MV-22B Osprey

The MV-22B Osprey is the twelfth aircraft, added in v0.4.6. It is the Marine Corps version of the CV-22B Osprey, painted dark green with white UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS lettering. Like the CV-22B it is a tilt-rotor: its two big proprotors — part rotor, part propeller — sit on engine pods called nacelles at the tips of its wing. It takes off, hovers and lands as a helicopter with the nacelles pointing straight up, then tilts them forward and flies on its wing like an aeroplane. It flies, seats and loads exactly like the CV-22B. The differences are that it is heavier — the heaviest aircraft in the mod — and it carries less fuel. It is just as fast. It carries 22 people. The pilot sits in the right-hand cockpit seat, with the co-pilot on the left. Behind them, twenty seats line the cabin walls, ten down each side, facing the aisle. You walk in up the rear ramp or climb in through the crew door at the front right, and the cabin is tall enough to stand up in.

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Specifications

Per-helicopter config files live in $profile:\CZAutoz_Heli\HeliConfigs\.

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Variants

The MV-22B comes in one version, CZ_MV22BOsprey.

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Getting in

• Board through the rear ramp — open it (see Rear Ramp) and walk up it into the cabin — or through the crew door at the front right. Once inside, take any free seat, the pilot’s and co-pilot’s included
• The crew door comes in two halves, upper and lower, which open and close separately. Open both to get in: the lower half folds down into two steps up to the doorway, which is about 1.3 m off the ground and lower than a standing player, so crouch through. Shut, the door is solid; with the door halves taken off, the doorway stays open

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Rear Ramp

The rear ramp is part of the airframe, and it opens and closes the same way as on the CV-22B and the Chinooks:

• From the pilot or co-pilot seat, scroll the cockpit prompt list to Open/Close Rear Ramp and press F
• Anyone standing outside at the back of the aircraft can also open and close it
• It works in the air as well as on the ground
• While the ramp is still moving the action is unavailable — let it finish, then press again
• Ramp opens and closes are written to the activity log when logging.activityLog = 1

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Getting out inside

The MV-22B has no Move to Cabin / Return to Cockpit action, and it does not need one. As on the AW101 Merlin and the CV-22B, Get Out from any seat — pilot and co-pilot included — leaves you standing in the cabin rather than outside. You travel with the aircraft, in the air or on the ground, and can take any free seat again at any time. To leave, walk out down the rear ramp or climb down through the crew door. Switch Seats moves you straight to a free troop seat along the same wall: look at it and tap the interact key. To change between the pilot’s and co-pilot’s seats, or to a seat across the cabin, get out — from any seat that leaves you standing in the cabin — and get in again. While you are looking at another seat in the air, the interact key never takes you out of the aircraft — to get out, look away from the seats first. The cabin is tall enough to stand fully upright in, like the CV-22B’s and the two Chinooks’. In every other aircraft with an interior you stay crouched. See Cabin Mode for full details.

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Flying it

The MV-22B flies the same way as the CV-22B. The CV-22B page covers it in full; the short version is below.

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The nacelles

In the pilot seat, hold B and roll the mouse wheel (the hold key is yours to change in Options → Controls):

• Wheel up tilts the nacelles toward helicopter — straight up
• Wheel down tilts them toward aeroplane — pointing forward
• Each click moves them a tenth of the way. They turn at 7.5 degrees a second, so going all the way across takes about 12 seconds
• They move smoothly, for you and for everyone watching, and in aeroplane mode they line up with the wing

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On the HUD

A line above the dials reads NAC and the nacelle angle: 90 is straight up, 0 is fully forward. SLOW, GND, STALL and PROP mean the same as on the CV-22B — see On the HUD. STALL comes with a pulsing stall horn that only the people inside hear. The speed dial reads double range, up to about 324 knots, so the needle does not sit pinned in a cruise. The number in the middle is the real speed.

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Taking off

Take off straight up with the nacelles up, or make a rolling take-off: tilt the nacelles forward to the ground limit (the HUD shows GND — about 53° forward of straight up on flat ground, NAC 38, and less when banked or nose-down) and add power. It rolls along and lifts off on its wing and its rotor thrust together as speed builds; raising the nose helps. On the wheels the collective is a straight thrust lever: at the bottom the proprotors idle, at the top they give take-off power, and the roll builds up steadily, and nacelles set further forward than the ground allows carry on down by themselves once you lift off. The choice is the pilot’s.

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Converting to the wing and back

• Tilt the nacelles forward as speed builds. Tilt them all the way forward from a hover with no speed and it sinks, because the wing is not flying yet
• With the nacelles forward, the wing stalls below about 110 knots
• Once the nacelles are forward, the collective is the throttle, and the lever stays where you leave it, whatever your Collective Hold setting: centred is cruise power — about 246 knots — up is full power and down is idle. Full power takes it to about 275 knots, just under its 288-knot limit. Tilt the nacelles back up and it hands back to the normal collective
• Q/E is strong and quick as a helicopter, even with the nacelles part-way forward at low speed. In full aeroplane mode it is weaker, like a rudder, so turn by banking
• In Simple flight mode it holds its height for you on the wing: pitch (W/S) to climb or dive, let go and it levels off. The hold fades out below about 1.3 times the wing stall speed, so a slow aeroplane still stalls, and pulling the thrust lever back lets go of it. Advanced mode has no height hold
• The rudders follow Q/E, the elevator follows pitch, and the flaperons follow roll and droop down in helicopter mode, like the real V-22
• Slow down before bringing them back up. They only come up as far as your airspeed allows — fully up at 120 knots or less — and the HUD shows SLOW while they wait

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Landing

Land as a helicopter, or rolling on a runway like the real aircraft: bring the thrust lever back and let the speed bleed off until the height hold fades below about 1.3 times the wing stall speed, fly the approach with small pitch inputs at around 115–130 knots, and do not flare hard below about 105 knots while you are still high up, or it stalls. Coming down with the nacelles forward and the gear down, it tilts them up by itself in good time for the proprotors to clear the ground, with a short message when it takes over, so you touch down part-converted. With the gear up it never moves them and the HUD shows a red PROP. 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. Below the middle the thrust lever turns the proprotors into an airbrake for the approach. Brake with S. 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 it taxis like the other helicopters on wheels. See Rolling Landings.

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When things go wrong

Losing one proprotor rolls it toward the dead side while the other keeps flying it; with both gone it glides on its wing if it has speed, and falls if it is hovering. See When things go wrong on the CV-22B page — the MV-22B behaves the same way.

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Autopilot and Autohover

The autopilot flies a trip longer than 5 km as an aeroplane, the same as on the CV-22B: once it is at least 50 m up it tilts the nacelles forward and cruises on the wing about 110 m above the ground ahead, then slows down on a schedule so it is back in helicopter mode by about 2.5 km from the destination. Shorter trips are flown as a helicopter. See Autopilot and Autohover on the CV-22B page. Autohover and auto-land fly the MV-22B only as a helicopter. Engaging either one swings the nacelles up, and you keep control until they are nearly there — a notification tells you so. If they stop on the way, slow down. Auto-land waits until the nacelles are back in helicopter mode before it starts the landing approach. Range on this fuel. The autopilot map’s range figure allows for the aeroplane cruise. For a destination more than 5 km away — where the autopilot converts — it is worked out at aeroplane cruise speed, 85% of flight.maxAirspeed, with the last 2.5 km flown as a helicopter and about a minute allowed for climbing, converting and slowing down. For a destination 5 km or closer it uses helicopter speed, about 93% of tiltRotor.helicopterTopSpeed, because the autopilot stays a helicopter on short trips. With no destination set, the map shows the long-trip figure. Fuel burns at the same rate per hour in both modes, so on the wing the MV-22B goes roughly 2.2 times as far on the same fuel.

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Damage

All six damage areas are on by default, chassis included, the same as the other aircraft on wheels. The damage panel shows them as LROT and RROT (left and right), and the repair kit offers Repair Left Rotor and Repair Right Rotor.

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Sound

The MV-22B has its own set of sounds: two turbine engines and two big three-bladed proprotors. As on the CV-22B, the rotor note drops when the nacelles go forward.

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Sling Loading

The MV-22B lifts up to 6,800 kg on one hook, the same as the CV-22B.

• Its winch gear is not part of the model — the mod supplies the winch unit when a load is hooked
• The weight limit is sling.maxKg in the helicopter’s config file. A load over the limit gives you no hook-up action at all

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Landing gear

The MV-22B sits on a nose wheel with two tyres and two main wheels, and they fold away in flight. Raise and lower them with the landing gear action, which works the same way as on the AW101 Merlin. After a take-off the gear comes up by itself once you are climbing away more than 15 m up at over 40 knots, as long as you took off with it down and have not worked it since, and never while Auto Hover or the autopilot is flying; the pilot gets a message when it does. Lower it again before a rolling landing: the nacelles only tilt up to keep the proprotors clear of the ground while the gear is down.

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Door and wheel classnames

It also takes one HeadlightH7 bulb, for the spotlight under its nose. The 20 cabin seats have no doors of their own and are taken from inside. The MV-22B’s doors and wheels are its own items: the CV-22B’s do not fit it, and its own do not fit the CV-22B.

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Retexturing

The MV-22B has one paintable body texture, the camo slot — the tenth entry in its texture list, after nine light slots and before the four navigation-light slots, the same layout as most of the fleet. The outside of each crew-door half is painted from the same body texture, so one repaint covers the doors too; the inside of the doors and the rotor blades keep their standard finish. See Retexturing.

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Cargo

As well as its built-in storage of 1,000 slots, the MV-22B takes up to 10 extra cargo modules, the same as the rest. It has its own settings, separate from the CV-22B’s: set how many with cargoModules.mv22b.modules and how big each one is with cargoModules.mv22b.cellsPerModule in mod_config.json.

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Tilt-rotor settings

Like the CV-22B’s, the MV-22B’s config file has a tiltRotor section — the two Ospreys are the only aircraft whose files have one. Having no tail rotor, they also have no tailRotorFailure section. The Admin Panel shows the tilt-rotor settings under a Tilt-Rotor heading:

• Nacelle Turn Speed (tiltRotor.conversionRate) — how many degrees a second the nacelles turn. 7.5 takes about 12 seconds end to end
• Top Speed, Nacelles Up (tiltRotor.helicopterTopSpeed) — the airspeed limit with the nacelles up, in knots, and the speed below which they can come fully up. Level flight with them straight up tops out a little below it, nose well down; the autopilot tilts them a few degrees forward and cruises at about 110 knots nearly level
• Wing Stall Speed (tiltRotor.wingStallSpeed) — the speed, in knots, below which the wing stalls with the nacelles forward. The STALL warning and the stall horn come on at 1.1 times this
• Propeller Pull at Speed (tiltRotor.propellerPull) — how well the proprotors keep pulling as speed builds. 1 is stock; higher is faster on the wing

See Per-Helicopter Settings for the ranges each one allows.

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Default Flight Tuning

See Per-Helicopter Settings for a full description of every parameter.