Pilots! It's finally here! The ability for you to play Heliborne in Single-Player and CO-OP in pure PVE has finally arrived! It's taken us a long time to get here and for that, we're sorry, but we think this first step in to SP/COOP is a good one and we hope you agree. We've also added the ability to test and fly any helicopter in the game from the squadron tab or the hangar tab. This will take you to the new training map that will allow you the chance to experiment with all of our helos before heading in to MP-PVP. We're pretty proud of this update, and we hope you are as well! -Rayne Team JetCat Version 0.5

• Two new singleplayer/cooperative sandbox missions have been added. Right now both of these missions are based on the frontline scenario and have up to 9 different types of tasks that can be issued while playing. We are very much looking for feedback with these missions and we are planning to add new types of tasks in next several weeks. (Ex: rescue and evacuation, infiltration, covert action, etc). Also we want to add one or two new types of scenarios for sandbox missions - for example counter-insurgency scenario and attack scenario. But that depends on your feedback and on how it aligns with our release plans (we are not currently planning to add all of our sandbox singleplayer content before release)
  
• Training flight mode added - You can try out helicopters from the Hangar tab, and the squadron tab, without joining a battle. The Minimap will show you the location of the shooting range. This ranges has some targets, and is a “free fire” area.
• The Ka-226 russian light multirole helicopter has been added, and has been placed in recon the role at tier 4. This helicopter does not have any armament outside artillery aim, however, it does have door gunners which work only when there are at least 2 soldiers on board
  
• The HH-53 US heavy transport has been added to tiers 2, 3, and 4. The HH-53 Does not have any armament besides door gunners, which come in 2 armament variants - miniguns and .50 cal’s
  
• The ACH-47 has been made into a gunship. The “Guns A Go Go” version of the helicopter is intended to clear and secure Landing Zones, the amount of troopers inside has been lowered to 10 men and 2 additional door gunners have been added.
• The AH-1J has been moved to generation 3, squadron prices have changed for this helicopter
• Squadron prices slightly (no big changes) adjusted for 10-15 helicopter variants (mostly intermediate variants to make them more useful)
• Several flight parameters have been changed or updated, this mostly affects light helicopters, making them more agile and responsive.
• The 20mm gun on H-34, ACH-47, IAR 330L and UH-1Y split into the M24 and GIAT M621 variants, each with different characteristics.
• The NS-23KM (Mi-2 gun) has been given better explosive rounds.
• All 30mm and 20mm explosive rounds have had their area of effect slightly rescaled to make more sense.
• The GSH-2-30K has been given a burst cooldown if more than 50 rounds are fired repeatedly.
• Look Around (right mouse button by default) mechanics have changed.When pressing the look around mode button (default right mouse button) the players helicopter no longer maintains the last ordered course. Instead, the helicopter will maintain a course that will be between current and last ordered course. Practically this means that to circle around some positions, you now simply need to press Look Around for a few moments every several seconds. This was done to improve circling abilities and door gunner handling
• You can now make the Look Around function work as a toggle, rather then “while button is pressed”, go to Settings - General - Look Around Toggle
• When door gunners are selected they switch to manual control mode automatically (you can switch them back to Auto with Change mode button, F by default), when deselected they switch back to to auto control mode.
• All Air-to-Air missile blast damage (manpad included) now goes from 100% in center to 50% on the edge (before that it was 0% on the edge). This means that bigger helicopters will take as much damage as smaller helicopters
• The R-60 and AIM-9 missiles have had their aiming time increased by 50%
• Fixed a bug when your own ATGM or heat seeker missile could hit you on launch, also ATGMs and heat seeker missiles now start with current helicopter speed.
• AA missile locking time now include additional time for helicopter sizes (the smaller your helicopter is - the longer it takes to lock onto it) and additional time if the target is flying close to the ground. The closer the target is to the ground - the longer it takes to lock on, this starts from 45 meters of radar indicated height above the ground.