Before take-off: agree on the job
Decide whether the mission is delivery, transport or fire support and confirm who is flying, observing and communicating. Agree on a destination and an alternate before passengers board. Read the controls in your client rather than copying an unverified keyboard or controller layout.
- Pilot: aircraft control and the final landing decision.
- Co-pilot: destination calls, HUD monitoring and radio choice.
- Passengers: wait for a clear disembarkation call; avoid distracting chatter on approach.
Approach as a sequence of decisions
Editorial flight advice: approach with enough time to inspect the landing area, reduce speed progressively and keep an escape option. If visibility, terrain or incoming fire makes the landing unsafe, go around. This is a practice framework, not a claim about measured flight-model values or an optimal altitude.
Read the changed aircraft cues
The announcement adds icons for supply drops, spawning, automatic levelling, cockpit radio and repair/resupply. A cockpit alarm warns of low hull health. Check these cues with a co-pilot in a lower-pressure practice session before carrying a full group.
Radio, nearby enemies and streaming
The co-pilot can toggle the radio. Its music is audible inside the aircraft and to nearby players from either faction, so do not assume only your squad hears it. Helicopter music can be disabled in Audio Settings. The site does not make a licensing promise for videos or streams containing the tracks.
Landing, supplies and a failed approach
Confirm the intended drop or disembarkation actually happened through the HUD and squad communication. Do not assume a visible delivery always reached the intended ground location. The changelog describes a fix for supplies falling through the map under certain conditions; continuing failures still need a build-specific report.
What changed in helicopter combat
Announced helicopter machine-gun ammunition rises to 500 rounds and can damage boats and tunnels. Rotor blades no longer destroy structures; the tail rotor can harm infantry. Aircraft destruction now includes a crash sequence before the final destruction. None of those statements guarantees that occupants survive a crash.
Launch reference: Who flies: the US Helicopter unit
The official Steam role enumeration puts the Helicopter unit on the US side only, with two roles: Logistics Officer and Pilot. The official win-tips post likewise tells teams to encourage players to take on the Pilot and Co-Pilot roles. That asymmetry is deliberate: official developer Q&A frames helicopters and the NVA tunnel network as the two headline faction differences, with the US relying on helicopters to move both troops and supplies across the battlefield while the NVA use tunnels and boats.
Launch reference: The Field Pad spawn deploy
One of the most consequential post-Open-Beta changes: Officers can now deploy spawn points with their Field Pad upon exiting the helicopter. Official Q&A material presents this as giving teams even greater flexibility when moving around the battlefield, and the official win-tips post pairs it with the garrison network: use helicopters to move troops and supplies quickly, helping the team establish positions across the battlefield. In practice this couples air mobility directly to the spawn war.
Frequently asked questions
Who controls the Huey radio?
The co-pilot controls the radio. Helicopter music can be disabled in Audio Settings.
Sources and verification
Sources are linked for independent checking. Dynamic figures are snapshots, not permanent values.