Dearth of information on helicopters

[echo38 4]

So I've read virtually the entire wiki, have played on low-pop servers for about a week, and have made a few forum searches. Lots of out-dated and flat-out wrong info, especially on the wiki, but trial and error usually takes care of that. However, a helicopter is so incredibly rare that I don't want to risk losing yet another (I found two and lost both due to B.S. reasons--e.g. the last one disappeared after a server restart. Was in Sobor, then the server restarted. It wasn't a server crash; there was a 5-minute warning message, and I logged off outside of the helicopter with the helicopter on the ground, before the server went down. Server comes back up a few minutes later, and chopper is gone--and people on side chat (was a private hive--I'm tired of being killed by cheating script kiddies who teleport me to them and are invulnerable) start talking about a helicopter just taking off from Chernogorsk.

So, um, obviously this is more than a bit frustrating--my goal since the beginning was to get a helicopter and repair it, and it took a full week before I was able to locate one (and I got lucky--next one could take months) and then longer to repair it. And then, before I'm ever able to even fly it (it being out of fuel) the server eats it. This is getting really quite old! Various servers have destroyed countless amounts of my good equipment. I never did find another coyote backpack after I lost mine due to the "debug plains" bug (and no, my corpse wasn't where I'd logged off peacefully before). And I'm not even going to start about the amount I've lost due to script cheaters.

But, this rant aside, what I really originally intended to ask here was a few questions about helicopters, which is not given in the wiki or in any of the forum posts I could find. Firstly, is there any way to get a helicopter on a server which already has one placed in an inaccessible location (e.g. a full fuel load's flight off of the edge of the map)? Or will there never be another helicopter on that server again, barring some sort of server reset?

Secondly, I read that helicopters which blow up must be "saved" to get them to respawn a week later. But how does one get to the wreck to save it, if it is in an inaccessible location, such as the middle of the ocean? Does this, too, mean that the server will permanently be without a helicopter, barring a server reset?

Thirdly, how does one rearm the chopper's guns? I've found quite a few M240 magazines and have been saving them for the helicopter guns, but I'm not seeing any way of using them to rearm the chopper.

Finally, what happens to a helicopter if the server goes down while it is in flight? What about when the player is disconnected while in a low hover?

Edited October 21, 2012 by A. Darkthorn

[TheDuriel 26]

but the bags in che chopper inventory

save 'em before the server restarts (thats what the save is for...)

there are 5~ chopper spawns = 5 chopper for each server

almost all of then get destroyed the first day (server restarts CAN prevent respawn) or are in the admin camp

if you dissconnect in a chopper your char will be on the ground next time you log in

if the server goes down vehicles will always reapear at the last save (if not wait for the second restart)

[echo38 4]

Thanks for the reply. Hmm, I was under the impression that the save function was just to save the vehicle's inventory, not the location of the vehicle itself. No?