NOZZLE\SPEED landing

[joojoo]

How can I achieve a steady speed when I set nozzles in landing position? When I set nozzle at 82 the speed decreases rapidly and the aircraft becomes unsteady even when i set throttles full forward how can I set a steady speed when I approach tarawa?

 

Thanx

[shagrat]

WitchHat below the Horizon on HUD to accelerate/move forward.

WitchHat is the "_/\_" symbol, not the Velocity Vector. To decelerate put it a bit above the horizon.

[kengou]

You fly like a helicopter. Pitch forward to go forward, back to slow down. Throttle to control height/rate of descent. Alternatively you can nozzle back a little, like 75, and forward to 90 to slow down again. But I don’t know if this is best practice since you’re losing some vertical thrust

[fjacobsen]

You fly like a helicopter. Pitch forward to go forward, back to slow down. Throttle to control height/rate of descent. Alternatively you can nozzle back a little, like 75, and forward to 90 to slow down again. But I don’t know if this is best practice since you’re losing some vertical thrust

 

Or maybe a combo of both pitch and throttle.

Pitching up and down will also reduce vertical thrust.

 

So for moving forward, pitch down and add a tad of throttle.

Same with going backwards - pitch up and add a tad of throttle.

When zeroing pitch, throttle down slightly.

 

It's very much like flying a Helicopter.

[G.J.S]

How can I achieve a steady speed when I set nozzles in landing position? When I set nozzle at 82 the speed decreases rapidly and the aircraft becomes unsteady even when i set throttles full forward how can I set a steady speed when I approach tarawa?

 

Thanx

 

82 degrees on the nozzle is for a vertical landing (the thrust is pointing straight down), which pitches the airframe to its at rest position so all wheels touch at same time (airframe on ground is naturally 8 degrees nose up).

If you are trying to vert land, there are many online "how to's".

 

And i remember asking a hairdryer pilot when i was still serving how to fly it when jet borne - "is it like a chopper?", i was told it is nothing like a heli at all. Heli's translate to forward travel via pitching nose down and increasing collective. Nose down NOT advisable in a Harrier apparently!

From the hover (if vert take off) at around 100ft, feed in rear nozzle at a smooth rate and at around 50kts, start to pitch nose up to about 10 - 15 degrees whilst retracting gear, wing borne lift starts to kick in then and due to the 10 - 15 degree nose up pitch you introduced, sink stops - power away!

Rear flight? - when in the hover (and stable!), just push nozzles to the forward stop with a slight increase in thrust, try and eyeball a rearward speed of 10 - 15 kts, any higher and (IRL) the intakes can behave a little erratically.

Stop rearward motion with a little rearward nozzle, which can be combined with A LITTLE nose down.

 

Its all about angles.

[shagrat]

If you look at the physical setup of the throttle lever and nozzle lever, it becomes apparent you can not easily adjust both at the same time in the real jet.

Thus the real world manuals advise to set a specific nozzle position at certain points of the approach. E.g. set 60° to slow down, then 82° for hover stop on final etc. then you adjust throttle to manage the decent and use the witch hat position (waterline/nose) slightly above the horizon to decelerate if the nozzle position does not slow fast enough and a bit below the horizon to pick up a bit of forward momentum. You need to anticipate to give it a bit of throttle input to counter the slight loss in thrust through the change in angles, that is the practice part, as the Harrier is twitchy close to the hover.

In DCS, with a dual axis throttle it's easy to adjust both nozzle angle and throttle at the same time with one hand, but it's not exactly how it should be done... ;)

 

Edited October 30, 2020 by shagrat