How to land a fighter on an aircraft carrier
- Thread starter C-182 flyer
- Start date
///AMG
Well-Known Member
C-182 can answer as well or better than I can, but no not in my experience. Day ops with good weather/visibility gets kind of sort of fun after a while and some experience doing it. Flying around the boat is fun in that sort of environment…..there are very very few rules out there, aside from not doing something stupid or screwing up your fuel management. Unfortunately, most of the places you actually deploy to (Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman come to mind) these days have horrible visibility…….so you have an air boss that is trying to be a hard dick and calls case 1 when you can't even see the other section of jets holding cross circle co-altitude….not to mention that you might do case 1 like every 3rd week or less over there. I got to the point where I would much rather do case III (day or night) purely based on proficiency…..probably 80% of my deployed traps are at night. But night still is never fun.
killbilly
Vocals, Lyrics, Triangle, Washboard, Kittens
Cool. Thanks for the info. Is there any automation in the airplane that makes flying a night trap any easier? I didn't realize that you had a standard ILS + ALCS - does the jet help at all, or is it a totally manual process?
///AMG
Well-Known Member
You have ICLS, which looks like a civilian ILS in terms of cockpit displays, but is a completely different system that is incompatible with civilian ILS. ACLS is a bit different in theory as well as symbology (it is the little round spermy in the HUD that ironically is called "needles" while ICLS is called "bullseye"). Both those systems help flying a good stabilized approach. In coupled mode, ACLS can be used to land a jet completely hands-off, though the system needs to be operational (often it is not), you need a good handshake with the shipboard portion of the system, and it needs to pass a functional test prior to pushing over. I've actually never "flown" a coupled approach, nor have I landed using auto throttles, so all my landings have been manual with visual reference to ICLS, ACLS, both, or neither in addition to the standard IFLOLS/"meatball". Coming soon is "magic carpet"…..I don't know much about it, but as I understand, it takes a lot of the guesswork and technique out of flying a carrier approach (there is some even with all of the previously mentioned aids), and you basically just put the thing on the thing and land perfectly every time. At least that is how it is being advertised.
exerauflyboy5
Well-Known Member
"Flaring to land is like squatting to pee."-My ex-navy/tomcat driving/ boss