Wardogs Flight Sim Fly this drill

Trainer / Drills / Tower circle

Turning about a point: hold your height in the circle

By the Wardogs Flight Sim team. Published , updated

A helicopter that holds its height in straight flight will sink the moment you bank into a circle. Turning about a point trains the small collective input that stops it.

Free browser trainer

Fly the tower circle drill

Circle a tower twice, holding 25 m within 3 m. Free in your browser, in any of the six helicopters, with a debrief and a replay after each run.

Fly this drillAll 12 drills

Wardogs Flight Sim tower circle drill in progress: helicopter banked round the striped mast at 25 m, with the green height collar on the tower
Tower circle in the trainer: two laps round the mast, level with the green collar.

Why the height bleeds away

In a level hover or straight flight, all of the rotor's lift holds the aircraft up. Bank it and the lift tilts with the disc: part of it now pulls you round the circle, and only the rest holds you up. Leave the collective where it was and you sink. The steeper the bank, the more you lose, which is why a tight, fast orbit needs more collective than a wide, slow one.

The fix is small and early: add a touch of collective as you roll in, hold it while the bank stays steady, and take it out as you roll level. A late, large correction overshoots and you start to porpoise up and down the tower.

Where it comes from

Cologne TM calls turning about a point his favourite drill and the hardest: circle a tower at a constant height, speed and radius, keeping it in view the whole way round. He says it carries straight over to minigun and rocket aiming. The trainer's version takes one part of it, the height, and scores it on its own. Once the height looks after itself, fly the target orbit and add the nose on the target.

It also trains out the circle strafe's classic failure, target fixation: with your eyes on the target, the height quietly bleeds away. Hieb's picture of the rotor disc as a dish tilted toward the target is the same physics seen from the other side: that tilt is what pulls you round, and it is also what costs you height.

How to fly it

  1. Fly out to the tower at about 25 m and settle on a radius you can hold, somewhere between 60 and 100 m.
  2. Pick a speed and bank you can keep the same all the way round. A steady circle makes the height easy; a wobbly one makes it a chase.
  3. Watch the green collar on the tower, not just the altimeter. If the collar climbs up the tower you are sinking; if it slides down you are climbing.
  4. Correct with small collective taps the moment the collar moves, not after it has gone.

The drill

Circle the tower at 60 to 100 m and at least 30 km/h for two full laps, holding 25 m within 3 m for at least 75% of the time. The green collar on the tower marks the band. Dropping below 10 m on the circle, or hitting the tower, fails the run.

The debrief shows how much of each lap you spent in the band, and the furthest you strayed high and low, so you can see whether you sink as you roll in or balloon as you roll out.

Fly the tower circle drill All 12 drills

Related drills

Target orbitCircle a target with the nose on it for a full lap.Low forward flightTransition to forward flight and hold height under 15 m.Hover holdHold a steady hover for 15 s, then land on the spot.

Sources

Practise as you readFree, no install Fly the sim