The alarms system consists of: a figure of a plane --that's supposed to represent your craft, your helicopter--; a circle underneath it; an inner circular array of lights; a semicircular outer array of numbered lights along with two other lights featuring arrows instead of numbers; and a row of six numbered lights at the bottom. It displays only the most urgent threat, if any.

Among the six numbered threat types, the first four are not immediate threats: they indicate that you're in range of enemy radar, but no missile has been fired yet. After some time within enemy aircraft radar the circle bellow the central aircraft figure may be lit: this would mean that you're "fixed", and you should expect the enemy's firing shortly; start an evasive manoeuvre changing your course. When an enemy has eventually shot a missile, either the number five or the number six will be lit.

Don't let enemy copters take you down with their guns though, you get no alarm for bullets of course. When there's an enemy copter nearby it should be your highest priority except for missiles: chase it until it's down. Your chasing movements will make it difficult for other possible copters to get you with their guns, but if any missile is fired against you, this always overruns any previous priority: evade it (see bellow how to do it). As for planes they're more difficult to take down. Sometimes, and deppending on their attitude towards you, it's better to do it and sometimes it's better to let them alone and evade (see bellow) their missiles if any. (However, if you manage to take down a plane that was pounding friendly ground forces the friendly casualties briefed after the battle will be accordingly lower--in case you care about that.  )

The meaning of each numbered threat indicator is:

1.- Early Warning Radar (EWR): These radars are mounted on trucks embedded in the AAA/SAM groups. I don't know whether they extend these weapons' ranges or something and I never care about EWR myself, nor about this no. 1 threat indicator either. Besides your WSO will never target them automatically unless there's nothing else around, which is pretty difficult on a battlefield. I don't know what kind of help they lend to AAAs and SAMs, but once the later are destroyed you don't have to worry about the former, do you.

2.- Aircraft Radar: Aircraft fire InfraRed (IR) guided missiles --and may fire their guns as well. When these are fired, alarm no. 6 is displayed (see bellow). Against enemy aircraft you can use your own IR missiles, but also the laser-guided anti-tank missiles, the heavy cannon specially designed for aircraft --takes practice, but can also take even armoured vehicles-- and even the conventional turret gun for planes and lightly armoured copters which are really close and flying towards or from you --works for enemy Hinds but not for Apaches, now THOSE are mean. Launching a missile against enemy aircraft with some chances that it will hit is an art in itself: just think what makes it difficult for an enemy missile to hit you (see bellow), and make sure it isn't happening with the enemy aircraft. In short, it should be heading almost directly towards or from you; and you should fire the missile a little towards the side the enemy craft's heading; thus your missile will approach the enemy from the front rather than from behind, in which case it would be decoyed. Save your IR- and laser-guided missiles for the aircraft unless you're near the end of the mission, the later are called anti-tank but they're too scarce, the best thing you should be throwing at land targets is unguided missiles, and use your trusty turret gun for all except the heavily armoured ones --tanks and possibly BMPs.

3.- Anti-Air Artillery (AAA or triple A) radar. These are armed with guns, no missiles. You can take them down with your gun, just make sure to evade (see bellow) as soon as you spot the flash of its firing while you approach, because their range is longer than yours. If you keep flying towards an AAA when it has fired, you'll at least get damaged, even if you pointlessly steer right and left alternatively. No, you must evade. If you fly fast and low it's extremely difficult for an AAA to hit you unless you're flying directly towards it --or directly from it--; so you don't have to worry too much about every dang machine gun unless you're attacking it. Any vehicles armed with machine guns (APCs, tanks, etc.) are much like the AAA, even if less powerful --but more heavily armoured.

4.- Surface to Air Missile (SAM) radar. Take these before the triple A, they're far more dangerous. After aircfat --which comes first unless you've got SAM within gun range--, your first concern when newly into an enemy area is to clear it of these pesky fellows --then AAA then other ground forces. They fire radar-guided missiles, and then alarm no. 5 will be displayed (see bellow). They can be taken down perfectly with your gun, provided you evade any missile fired while approacing --you must evade any missile fired at any time anyway.

5.- Radar-guided missile: Now we're talking. Fired by SAM batteries, they can be somewhat misguided by chaff --used while evading--, which deflects radar waves. Flares have no effect upon them, since they don't have metalic surfaces which deflect radar.

6.- Infrared-guided missile: Fired by aircraft and sometimes infantry --Stingers and such--, flares can be used as a decoy while evading them. Flares amount to hotspots which create massive infrared radiation just like your craft's engines exhausts. Since chaff doesn't create heat it doesn't misguide IR-guided missiles at all.

How to evade: You can't dodge enemy fire turning hither and thither, you must turn either right or left and change your trajectory altogegther. A helicopter's not an UFO: when you pull the joystick rigth and left alternatively like crazy, it could seem that your craft is also moving like crazy from within the cockpit, but in fact the craft itself has deviated little from its course, is still going straight ahead against the missile, and has even slowed down which is bad in order to evade. And of course you've got to fly always at low altitude, unless you're hunting for aircraft *and* the ground's clear of anti-aircraft units.

When there's a missile fired at you, one of the lights arranged in the outer circle come on, and also some in the inner circle. The former is for the direction the missile is coming from: the numbers are of course sexagesimal degrees, and span the front half of the space; if the missile is behind you then one of the other two lights come on, depending on whether the missile is behind to the right or left. The inner circle is for distance: when all the lights in the circle are on the missile is terribly near.

You cannot rely on random movements to evade. You must trick the missile placing the decoy (chaff/flare) between your craft and the missile. If you run out of decoys you're nearly as good as dead, return to base. In order to evade you must wait at least until all the distance lights but one are on. Then you must change direction abruptly, not from one side to the other alternatively, but you should turn in only one direction, the opposite of the one the missile's coming from, rapidly. If the missile was coming from ahead you should try to turn more than 90 degrees --relative to the missile, look at the alarm indicator--, if not maybe less --you don't want to come into the missile by yourself. Immedately after starting the turn (not before) you must release the decoy (chaff for radar-guided, flare for IR-guided), and proceed straight once your direction is appropiate.

If you try to picture in your head the movements I've just described, you'll find that you'd have placed the decoy between your craft and the missile, so that the latter will always find the decoy and never the craft. Here's an ASCII "animation" of an example in which the missile was coming from ahead. The 'H' stands for helicopter, M for missile and D for decoy and the dotted lines represent the trajectories:

_______________________



--H                 M--



_______________________



----H            M-----



_______________________


      H
     /
----+--D     M---------



_______________________

       H
      /
     /
----+--(BOOM!)---------



_______________________


Cool, isn't it?  The decoys are released pressing C or F (Chaff or Flare), *but* once you hear the explosion of the missile against it, you should press the key again to stop releasing them, because should you run out of decoys you'd be utterly unable to evade missiles. You might consider setting atochaff/flare on --pressing the key just once-- *only* if missiles are fired at you almost every second, and so even when you're evading a missile there may be others already fired at you. It's the missile closest to you that is displayed in the alarm system, so keep one eye on it, even after evading a missile there could be another about to hit you. Even if you don't voluntarily evade a missile it may perfectly not hit you if you're releasing decoys and changing direction because of other concerns.

Evading fire from AAA and such is much easier because bullets are not guided and you don't need decoys. Still, don't steer from one side to another: once you spot the flash of the enemy guns' firing, change direction slightly and keep going in that direction until the bullets pass you by, then resume your attack course. The same goes for evading aircraft gun fire: dont' charge head to head against an enemy copter which is firing at you: even if you kill it, most probably it will kill you as well.

I find landing to be the most difficult part, I get some heavy landings but not always. I guess it's better when you've got a second joystick for the rotor speed and pedals for the rudder, I've got just one crappy but trusty "El Cheapo" joystick which I keep in a religious working order. So I learned to land somewhat like a plane: instead of stopping in the air and then hovering down, I head towards the ground until I'm pretty low and close --not too so-- to the landing point's position. Then I steer up to lose speed, but just beforehand I compensate by drastically decreasing rotor speed (to a value which could't support the copter airborne unless it was moving with its nose up), in order not to ascend. In that condition steering up decreases the speed, and not doing so decreases altitude. The idea is having lost enough speed when I (hopefully smoothly) reach the ground. You can have little horizontal speed when landing, the Hind is equiped with wheels, and you can land with your nose somewhat up; just don't ever steer even when touching ground. After landing you can activate the brakes.

--Japofran