Mi-8MTV2 Magnificent Eight

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Take your average inner-city commuter bus. Now strap two honking great engines and an even greater and more honking rotor to it. Then strap rockets to it. No, more rockets. Oh, and go to your local CB:s-Я-Us switch wholesaler and buy out their entire stock to use as interior decoration. Congratulations, you now have yourself an Mi-8MTV2 — the not-yet-militarised version of the Mi-17 Hip, and one of the most common helicopters in the entire world.

In the DCS world, it is not quite as common because it is, after all, simply a very large transport helicopter that you just so happen to be able to strap some weapons pods onto. The bus comparison is a bit unfair — the Mi-8MTV2 can be a surprisingly fast and agile helicopter — but the engine and rotors that gives it that speed and agility are work horses. They are built to haul heavy loads over long distances, not to duck and weave in tight spaces, and they are slow to respond to throttle and collective inputs. The simile is more that of a 1500+ Hp diesel engine than a 500Hp V8.

Features

The Mi-8MTV2's core task of “go to place; drop off stuff” is readily apparent when looking at its feature list:

• Five different radios (R-863 VHF, R-828 FM, YaDRO-1A HF, ARK-9, ARK-UD), most of which are used for direction-finding rather than communication.
• DISS-15 doppler navigation and hover/drift indication.
• A subtly competent autopilot.
• Semi-automated cargo slinging, including a special cargo view to spot your pick-up and drop-off point.
• Roughly four bajillion circuit-breaker switches.
• Enough panels and things to monitor to occupy a crew of three (pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer), but no way of multi-crewing it so you have to manage it all by yourself.
• More rockets, grenades, and miniguns than you could possibly ever need, and also bombs and auto-cannons.

Comes with the built-in Spring Tension campaign.

Flying the Mi-8MTV2

Cockpit overview

Links and files

• Tippis' Checklist (see also kneeboard mods).
• Chuck's Mi-8MTV2 guide.
• DCS: Mi-8MTV2 Magnificent Eight by Belsimtek in the DCS shop.

Related DCS modules

• NS 430 Navigation system for Mi-8MTV2.
• The Border Campaign for Mi-8MTV2.
• The Oilfield Campaign for Mi-8MTV2.

More information

• Mil Mi-8 on wikipedia.
• Mi-8 HIP on globalsecurity.org.