Aerosoft's Seahawk And Boxer

I have to admit that within the virtual skies of MSFS 2004, I haven't played around too much with the helicopters. However, from time to time I like to hop into something "rotary style" and do some really slow sight-seeing! If you have any scenery add-ons, taking a cruise in a helicopter is one of the best ways to enjoy all those megabytes of beautiful scenery! Put it into a hover and get a good look around!

The majority of my helicopter "flying" comes in the way of the combat sims that are out there, and I found that the default and freeware helicopters handled quite differently from the assault helicopters I was accustomed to. The performance of helicopters in the MSFS 2004 world is OK, but leaves some room for improvement. Aerosoft, a company that has impressed me with its excellent add on scenery

products, such as Real Germany and France 1, has filled this void with a great model of the Sikorsky Seahawk, the Navy's version of the Blackhawk Helicopter. The name of the product is Seahawk & Boxer For MSFS 2004.

The name "Sikorsky" is synonymous with "helicopters". The S-52, a 178 hp helicopter developed in 1947 was probably the first serious production rotary aircraft from Sikorsky, although unsuccessful attempts were made as early as 1909 - 1910. The Sikorsky S-70 was designed to replace the U.S. Army's aging fleet of Bell UH-1's, commonly called the "Huey". It needed to be capable of carrying 11 soldiers and their equipment. YUH-60A, the prototype, first flew on October 17, 1974. Beating out the Bell 240 and Boeing Vertol 179 on December 23, 1976 was a blessing for the Sikorsky Company, which had been having financial difficulties due to below normal orders for their aircraft. The projected order of 1,107 aircraft was definitely a pick-me-up for Sikorsky.

Powered by two 1,560 hp, General Electric Turbo Shaft Engines, the first production line aircraft flew on Oct 17, 1978, and the first folks to have a ride in it were the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division in June of the following year. With its ability to carry more payload, both inside and out, and the ease with which various versions could be made, the UH-60A was a logical choice for the U.S. Navy in the LAMPS (Light Airborne Multi Purpose System) program, for it had superior capabilities to the Kaman Sea sprite, which was being utilized at that time. The across the board commonality with the UH-60A meant big dollar savings in both maintenance and training, and so the SH-60B Seahawk was born. As with anything that deals with aviation and the military, there are an abundance of variations of this helicopter, which goes to show that this is truly an adaptable helicopter. In the figure at right, I'd like to point out the incredible detail that has been afforded to this product by the folks at Aerosoft, literally right down to the nuts and bolts.

This helicopter wears many hats indeed, such as anti-submarine warfare, search and rescue, anti-ship warfare, cargo, and special ops. It is based on cruisers, destroyers, and frigates. Crewed by three; a pilot, an Airborne Tactical Officer, and a Sensor Operator, who operates the magnetic Anomaly Detector (MAD) in its search for submarines, which is its primary mission in the service of the Navy.

The export model of the Seahawk designated S-70, features a state-of-the-art glass cockpit. The U.S. Navy is upgrading their fleet of Seahawks with this configuration also. The model in this product features this state-of-the-art panel.

There are 8 locations around the "Virtual Globe" where you can find the LHD 4 Boxer WASP Class Amphibious Assault Ships anchored (try saying that three times, fast!). They are (near); San Francisco, New York, Miami, Gibraltar, Iraqi Coast, Norfolk, Hamburg, and London. Each location offers a new task for you to carry out in the Seahawk, when you launch from these ships. These flight plans are found in the "Select a Flight" menu under "Aerosoft Flights". Built by Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, these ships have an incredible assault capability! Carrying a variety of helicopters, and able to carry and launch up to eight Harriers off its large deck, it also packs a whopping 2,000 Marines on board for the "personal" touch! These ships are also invaluable when emergency relief is needed, being the perfect platform to command and coordinate relief efforts, whenever and wherever they may be needed.

This is an incredibly detailed launching platform for the Seahawk. Aerosoft also admits that this is the "frame rate eater", although, with my system,having my graphics settings slightly higher than what is suggested, I really didn't feel there was any inconvenience here. Load up times are a bit longer, but nothing unbearable. If you have any add on scenery products that cover the areas the Boxer is found in, you may have even longer load times. It's worth the wait! The ship is truly a sight to see. Extremely detailed is an understatement! The number of polygons used to “construct” this ship is about the same as that used in a quality airport payware package, packed into a smaller area! The Scenery Complexity Slider will adjust how many items will be displayed on the ship. You'll want to be careful not to go to low here, since the purpose of this product is to give you an authentic launching platform for the Seahawk. The lower you go, the fewer items you'll see. As with all systems and all add ons, you'll have to experiment with your settings to see what's good for you. I would suggest following the guidelines in the printed manual that ships with the product and then go from there, up or down. Remember that you can start your flight out with graphic settings set to where you get the most out of the ships scenery, then, just hit the "Alt" button, readjust your settings to suit your needs, and off you go! Once again, very beautiful work on the ship! My "straw hat" is off to you folks!

Concerning the Realism Settings, this model of the Seahawk was designed to fly with the settings at medium or slightly higher. The Seahawk in the real world was developed to be an extremely stable helicopter platform, so that it could perform its various tasks, like hovering in bad conditions. The Automatic Flight Control System (AFCS) and the Stability Augmentation Systems (SAS) makes this helicopter a dream to fly. If you were to max out your Realism Settings in this case, it would be like taking the power steering unit out of a huge car, and painting the windows black! So, as weird as it may sound, for realistic flying, follow the suggested settings of medium or so.

The exterior detail is beautiful! Detail extends from the obvious paint job to connections for antennae, rivets and smudges! The only thing that I could see that wasn't "perfectly" round was the chin radome on one of the models. An extremely small detail, but I figured I had to come up with something, or else this would sound like a one sided review! In all there are 13 variations that come with this product, some are similar in appearance, but reflect

The texturing, dynamic shine and the looks are great! From the external view you will also notice a great amount of detail when viewing the interior of the aircraft. The Pilot is very nicely detailed, and although I've seen animated pilot heads, arms, and legs, this is the first time that I've seen the animated movements look as if they're performing an instrument scan, then "eyeballing" the outside air, then back to the instruments! Pretty cool effect! I wonder if I'm just imagining this or if they planned it? Hmmm... Here are a few shots illustrating what I mean about the detail afforded to this model!

The Automatic Flight Control System (AFCS) and Stability Augmentation System (SAS) are easily used and clearly rendered. It is accessible by hitting "Shift + 5", or by using the Panel Switcher in the lower right of the 2D screen. This panel can also be seen in the Pedestal Panel, (Shift + 4, or Panel Switcher), which displays both the AFCS and the Radio Avionics and Control Display Unit. (Click on the Pics for a larger, clearer view of the functions.) The manual talks you through the use of these avionics in a clear and simple manner, except for a typo or two, (one had me looking for the "APPT HVR" Key, instead of the "APPR HVR" key. I think I would have caught this sooner and not dwelled over the panels looking for the APPT HVR key for as long as I did had I more coffee in my veins! The AFCS provides you an opportunity for radar altitude flight, something you don't have

respectively. Access can also be made through the Panel Switcher in the lower right corner of the 2D panel, or by pressing the respective keys, i.e., "Shift + 2" will bring up your Pilot Flying Display. The Pilot Flying Display, (on the left) and Navigation Display (on the right), can be undocked and moved to a secondary display, as well as any other panels, which can be handy for easier viewing. Some of the functions of the 2D panels are better viewed in expanded mode because of resolution, such as the Primary Flight

Display while in Map Mode. The HSI displays the course, but is a little hard to see accurately. Very little eye-candy on these panels, as most of the buttons have functions. This is actually an easy, user-friendly panel. Work through the tutorials once or twice, and you'll know most of the functions of the "glass-cockpit". The Virtual Cockpit is well done and handy for doing those sideways landings onto the Boxer but I preferred the 2D cockpit for navigation and control, as I found the panels were a little easier to read.

access to in most MSFS 2004 aircraft. This enables you to fly some pretty close "nap-of-the-earth" flight paths. As Aerosoft themselves have stated, if you have add on scenery replacing the default MSFS 2004 Scenery, there may be situations where you may find yourself closer to the ground than what you thought you had set the controls for. This is because the "radar" is reading the default scenery elevation, and not the add-on's elevation. I didn't find this to be too much of an issue, though there were a couple of times I'd look out and it seemed we were lower than the 200 feet at which I had the radar altimeter set. Planned flights utilizing the inherent Flight Planner in MSFS 2004 will load into the Seahawk's avionics systems, the route ready to fly.

There are checklists that provide you with all the information from preflight to shutdown, and tutorials that walk you through entire flight plans. The "learning curve" on this product is not very tough at all. If you haven't flown helicopters before, some basic helicopter flight instruction is provided in the manual. Flying helicopters is a balancing act between collective, power, and cyclic. In this product, the power is controlled automatically as you increase the collective pitch. This is due to one of those programming issues with MSFS 2004, but makes for one less thing for you to juggle, and does not detract from the "realism" one bit! If you haven't flown helicopters before, you'll need to practice your juggling act, but this is a good product to learn with, since the actual Seahawk is "user-friendly", so is the model in this package.

I found that the flight dynamics were as realistic as I could tell, having never flown a helicopter, but spending some time as a "passenger" in Hueys. You could almost feel the Seahawk tilt either nose down or nose up as you maneuver. It handled quite a bit differently than the chopper in my combat flight sim, only in that it is a larger helicopter, with slightly slower response times, but still quite quick to rotate on the rudder!

The detail you'll find while looking about in Virtual Cockpit mode is outstanding. However, due to some viewing angles, the Pedestal panel and Overhead panel are better viewed while in 2D mode, using the pop up panel options. VC viewing was especially handy for looking left and right for hovering and landing. The VC mode is especially handy while coming into a hover and landing. I use TrackIR from edimensional, and can't imagine being without it for helicopter operations. In the screenshot at right, I want to point out that the mirrors reflect the difference in textures between sky and ground, adding still more to the realism factor. Stepping into the back of the helicopter, you'll see even more detail. The Sensor Operators station is included and is nicely rendered, along with the look of the cargo area. It has a very authentic feel to it. You can certainly tell that the folks at Aerosoft spent some time and effort, considerable amounts I might add, in developing and creating this model.

The figure to the left is a screen shot of the panel with the Navigation Display in Map Mode. It resembles what you may see on your GPS systems in your fixed wing a/c. To the right, the Pilot Flying Display (PFD) is expanded to display the Hover Mode Configuration. I'm not getting into a lesson on how to hover here, but using the circles and square at the bottom center of the PFD, lining up everything just so, makes the hover possible in zero visibility. Even though I was familiar with the "operations" of rotary

aircraft there are more accurately rendered avionics than in the combat sims I'm familiar with. This was a bit intimidating at first, but I have developed the good habit of looking through the manual first before attempting virtual flight! Come to find out, this method really works well! Granted, I gave the manual a quick looking over, stopping now and then when I saw something that was new to me, such as the AFCS, but I was surprised at how uncomplicated this helicopter really was! You may think larger means harder to control, but it's the exact opposite. There are plenty of built-in avionics to help with stability and control. I want to mention here that you must copy and paste the tutorial flight from Main Folder of Seahawk & Boxer to your Flight Simulator Files where your flights are loaded from. No biggie, takes but a few seconds to complete. I'm not sure why this isn't done automatically for you when you load. Might be a technical issue.

Usually, when you put Helicopters and MSFS 2004 together the resulting performance is not exactly the best you'd want out of the simulation. The Seahawk & Boxer product from Aerosoft not only fills the helicopter gap with MSFS 2004, but also offers you the challenge of shipboard landings on a beautifully rendered WASP Class Amphibious Assault Ship. There are very few bugs in this product, and where they do appear, they are usually minor and already addressed by Aerosoft. One of these items is the tail-hook message that comes up when the stabilizer is moved a certain amount. There is no tail-hook. Again, it's one of those mysterious MSFS 2004 versus Helicopter issues. You can, however, download a fix for this from their site. This might be a pain in the behind for you if you are a "Screen Shooter" and you have the perfect shot lined up ready to take and the message displays across the top of the screen, but it's not like you can't try for the shot again! "Virtual" Flight Time and "Virtual" AVGAS are cheap!

The Overhead Display is very clear and easily used also. Engine start-up is performed here. Even if you're new to flying helicopters or anything for that matter, the manual does a fine job of explaining the correct sequences to get this beastie off the ground! Then it's up to you! Actually, there's help all along the way for you with the tutorials. There are just the right amount of "hoops to jump through" to get off the ground and flying! In other words, after you're familiar with the start-up procedure, it won't take half an hour of run-ups and system checks to get going. Using the manual for a reference came in handy while flying, so a big thanks for printing it up for us Aerosoft!

Special Features Seahawk
· Four Vector designed Multi-Function Displays (scalable to 4800 pixels)
· Augmented Stability and Control System (Automatic Flight Control System)
· Highly realistic Auto Hover System (with 3 axis depart modes)
· Tested and highly accurate flight model (yet fully flyable for novices)
· Pilot Flight Display with three modes (hover / HSI / map)
· Nav Display with 7 modes (include user defined navigation points)
· Will fly all FS2004 flight plans
· Total interactive and fully functional Virtual Cockpit
· Six 2D panels, designed for multi screen cockpits
· 7 models, 13 textures
· US navy Seahawk, US Coast Guard Jayhawk and export models included
· High def sound set by MeatWater studios
· Extensive manual, assisting novice pilots understanding helicopter flight
· HTML formatted check lists, briefing files etc
· And of course, all fully Gmax and animated etc...

Special Features USS Boxer
· Unprecedented level of detail (over 750.000 polygons)
· Highly accurate lighting system
· High detail deck objects
· Navigation aids
· Locations San Francisco, New York, Miami, Gibraltar, Iraq, Norfolks, Hamburg, London
· Includes additional scenery in the form of military bases, oil rigs, sinking boats,
· With every ship there is a assignment so you can increase your skills.

Printed english manual included.

System requirements:
Microsoft Flugsimulator 2004
Pentium 2,5 GHz or faster
400 MB free hard disk space
512 MB RAM
CD-Drive
3D graphic card with at least 64 MB, recommended 256 MB
Sound card

The price is $43.19 USD, 39.99 EUR. So, for a little over forty bucks, you're getting an exceptionally well modeled Helicopter, that actually performs great in MSFS 2004, and a finely detailed launching platform in the shape of the WASP Class Amphibious Assault Ships. To get you going, a well written manual in English is provided. Included in the PDF Version of the Manual are approach charts for London City and Norfolk, two of the locations of your tutorial flights. Whether you're experienced or not, you'll find the Seahawk a very stable aircraft to fly, and not that difficult to learn. First timers into the rotary aircraft category can't go wrong with this product. Honestly, if you haven't handled helicopters before, it's going to take some practice with the coordination of the controls. It's a lot different than a fixed wing! You're up in the "virtual sky" anyway, so you must be adventurous and willing to try something new! This product fills a void in the rotary aircraft category of MSFS 2004, and does a great job of it at that! I would definitely recommend this add on if you're a fan of choppers, and if you're new simmer wanting to give the rotary world a try, this is a great one to learn on.

For more information on the Seahawk & Boxer product visit www.aerosoft.com