July 2021 - Month of the Mi-24

Hi folks!

July is upon us, and the sunny Marianas Islands with it. With COVID health & safety measures ramping down here in Canada, I'm starting to slowly rediscover what it feels like to go outside. The sun burns my vampiric skin, but it's a small price to pay to breathe some fresh air at last and go outside. I gradually rediscover how to interact with other human beings "in person"... Feels a bit weird, doesn't it? 

On the DCS front, I'm still hard at work on the Mi-24 guide. The process is, as usual, taking longer than expected... but this time the reason isn't as much technical as it is about spending time to enjoy the helicopter with friends online. I wish I could go faster, but these projects are marathons... not sprints. If I want to finish it, I have to pace myself and try to make sure the process keeps being fun and doesn't become a chore. 

I've seen many Youtube content creators start pumping out tutorials, which is great news for the community. Redkite, Casmo and even the great  xxJohnxx (who has returned Return of the Jedi style) produce great content and I am glad to see these kinds of tutorial keep being made to adequate standards for academic purposes rather than surf on the hype wave and go for flash over substance. I hope to see more stuff from vsTerminus for the Mi-24, who has done a masterful series of tutorials about the Mi-8. 

One of the challenging aspects working on the Mi-24 guide is that good reference material is hard to find. The documentation we have with the module isn't terrible, but it isn't great either. I had to reverse-engineer a few things, use a bunch of rules of thumb, make wild guesses and sometimes even wilder assumptions based on other helicopters like the Mi-8, which often have some system commonality.

Stay tuned for more updates!