A Newbie Walks Into An Apache (Helicopter): DCS' AH-64D

While the title may not be quite clever enough for search engines, I feel like a good twist on the "X walks into a bar" joke.. And given how complicated the interface in the screenshot above seems, I feel like going a little simple on the first joke of this brief piece is perfectly acceptable.

Especially since I kinda failed to achieve lift-off.

Anyway, I decided to do the 2 week trial of DCS' Apache AH-64D module to help me decide if I want to buy it while it's still on sale. I prepped: I watched multiple startup videos, and began to get a feel for the various buttons, switches, dials, displays, and other doodads that decorate the interior of this beast of a war machine.

I grabbed an Apache training map to screw around in, loaded up the cold start portion, and also loaded up this AH-64D cold start tutorial on my phone (I am insanely glad to have my big-ass Samsung Galaxy zFold 6 for this shit).

After making sure I had all my bindings set for my sticks (at least, the ones I'd need for this), I started going through the motions.. And honestly, it wasn't bad. A fully simulated cockpit seems daunting, but with TrackIR and Eagle Dynamic's methods for building these clickable cockpits, I had no problems going through every step, toggling through the 2 displays' menus (which - if you're like me and have hand-calibrated old school CRT monitors - the interface is extremely familiar), and eventually getting to the point to where I could feed full power to the engines and turn off my APU (holy fuck is the idea of an APU - basically a smaller engine used to help start the bigger engines - fascinating).

Alright, at this point, I have enough experience to know what to do next: Give it some collective, and be prepared to spin the fuck out if I don't handle my cyclics properly.

As I slowly ease the collective up, I realize.. Huh, why am I not lifting up?

I slowly ease it all the way to the top, no go. The rotor speeds are changing, stuff happens when I fiddle with the cyclics, but.. I'm glued to the ground like a stoner on 420 who's out of weed: I want to be high, but can't seem to get what I need to get there.

Oh well. You know what? I'm still counting this as a win, because I didn't blow anything up. I went through the startup procedure and got familiar with everything..

..Assuming I didn't miss some important step in this whole process.

Guess I better fuckin' start reading the manual for this thing during my early AM shitter trips.