Carrier traps. Flanker sinks or sails.

So I've been doing carrier traps with the hornet for a few weeks. Within a week the standard pattern became too easy, so I started doing SHBs and got good at those too. I can consistently trap the hornet with a centered ball and a 3 or 4 wire.

The su33 is considerably more difficult. Getting to on speed aoa is so much less intuitive, and getting the glide path correct in the middle to in close is so damn hard. Rocking the throttle can still result in flanker dropping like a rock or sailing 50ft high in close. Any pro tips to keep the flanker more on glide slope and on speed aoa especially in close?

Try a stable power setting 280 and lower (240 KMH)

I use 89%

No Meatball on the Kutz so it feels like "CaddyShack"

I use the white circle aimpoint in DCS to find my landing spot

And my last advice is any landing you can walk away from is a good landing

Glad to hear the SU-33 is a challenge

Learn to use the auto-throttle it makes landing the Su-33 on a carrier trivial (this is what it was designed for anyway). Set speed, forget about the throttle, fly the plane onto the deck.

Learn to use the auto-throttle it makes landing the Su-33 on a carrier trivial (this is what it was designed for anyway). Set speed, forget about the throttle, fly the plane onto the deck.

So am I supposed to make small adjustments with pitch in the stick, or is there an option to make small increases or decreases to throttle?

You set the speed and the throttle makes its own small adjustments to keep that speed. The speed controls allow very slow increments, but it's not a direct control of the throttle. I'm not sure I understand the question though, what else would you control pitch with if not the stick? I only landed the Hornet once, when it was free for a weekend (I didn't buy it after) and I didn't follow any procedures so I don't know how it really compares, just slammed it down and that seemed to work.

In the hornet, once you are trimmed for on speed aoa and level flight, you no longer use the stick for pitch adjustments, you will use the throttle to increase or decrease pitch.

This must be a somewhat key difference between the su33 and hornet, if I'm understanding correctly.

So it seems the flanker strategy is something like this: get on the glide path, set speed to 240kph +or- 20kph depending on weight, then use very small stick inputs to touch the flanker down on the deck, trying to keep aoa reasonably in range. This is what I did twice last night, and landing was almost too easy honestly.

So I know in a usual glide path you use throttle to control glide slope, and pitch to control speed, but I didn't realise in the Hornet you are so well trimmed that you can control pitch with power alone. Usually you still need stick and throttle in some combination.

I guess then yes, the relationship in the Flanker is a bit backwards. Speed controls itself (assuming auto-throttle), and stick directly controls flight path. The only catch would be that if you suddenly change AoA too much the autothrottle will try to compensate to maintain speed and you can get some large unexpected glidepath deviations.

To be honest, I find carrier landing overall to be too easy in DCS, at least in the two planes that can currently do it. As I said I flew the Hornet a couple of times when it was free, and I followed no procedure, didn't trim, didn't even look at the "ball", and I trapped fine without breaking anything.

I very much look forward to the challenges the Tomcat will bring on that front.

 

.....No Meatball on the Kutz so it feels like "CaddyShack"

 

I could swear that I saw a meat ball on the Kuz just the other day. I'll go back and take a look this evening when I get home from work.

It's not like the Stennis in which you can see the Meatball at 3/4 mile

In the Kutz it is at the last minute, usually before 1 second before I Trap