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How to hover a helicopter in Wardogs

Everything else in Wardogs flying starts from a stable hover. If you can hold one spot at 10 m, landings, drops and gun runs all get easier.

Updated 2026-09-28

Why the hover goes wrong

Wardogs helicopters do not hold an attitude for you. The cyclic sets a rate: deflect it and the aircraft keeps tilting until you centre it again. Sim Controls, who flies a HOTAS, sums up the model as keyboard input on an analog stick: any deflection keeps rotating the aircraft, and the only way to stop is back to centre. New pilots hold a small correction, the helicopter keeps leaning, and they end up chasing the drift in growing swings.

How to hover

  1. Find the hover collective. Raise the collective slowly until the skids just leave the ground, then stop. On a HOTAS throttle that is roughly 30 to 40% of travel (Sim Controls). If you keep climbing, ease it back a touch.
  2. Look at the horizon, not the ground under you. In a steady hover the attitude indicator sits on its horizon line: blue sky above, brown ground below.
  3. Correct drift with taps. Give the cyclic a small input toward where you want to go, then centre it. Wait for the aircraft to respond before the next tap.
  4. Hold the nose with small yaw taps, not a held key.
  5. Accept small wobbles. The goal is control through deliberate corrections, not a perfectly still aircraft.

Cologne TM, a real helicopter pilot with more than 3,000 hours, sets new pilots two goals: hover over one spot for 60 seconds without drifting off it, then fly a lap and land back on the same spot three times in a row.

Auto-hover or not? With the game's auto-hover assist on, letting go of the collective holds your height (Nova Gaming shows this in a beginner guide). It is a good crutch for your first flights. Experienced pilots such as Hieb and ProLosco turn every assist off, because auto-hover moves the collective on its own and hides where it really is. Learn with it on, then turn it off once the hover feels easy.

The drill

Lift off and settle inside the ring over the pad, between 8 and 12 m. Hold it there for 15 seconds without a break, then put it back on the pad at under 2 m/s. The debrief charts your height, drift and inputs against time, with your previous run behind it.

The collective hover mark in the trainer moves with the aircraft's weight: the MH-6 hovers at the centre of the bar, the heavier Lakota and Havoc higher up. Once it is easy in the Little Bird, try it in the Lakota.

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Related drills

Hover taxiSlide 200 m sideways along a line without seesawing.Clean touchdownSet down on three small pads with no sideways drift.Low forward flightTransition to forward flight and hold height under 15 m.

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