Helicopter Autorotation

*** BETA *** This is an early test version. The flight model works, but the numbers are still being tuned and multiplayer has not been tested. Please tell me how it flies (see WHAT TO REPORT at the end).

Helicopter Autorotation changes what happens when the engine of a UH-1H or Mi-8MT stops in the air. In the base game the rotor is dragged to a stop within 15-20 seconds, and until then a helicopter with the engine off flies exactly like a powered one - it can even hover. With this mod an engine-out becomes an autorotation.

Created by Goldhook420.

WHAT IT DOES
- No rotor brake: after the engine stops the rotor keeps turning and coasts down slowly (UH-1H about 90 seconds, Mi-8MT about 120 seconds) instead of stopping in 15-20 seconds.
- Real autorotation: with the engine out you can no longer hover or fly level on dead power. Keep the collective up and the rotor speed bleeds away and you sink. Keep some forward speed (about 90 km/h) and the collective down, and the helicopter settles into a steady glide of roughly 7-9 m/s. A nose-up flare near the ground spins the rotor back up and gives extra lift to cushion the landing. Dive and the rotor recovers.
- Your cyclic, pedals and collective keep full authority the whole time - only the lift is limited.
- On-screen hints when the engine quits and when the rotor speed gets low.
- Engine off and settled on the ground: the rotor cannot lift the helicopter again. Start the engine and normal flight is back.

HOW TO FLY AN AUTOROTATION
1. The engine quits (or you shut it down in flight).
2. HOLD the collective-down input. The default collective is a vertical-speed command: if you let go or pull up, the helicopter is asked to hold altitude, which it can no longer do, so the rotor speed bleeds and you fall.
3. Keep about 90 km/h and steer with the cyclic as usual.
4. At 20-30 m above the ground pitch the nose up (flare) to bleed speed and spin the rotor up.
5. Level out and cushion the touchdown with the collective.
Engine cut below about 30 m is too low to recover, as in real life.

HELICOPTERS
UH-1H and Mi-8MT, every variant of them.

HOW TO USE
Just load the mod. It replaces the base files of those two helicopters, so existing prefabs, spawners and missions pick it up automatically - no new vehicle entries. The mod must be on the server as well as on the clients. It needs nothing but the base game.

KNOWN ISSUES (early release - please report what you see)
- The rotor speed that matters for flight is simulated by the mod. The blades, the engine sound and the cockpit RPM gauge still show the coasting game rotor; the on-screen hint shows the simulated value.
- After a normal shutdown on the ground the rotor coasts for 90 / 120 seconds (that is the "no rotor brake" part).
- A helicopter whose engine was destroyed by damage cannot be flown at all - that is the base game's behaviour and is not changed.
- Tuned by calculation and a limited number of test flights in single player; feel and numbers may still change. Multiplayer / dedicated server use has not been tested yet.
- It replaces the game's own UH1H_base and Mi8_base files: other mods that replace the same files will conflict with it, and it needs an update when the game changes those files.
- Hints are English only.

WHAT TO REPORT (beta feedback - use the Workshop comments)
- Which helicopter, roughly how high and how fast you were when the engine quit, and whether you held the collective down.
- What it felt like: too harsh (you fell no matter what), too easy (you could still hover or fly level), the flare, the landing, the hints.
- Anything that broke: controls dead, helicopter jumping, errors in the log, conflicts with other helicopter mods.
- Whether it works on a server.

CREDITS
Created by Goldhook420.
Base helicopters, textures and the game: Bohemia Interactive (Arma Reforger). This mod ships two copies of Bohemia's helicopter prefab files with a single value changed (the engine spin-down time).