> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.czautoz.co.uk/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Sling Loading

> Hook a vehicle under the helicopter and fly it out — per-airframe lift classes from 500 kg to 10,000 kg, a working winch, and honest flight penalties while slung.

Sling loading lets a helicopter pick a vehicle up off the ground, carry it under the airframe on a rope, and set it down somewhere else. Every helicopter in the fleet can do it — what changes is **how much it can lift**, from the MH-6's 500 kg up to the Chinook's 10,000 kg.

<Warning>
  **Sling loading ships as EXPERIMENTAL.** It is fully playable and safe to run on a live server — the netcode, the automatic releases and the config handling are all in place. What is still being refined is the **rope and bridle visuals** and the **feel of carrying a load**. Expect both to change between builds. If you would rather not run it yet, set `features.slingloadEnabled = 0` in `mod_config.json` and the whole system disappears server-wide.
</Warning>

***

## What Can Be Lifted

Any **vehicle** — anything built on DayZ's `CarScript` base, which covers vanilla cars and trucks as well as most modded vehicles — can be slung, provided:

* it is sitting **directly under the helicopter's hook**, and
* its **mass is within that airframe's lift class**

Other helicopters cannot be slung. A load over the limit simply will not offer the hook action — there is no partial lift and no dragging.

**Locked vehicles refuse the hook** (v0.4.1). Before attaching, the mod asks whichever lock mod your server runs — MuchCarKey, Trader, TraderPlus and Expansion are all understood — and a vehicle reported locked simply never offers the hook action, so a helicopter cannot lift a car straight around its lock. Servers that prefer the old behaviour can switch it off with `features.slingRespectLocks = 0`.

### Lift Classes

| Helicopter       | `sling.maxKg` |
| ---------------- | ------------- |
| MH-6 Little Bird | 500 kg        |
| MD500 Civilian   | 600 kg        |
| SA342M Gazelle   | 700 kg        |
| UH-1H Iroquois   | 1,500 kg      |
| MH-60L Blackhawk | 3,000 kg      |
| AW101 Merlin     | 5,500 kg      |
| MH-47G Chinook   | 10,000 kg     |

The Chinook is the fleet's heavy lifter and the only airframe that can move the heaviest vehicle classes.

***

## Hooking a Load

### From the cockpit

1. Bring the helicopter to a **hover directly over the vehicle** — the load has to be under the hook, and the aircraft essentially stationary
2. Keep the **rotor at 90% or above** — this is a running-rotor operation, not something you do at idle
3. Scroll the **mouse wheel** until the side hint row shows **Attach Sling Load**
4. Press **`F`**

The action is available to a crew member in the **pilot or co-pilot seat**. The rope length is set automatically from the hook's height above the load when it takes.

### From the ground

Walk up to the vehicle with a helicopter hovering over it, **look at the vehicle**, and take the **Attach Sling Load** action. This is the easiest way to rig a load with a second player flying — the pilot holds the hover, the ground crew hooks it.

***

## Releasing a Load

* **From the seat** — select the sling row with the mouse wheel and press **`F`**. The row reads **Release Sling Load** while something is on the hook
* **From the ground** — look at the slung vehicle and take the **Unhook Sling Load** action. The load has to be near the ground and not moving

***

## The Winch

While a load is hooked, two more hint rows appear: **Winch Load Up** and **Winch Load Down**. Each press moves the rope **2 metres**, between a minimum of **4 m** and a maximum of **22 m**.

The **live rope length is shown in metres on the sling hint row**, so you always know how much line is out — useful for threading a load between trees, or for shortening up before a fast transit.

***

## Automatic Release

The load is dropped automatically, without any input, when:

* the **carrier is powered down**, destroyed, or deleted
* the **load entity is lost**
* the **load strikes the ground**
* the **load strikes an obstacle**
* the **load snags** on something

These are safety releases, not failures — they stop a hooked load from dragging the helicopter into terrain. Every one of them is written to the activity log with its reason when logging is enabled.

***

## Flying With a Load

A slung load is felt in the flight model for as long as it is on the hook, scaled by how heavy it is relative to the aircraft:

| Effect                      | While fully loaded                        |
| --------------------------- | ----------------------------------------- |
| **VNE (top speed)**         | Down 35%                                  |
| **Vertical speed cap**      | Down 40%                                  |
| **Forward drag**            | Up 80%                                    |
| **Load weight compensated** | 85% in Simple mode · 55% in Advanced mode |

Simple mode carries most of the load's weight for you. **Advanced mode deliberately does not** — you feel the mass hanging under the aircraft and have to fly around it, which is the point.

See [Flight Model](/features/flight-model#flying-with-a-sling-load) for how these stack with the rest of the envelope.

***

## Airframe Hardware

Two things differ between airframes beyond the lift class:

**Modelled winch gear** — the **UH-1H**, **MH-60L Blackhawk** and **MH-47G Chinook** carry their winch hardware on the model itself, which reveals when a load is hooked. The other airframes get a generic winch unit spawned in its place.

**Dual hooks** — the **AW101 Merlin** and **MH-47G Chinook** have two hooks, fore and aft, with a bridle running to the front and rear of the load. Long vehicles ride level under those two airframes instead of hanging nose-down from a single point.

***

## Server Configuration

| Setting                      | Where                             | What it does                                                                                                               | Default                            |
| ---------------------------- | --------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------- |
| `features.slingloadEnabled`  | `mod_config.json`                 | `1` = sling loading available. `0` = disabled server-wide — no hook actions appear on any helicopter.                      | `1`                                |
| `features.slingRespectLocks` | `mod_config.json`                 | **New in v0.4.1.** `1` = locked vehicles (MuchCarKey, Trader, TraderPlus, Expansion) refuse the hook. `0` = locks ignored. | `1`                                |
| `sling.maxKg`                | `HeliConfigs\<Class>_Config.json` | That variant's lift class in kilograms.                                                                                    | Per airframe — see the table above |

<Note>
  A `sling.maxKg` of **`0` means unset**, not "cannot lift". On load, an unset value is replaced with that airframe's preset default and the substitution is printed to the server log. To genuinely disable sling loading, use `features.slingloadEnabled = 0` rather than zeroing the lift classes.
</Note>

Both values are also editable live from the in-game **Admin Panel**, where `sling.maxKg` appears as **Sling Max Load (kg)**.