FSXA Starting with a Sling Load attached on the EH101


I'm working on a mission where I 'd like to start with the parked EH101 cold/dark, get airborne and pick up a sling load cargo without going through the difficult load attachment process or without the user having to reset their aircraft.cfg file to make attaching a load more easy (mine is set to 40 ft and 25 knots!)

IMHO, attaching a sling load is unrealistically too difficult. Yes, I have seen the screen shots of a guy who, in the Sling Load Tutorial, neatly stacked four loads on the truck. I tip my hat to him. :)

However, in 28 years in the Navy I have seen dozens of real sling load operations--different helicopters, different types of ship, different conditions. Yet they all have had one thing in common--the sailor on deck that actually hooks the cargo to the sling hook. My son in the 101st Air Assault Div who is air assault qualified informs me the Army does it the same way. In the real world the pilot needs to go into a reasonable hover near the cargo, the aircrewman providing position calls, and the guy/gal on the deck/ground does the rest. The pilot doesn't go "fishing" for the cargo. And the hover is a lot lower than in FSX.

So I'm thinking abut using a reasonably large proximity box with a proximity & timer trigger. Hover on the box for 8 seconds and the cargo hooks on automatically...well the virtue dude on the ground hooks it on ;)

I've tried using the attach dropable object action. That didn't seem to work. I don't see any specific action.

Any thoughts?

Failing that, is there any way of starting a mission with a sling cargo already attached?
Last edited:
I agree 100% that the default sling hook is like fishing and it causes vertigo...since most users are using a monitor to focus.

I designed my own sling and objects for the Bell 205, to allow easy hook up and it's during free flight.
My thoughts are to use a larger "active box area" to allow hookup. That should resolve that...

I'm a bit stuck again. What is an "active box area"?

At first I thought you meant the "HoistPoint" property from an object's sim.cfg file. However, that relates to the position of the hoist point, not its size.

If you mean the "auto_pickup_range" field in the aircraft.cfg file, roger, I can do that however however my understanding is that is strictly an x/y axis value, no z value While increasing it is helpful, it does not fully solve the challenge of a bigger x,y,z pickup zone.

I looked at the gMax FS Tools - nothing jumps out at me. I figured it might be something under the "AttachPointTool" but ... ? I must be missing?


R/ Hangar32

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

I figured a way to start the mission with the cargo on the sling and the helo on the ground.

I started with a mission with an AI cargo object added. In the flightplan portion, it ended up as sim.1 object with several entries for it. Playing close attention to the XY and Z velocity entries I made sure all were zero. Likewise I made sure that "on the ground = true"

Under the sling.0 entry in the flightplan, I added the object name to the object field. I also gave it plenty of cable length – 75 feet.

When I start the mission, there is some banging around but the object remains on the cable and the cable remains unbroken. Oddly enough two objects show up, one attached to the helicopter and one just sitting at the lat long of the AI object. Strange, but it works. If I cannot get rid of the second object I will merely put its lat long inside a building to hide it. Inelegant, but it will work.

So, I got it working. That said in my research I came across the following:

PAYLOAD STATION OBJECT:index Places the named object at the payload station identified by the index (starting from 1). The string is the Container name (refer to the title property of Simulation Object Configuration Files).

Near is I can tell, one should be able to place objects inside the helicopter, and then using the hoist, bring them out one at a time. However, that is the subject of a new thread. :)

Thanks again for all the help,

R/ Hangar32

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD