below 10%, and twice a second below 5%. Find somewhere to land. Tail rotor destroyed The aircraft starts spinning and you cannot stop it on the pedals. The spin is driven by the engine, so slowing right down and shutting the engine down stops it — that is the real procedure: cut the power and autorotate down. The collective still works. Main rotor destroyed Lift goes immediately and the aircraft falls. There is no recovery. (The Chinooks and the Ospreys have two lifting rotors instead — see below.) No tail rotor: the Chinooks and the Ospreys On either Chinook the two rotor areas are the front and rear lifting rotors. Losing either does not send you spinning: it takes away about half your lift, the aircraft sinks, and it pitches toward the lost rotor — tail down and nose up if the rear one goes, nose down if the front one does. The two Ospreys have no tail rotor either: their two rotor areas are their two proprotors, and losing one rolls the aircraft toward the dead side while the other keeps flying it. See When things go wrong. Upside down on the ground If your server has flipping switched on, pressing X while tipped over on the ground rolls the aircraft back upright. It works when the lowest part of the aircraft is within 3 m of the ground and it has all but stopped, so tall aircraft lying on their backs, such as the Ospreys and Chinooks, can be stood up too. It won’t stand up a destroyed wreck. It is off by default and lives in the flight-mode profiles — simple.groundFlipRecovery / advanced.groundFlipRecovery — so it can be set per mode. From outside, a Flip Wrench does the same job — hold its action beside the aircraft.

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How They Differ

They all use the same controls — the Ospreys add their nacelles — but feel very different: Heavier aircraft are steadier in cruise but harder to hover precisely. Lighter ones are quick but twitchy for a new pilot.

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Shutting Down

  1. Land properly — wheels or skids on the ground
  2. From the pilot seat, hold the Stop Engine action (flight.engineHoldTime, about 1 second by default)
  3. The rotor winds down
The action is blocked while you are off the ground and moving faster than about 5 m/s. Stopping the engine uses no battery charge. If every rotor is destroyed, the engine shuts itself down.