Player guide

Parts, fuel and repair

What each helicopter needs to start, how to keep it fuelled, and how to fix it after a bad day. Servers can make extra parts required, so check what your server expects.

Parts each aircraft needs

No radiator, drive belt or key is needed to start by default. The battery must be charged.

A freshly spawned aircraft with nothing attached receives its battery and plugs, plus a blowtorch with gas, a moment after it appears. Aircraft placed by an admin with parts already attached may skip that step.

Fitting parts

Fit parts from outside the aircraft with the engine off, through the aircraft's inventory. The ENGINE category holds the attachment slots.

Optional parts some servers require

• Drive belt (Mosquito only). If the server requires it, the Mosquito won't start without a healthy belt. No other aircraft has a belt slot.
• Rotor blade set. If the server requires blades, every aircraft needs a healthy matching set fitted to start, and you can fit and remove healthy sets freely.

Missing, wrong or ruined required parts stop the engine from starting. They don't stop an engine that is already running in flight.

Why it won't start

Fuel

Every aircraft starts with a quarter tank. To refuel, hold a container of gasoline, aim at the fuel cap from within 2.5 m and hold LMB. A gas can is the reliable choice. A barrel standing on the ground doesn't work.

At full lever, the default burn is about 60 L/h (Mosquito), 360 L/h (MH-6), 540 L/h (Gazelle) and 1650 L/h (Black Hawk). Idle burns about a third of that and centre lever about two thirds. Cargo doesn't change fuel use.

Checking condition

Open the aircraft's inventory and expand ENGINE. After the real attachment slots you'll see previews of the Engine, Fuel tank, Main rotor and Tail rotor. Their health bars work like any item: pristine, worn, damaged, badly damaged, ruined. Hover one for its name and condition. The tank also says leaking when it is.

These previews are built-in parts of the aircraft, not slots. You can't drag items into them. Rotor blade sets go in the real RotorBlades slot.

Looking at a part from outside also shows its name and a condition badge. In flight, the pilot sees the same four parts as coloured silhouettes above the flight gauges.

Repairing damage

Use a blowtorch on the damaged area.

• Ordinary repairs stop at worn.
• Ruined structural parts can't be repaired.
• Ruined windows are a special case by default: one pass brings them back to cracked, a second pass makes them whole.
• A destroyed rotor can't be fixed with a blowtorch. It needs a blade set.

Rotor blade sets

A destroyed main or tail rotor stops the engine and blocks starting. The HUD reads MAIN ROTOR DESTROYED: FIT BLADE SET or TAIL ROTOR DESTROYED: FIT BLADE SET, and the part shows red and Ruined in the inventory.

1. Land, stop the engine and wait until the blades have stopped turning.
2. Open the aircraft inventory from outside.
3. If a ruined set is fitted, remove it.
4. Drag a non-ruined set for your aircraft from the ground or your hands into the RotorBlades slot.

One set restores both ruined rotors to full health and stays fitted. Rotors that are only worn or damaged are left as they are; patch those with the blowtorch. If a rotor is destroyed again later, the fitted set is ruined with it.

• Each named set fits only its own aircraft: Mosquito, MH-6, Gazelle, Black Hawk or Chinook. The armed versions use their base aircraft's set, so the MH-6 set fits the AH-6.
• Blade sets are heavy and carried in your hands. They can't go into backpacks, clothing, crates or vehicle cargo.
• On a server that doesn't require blades (the default), the slot only accepts a set while a rotor is destroyed, and a healthy fitted set can't be removed.
• There is also a universal blade set. It only works on servers that switch it on; elsewhere it does nothing.

Flipping an aircraft back upright

If your helicopter ends up on its side, hold a wrench or lug wrench, aim at the aircraft and hold the action shown. It needs:

• the aircraft tipped at least 60 degrees, standing still, and not ruined;
• nobody alive inside (dead occupants can stay);
• the engine off, or the rotor almost stopped;
• fairly level ground and room for the upright hull. Trees, rocks and other solid objects can block it.

The aircraft must be unlocked. Flipping costs the wrench some health and doesn't repair anything. Servers can change the time it takes, let you do it with empty hands, or turn it off.

What breaks

• Crashes and hard rollovers damage the aircraft and can injure or kill the people inside. How hard a landing has to be depends on the server's difficulty.
• Gunfire damages it like any vehicle.
• Rotor strikes against trees, obstacles or the ground damage the rotors.
• Fire: a ruined fuel tank or engine with fuel aboard starts a fire that burns the aircraft down over about a minute by default, then it explodes. Emptying the tank stops the burn.
• Explosions: a destroyed aircraft with enough fuel explodes and kills anyone still inside.
• Wrecks stay for 30 minutes by default before they are cleaned up.

To get a dead occupant out, aim at them and use Pull out body.

Something missing or wrong? Ask in the Discord.