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How do I land?


redboot

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I’m a flight sim noob, but after landing once successfully in 25 VFR tries, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s my “noobness” or I’m doing something wrong. All other aspects of learning the plane and weapons are going well, but landing is a clusterf***. Most of my landing attempts go something like this.

 

1. Downwind Leg. Get to 350 Knots and 800 Feet. Check.

 

2. Turn to Upwind Leg. Turn at 3.0 to 3.5 G and slow to @ 250 knots. 600-800 feet. Still a little wobbly at times but I’m usually still OK here.

 

3. Upwind Leg. This is where it starts to get off track.

 

a. Gear and Flaps down.

 

b. Trim up to 8.1 degree-ish AOA.

 

c. I do these more or less simultaneously. My nose starts to pitch up and down wildly. I’m finding it's almost impossible to maintain a steady nose at 600 feet or any other altitude for that matter.

 

4. Turn into Final Approach. A mess.

 

a. If I manage to get to the end of the downwind leg in reasonable shape (rare), the final turn is a disaster.

 

b. Lose pitch with the turn, compensate with more throttle. Nose pitching all over the place

 

c. Come out of the turn, compensate with less throttle. Nose hopelessly pitches up, the oscillates wildly.

 

5. Abort landing and come in for another pass. Rinse and repeat. Eventually crash or run out of gas.

 

Is it just a matter or patience and practice, or am I doing something fundamentally wrong? This is driving me nuts. Thanks in advance for any advice.

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Try this and see what happens

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Have to be trimmed onspeed first. If not, nothing else will work. Go up to 5 thousand feet, dirty up and learn to trim the aircraft first. Then practice turns at that altitude. If you are trimmed onspeed, the VV will be in the middle of the E-Bracket and the jet will be dead stable. Then the throttle should move the E-Bracket and VV together up and down without moving the stick.

 

PS, make sure you are 33 thousand lbs or less, or you will be flying a brick.

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short answer you need more practice

 

can you land straight in with out any problems?

flying the pattern can be tricky if you have not yet masters on speed flying get straight in landing down cold first then move to the more complex pattern turns

 

form your point 4a-c looks like you need to work on your throttle control

suggestion for you start a free flight mission where its only you on the map and nothing is going to brother you make one in the ME if you need to

1. take off get about 3000 -5000 ft AGL <250knots lower the landing gear flaps to FULL trim for on speed AOA (8.1 e bracket centered on VV) keep it there for a bit flying level, dont use up or down stick only use the throttle to keep the VV on the horizon line only use left and right stick to keep you level you should only need very very little left and right stick to keep level

things to note.

your jets reaction to changes in throttle are going to be delayed

reducing throttle will drop you nose and VV this change will be delayed slightly but faster the increasing throttle

increasing throttle will raze your nose and VV this has a long delay form when you move the throttle and your jet responds

you need to learn how it will respond with practice

you can try to bump the throttle a bit higher than you think you need the back to where you had it for a faster response but this needs to be practiced

there is no sweet spot for the throttle you can just leave it for 15min you will all ways be moving the throttle learn to make small constant corrections

 

now when you can fly level on speed in a straight line like a pro add some turns in the mix

turn left 90deg try to stay level and go back to strait and level flight then turn right 90deg back to level flight

things to note

when you bank you nose is going to droop you need to add throttle to compensate

the response is going to be delayed

add some throttle before you start to make the turn and adjust as needed to maintain level flight

when you straiten out your nose is going to rise you need to reduce throttle to stay level

reduce throttle before stating out and adjust throttle as needed to stay level

 

you are not going to learn this in 5min you need to practice this a lot when you can fly this left right turns level like a pro then add in the more complex pattern

its ok to extend you down wind as much as you need a tight 4 man over head break may look supper cool if done right but none of the guys doing it got there in a day


Edited by squid509
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You got upwind and downwind wrong. Oh and yes, its' because you need more practice.

 

Common mistake for new people is to try and land on the carrier immediately. This will never go well. Learn to fly the pattern, learn to land on an airfield and land to fly ON SPEED before you start practicing case I recoveries.

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You got upwind and downwind mixed up...

 

Focus on being on-speed and stable while on downwind...key is to not fight the trim with stick pitch movement, let it settle till you fight the sweet stable spot...

 

extend your downwind if you need to, once you get better and quicker at being on-speed and stable on downwind, you can shorten your groove gradually...

 

If you have a track of your traps, we can help diagnose your opportunities...

 

Keep at it...when you feel too frustrated and about to break stuff...stop and get some air...keep grinding :)

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Honestly? Nothing.

 

When I first flew the Hornet I wanted to try a landing like Wags did in his

, it seemed so simple. But man I struggled. A lot. So it's just you need to practice more. And then some. It'll come, just be patient and keep practicing. ;)

 

Also, what helped me a lot was this excellent video from Lex Talionis, former F/A-18C pilot. :)

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Some basic pointers for flying in general, not just a particular airframe:

 

1. Nose attitude (pitch) controls your airspeed or AOA, whichever you are using as a reference. When you use the pitch trim, you are trimming for a specific speed or AOA. You power setting will then determine whether you are climbing, level, or descending.

 

2. Power controls your rate of climb / descent.

 

3. The combination of the two equals performance- i.e., every change in pitch will require a small power adjustment as well, and every change in power will require a small pitch adjustment to go along with it.

 

4. Don't try to fly the airplane with trim. More to the point, you fly the airplane, don't let the airpline fly you.

 

5. To practice handling, try a maneuver called the 'level speed change'. It's taught to students in primary flight training, but the steps below are modified for the F-18:

 

1. Fly straight and level, clean, at 350 knots.

2. Reduce power, maintain altitude and heading, and drop the gear when your speed goes below 250 kts.

3. Set the flap switch to full, and allow the plane to decelerate to the amber donut on the AOA. Maintain altitude and heading. Use the pitch trim, and adjust power so that you are flying straight and level with the gear and flaps down, amber donut on the AOA, maintaining heading. Get stabilized in this configuration.

4. Advance power to mil, raise the gear and flaps, and allow the plane to accelerate while maintaining altitude and heading. Reduce power back to where you started as the airplane gets back to 350 knots indicated.

 

The goal of the exercise is to maintain altitude and heading through the configuration, speed, and trim changes. Aim for less than 50' of altitude deviation and less than 5 degrees of heading change during the entire exercise. Once you can do that, shoot for on altitude and heading throughout- no deviations if you can swing it.

 

Do this over and over until you're comfortable with it, then add in the approach turn and practice at that as well. Once you get used to the transitions and handling the jet in these different configurations and trim settings, your pattern work will improve accordingly. The key thing is just to practice a lot. Remember that the flight models are pretty realistic, and if you aren't already a trained pilot you'll have to work a bit harder at it until you get the hang of it.

 

Happy flying!


Edited by jmarso
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I have watched Lex Tailionis video's a lot and found them very great for the theory and practical stuff. I have also watched Jabbers video, link below, and follow it. I am still not great at landing on the carrier, but getting better as time and flights get logged. I have been working a lot on my airfield landings and getting them down to perfection. I have started to add weather to my mission and use it for added excitement. Small steps and build on the last skill you managed to get figured out and somewhat mastered. Enough said for now. PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE and then more practice.

 

 

Happy flying and this pilot stuff is NOT easy.

 

 

 

 

Keep flying and learning on every flight.

 

 

Wayne

Wayne Wilson

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Three thing that also helped me most out was breaking down individual stages of the landing pattern, and just working on the fundamentals:

 

1 - Ignore the boat. Set your bingo fuel to 2k. Take off from an airfield near water, and then go fly over the water at 800 feet. Get into landing configuration (hook, gear, full flaps, and on AoA) and work to maintain that 800 feet. This teaches you to work the throttle in order to maintain altitude. Your going to constantly work the throttle. Then do level turns at 30º bank. Turn 180º while maintaining 800 feet. Using cardinal directions (N, S, E, W) simplifies the math for your turns. Once you get the hang of that, do straight descents down to 600 feet, and then climb back up to 800 feet. Keep practicing the climbs and descents. Once you get that down, then do descending 180º turns, again 800 down to 600 feet. Keep practicing, and head back to your airfield for fuel once you get the bingo warning. Repeat as needed.

 

2 - Ignore the boat. Set your bingo fuel to 2k. Take off from an airfield near water, and then go fly over the water at 800 feet. Except this time, you are going to practice nothing except the break turn. Pick two opposing cardinal directions (N and S, or E and W) and fly that heading at 350 kts. When ready, throttle to idle, speed brake out, left bank to ~70º, and pull ~3G. Watch your attitude to maintain 800 feet. Gear out at 250, shallow your bank angle to 30º, half flaps at 220. Your speed brake should retract automatically when your flaps deploy, Full flaps around 190-180 kts. Stop your turn at 180º and get on trim and AoA. Hopefully you stayed at 800 feet throughout that turn. Fly like that a bit, then throttle up and clean up the aircraft (flaps up, gear up). Get back to 350 kts and do it again and again until you get the bingo warning. Land for more fuel and repeat as needed.

 

3 - Ignore the boat. Pick an airfield, and practice touch and gos. Use the TACAN to help gauge your distance from the field. When I did this, I would climb to 5,000 feet and do a long final. A 3º glideslope translates to about 300 feet descent per mile, 5,000/300=16.67 mile final. Once I got comfortable doing that at 5k feet, I dropped down to 4k and continued to practice, only reducing altitude as I got more confident. Refuel as needed, I ended up burning several tanks of fuel doing this.

 

Once you get comfortable with that, then try to do Case 1 landings on the boat. It's going to take a lot of practice. joystick.gif My three practice techniques above can be boring, but helped me to develop the skills needed. One other thing I learned the hard way, is that the bank angle scale at the the bottom of your HUD is not marked in 10º increments. It's marked off in 15º increments, with two little ones marking 5º. Not knowing this at first caused my turns to be too steep.

 

Also, stop practicing if you are getting frustrated, take a break from it. Go blow stuff up for a while and come back to landings another time.


Edited by Diesel_Thunder

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Set your bingo fuel to 2k. Take off from. head back to your airfield for fuel once you get the bingo warning. Repeat as needed.

 

this is a bad habit IMO.

way too little fuel

you should plan to be on the ground before 3k fuel

you should be using the bingo and FPAS home fuel Waring as a backup

you should not be using this a crutch to avoid keeping track of how much fuel you have and fuel planing for how much do you need to get home

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I'd guess you're in a setup that is too heavy for slow speed, I guess you're stalling. Maybe.

Check outside or in the stores page that you do not have weapons on the rails and or are carrying - full - tanks.

Jettison all these with the big yellow 'push to jett' knob on your front left, Chk if all that is gone. (Or start with the instant mission 'free flight')

 

Do a couple of touch and go's on high(er) speeds (220 kts) and only Half (Auto) (!) flaps.

Keep doing these, circling the runway again and again, initially never slower than 220 kts and then slowing this down toward 170 kts, and experience what happens, this should be easy. Slow 'on speed' full flaps landing when heavy are just harder.

 

Only finally you need to do a cattier simulation landing 'on speed' 'full flaps' and be slow and know how heavy you are.

 

You also can check your handling of the jet by just going 'on speed' slow and level up in the air full flaps and gear down and slowing down as slow as possible and figure out what happens when a stall occurs, and what happens when you bank a turn, at what speeds and what weight.

 

The FA18C in banking gets into a wing stall remarkably fast so you throttle up in a bank when you're in the bottom end of the speed envelope. You can fly numbers when you know what these numbers actually mean.

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this is a bad habit IMO.

way too little fuel

you should plan to be on the ground before 3k fuel

you should be using the bingo and FPAS home fuel Waring as a backup

you should not be using this a crutch to avoid keeping track of how much fuel you have and fuel planing for how much do you need to get home

 

 

I understand, though where i was going with that is by staying near your airfield, when you get the bingo warning that you proceed to land immediately. 2k bingo gave me a good amount of practice time, plus enough fuel that I wasn't stressed about making it to base to refuel. The key is to stay within 20 miles. At the time that I practiced it, I used Kobuleti in the Caucasus map given it's proximity to water. For those practice sessions, I had no weapons loaded, and focused solely on my airwork.


Edited by Diesel_Thunder

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Been flying this for years, watched Lex T last night, outstanding explanations, very much appreciate the time spent making them and the sharing of knowledge, recommend them highly for anyone who wants to learn how to fly this thing properly.

 

Much more satisfaction doing it properly than flying it into the runway!

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When I started carrier traps I did straight in only. That was hard enough. Use an included mission where you start about 10-12 miles out at 3000 ft. I used to start the mission and immediately hit active pause so I could set up the tacan and the icls. I don't need the pause any more. Then go live, chop the throttle to idle and drop gear and hook once <250knots. Bring in a little up trim as speed drops further so you are starting to get the VV centered in the E bracket. You have to bring the trim in slowly because otherwise you start to climb. Wait til 180knots to drop flaps to full. This will eliminate the ballooning you get from flaps at higher speed. Once flaps are at full, bring in more up trim while watching air speed continue to drop. Your ultimate AOA on speed will be in the 130 range depending on weight so as speed drops start bringing in some power at 145 or so. Since your approach to the boat is at 9-10 degrees to the right of the boats heading to line up w/ the angled deck, the boat is constantly moving to your right. So I keep the VV just to the right of the boat super structure and the VV is to the right of the icls localizer line. At about 1.2 miles out I move the VV over towards the center of the deck. At the 1.0 - 1.2 miles out you can start to see the lines on the deck and will notice that you appear to be to the right of a good line up. Don't worry. In that last mile the boat moves further toward your right and line up will be good when you hit the deck. I did several 100 of these straight ins and felt pretty good as I could 95% get the plane on the boat properly. Then I tried pattern approaches. This is a whole other world. 6 months or so, several 100 pattern approaches, a couple of threads here that have helped a bunch, but I am still elated if I can get a score of >60 in Bankler's training mission. BTW, if you don't have Banklers mission download it.

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  • 1 month later...
I have watched Lex Tailionis video's a lot and found them very great for the theory and practical stuff. I have also watched Jabbers video, link below, and follow it. I am still not great at landing on the carrier, but getting better as time and flights get logged. I have been working a lot on my airfield landings and getting them down to perfection. I have started to add weather to my mission and use it for added excitement. Small steps and build on the last skill you managed to get figured out and somewhat mastered. Enough said for now. PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE and then more practice.

 

 

Happy flying and this pilot stuff is NOT easy.

 

 

 

 

Keep flying and learning on every flight.

 

 

Wayne

 

Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Practice does no good if one does the same thing over and over again hoping for a different result.

 

Just a thought.

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2. Turn to Upwind Leg. Turn at 3.0 to 3.5 G and slow to @ 250 knots.

 

I don't think it's just practice. It sounds like something is setup wrong, or you're missing something. It sounds like you have grasped the concept of on-speed, and then it shouldn't be this hard.

 

Four things:

 

1) Check your weight. If you're above 34.000 lbs, dump fuel.

 

2) (What I believe is your problem) Holding 3-3.5G through the break will put you very close to the runway or boat. For the boat, aim for 1.2 nm wide. For the runway, you might want to add a little more, like 1.5 nm (since the lack of angled deck makes it easier to overshoot). Being too narrow will require lots of bank and thrust through the final turn, making your aircraft go nuts when finally going wings level.

To know this courseline distance (which is NOT the same as TCN distance), put your HSI in the RIGHT mfd (left won't work) and bring up the course line. The distance to course line is shown in the bottom right corner.

 

3) Like Bartzi said, don't land on the carrier yet. Touch and go on the airfield until it's a walk in the park. Then take the next step. :thumbup:

 

4) When you're ready for the carrier, make sure you have roughly ~25 kts wind over the deck. Easiest way in the ME is to set wind to zero, and set the boat speed to 25 kts.


Edited by Bankler
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To assist with the rise when you drop wheels and flaps, try the following:

1. At the break, pull 3.5 g as you have been.

2. At 90 degrees from your initial turn, you should be about 250 knots, go wheels down.

3. approximately 220 knots, drop your flaps and relax your turn to about 20-25 degrees of bank. Start trimming your aircraft to keep your velocity vector level with the horizon line. With your aircraft still in a bank, you shouldn't need to worry about rising above your initial altitude of 800.

4. Once on the downwind parallel to the carrier, level off and add power to arrest the descent. And finish adding a few degrees of trim to get "on speed AOA"

 

This has helped me since I used to go flaps and gear down later in the turn, which caused the aircraft to balloon up in altitude. It takes a bit of practice to get right, but once you get it down, it really makes things easier, since your only worrying about 2 things once in the downwind.

A. Throttle to arrest descent

B. Waiting to turn into final and hit that magical 3 wire

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  • 1 month later...

What you call downwind leg is in fact UPWIND in the direction of landing. This is to check that the runway is clear and also to get a 'clear' call from the deck when you put the HOOK down. Lowering FLAPS, your LIFT increases so the a/c gains height. You have to push the stick forward to keep vel vector level, then trim to keep E bracket aligned with vel vector. What you call UPWIND is DOWNWIND opposite to the landing direction. On FINALS, you have to be very quick to adjust power to keep the speed within +- 2-3 knots. ( I too have these problems). Else you'll keep pumping the throttle.

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the nose pitching that the OP describes sounds like Pilot Induced Oscillations. Those come from over-correcting. The only way around PIO is practice, you need to get a feel for how the aircraft moves and make smaller stick inputs to correct your flight path. Trimming the aircraft properly will help, because you wont need to make as many small corrections.

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Sounds to me like a few things going on at once. My advise is to not land like a pro on your first attempts, don't start with a VRIAB (visual run in and break), start with BFM (basic flight maneuvers). First of all, you should be well trained and pro when it comes to speed, throttle, pitch and trim....in a Cessna! Not much changes for the F18, flight principles remain the same.

 

Can you fly in a straight and level flight at 300kts clean, trimmed

Can you fly at 200kts clean, trimmed

Can you apply half flap, adjust power to hole IAS and fly trimmed

Can you slow to 130kts full flap trimmed

Can you do a 45 deg level turn at this speed, trimmed.

 

The hornet has BIG flaps, you need to stay ahead of the plane (which means predict what it's going to do and control it, not the opposite).

So this is when you become a master and predict the small power input you need for the turn to final.

 

But start with the basics, don't chase the HUD around with big inputs, be really gentle on the stick, otherwise your AoA will go wild and you are chasing it. The more gentle you fly, the smoother the flight path vector and ebracket become and the easier it gets.

 

And practise! Go and do 20 circuits non stop until it starts to become natural, then do another 20...

 

 

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