Mysterious Explosion on Carrier TO

Just practicing my carrier landings and heavy loadout take offs and this happens....now I did have some problems with the launching bar hookup, but as you can see, the alignment should be okay, when the concrete blast walls come up...but apparently not

edit: sorry you have to go thru the boring approach and landing...it's also better to watch the end from F2

carrier_practice_7.trk

Try flipping the launchbar switch up again after hooking up.

Try flipping the launchbar switch up again after hooking up.

I was hitting the LBAR and that was probably the reason the ground crew said "What are you doing?" But 1) isn't the blast walls raising or up a sign that the bar HAS connected? and 2) don't you need the launch bar to be down before you launch? Because how else can you catapult without it being engaged (down)?

The launch bar needs to be selected as up prior to launch so that the landing gear can retract.

At least I think that is the reason.

To clarify, launch bar down to get hooked up, launch bar to retract prior to launch.

The bar is connected to the catapult at this point so it won’t retract until free of the catapult.

The launch bar needs to be selected as up prior to launch so that the landing gear can retract.

At least I think that is the reason.

 

To clarify, launch bar down to get hooked up, launch bar to retract prior to launch.

The bar is connected to the catapult at this point so it won’t retract until free of the catapult.

It depends on the serial number of the hornet. I’m assuming based on the current behavior we have the one that raises the launch bar automatically based on throttle position.

Thanks it appears so but the operation is the same in that without either an automatic or manual retract actuation the landing gear will not retract.

After looking at it I think we have a mix of both. When the throttle is advanced to mil or above the switch stays down but gets automatically switched to up at the end of the catapult stroke. I’ve only had a problem with launching once. I increased throttle but nothing happened. I went to idle. Unhooked the shuttle and hooked up again using the keyboard commands. After which I went to mil and the catapult fired.

Yeah not sure which we have as I hadn’t paid attention in my first few take offs which resulted in explosion which scared the crap out of me!

Now I just put the switch to retract after hook up and no issues.

What caused the explosion? It wasn't because of which LBAR we have. You can clearly see, that the plane launched before it exploded (which was somewhere down the track) and the blast shield was up, signalling a READY TO GO condition. Otherwise ground crew would halt the launch. Now, what's the problem?

It depends on the serial number of the hornet. I’m assuming based on the current behavior we have the one that raises the launch bar automatically based on throttle position.

Lot 20 = Block 51 = S/N 165399 THRU 165408. So our 10 Hornets don't retract the launch bar when throttle is set to MIL.

Nevertheless this should not cause the plane to explode on the cat. Just retracting the gear will not retract the front one then.

Lot 20 = Block 51 = S/N 165399 THRU 165408. So our 10 Hornets don't retract the launch bar when throttle is set to MIL.

 

Nevertheless this should not cause the plane to explode on the cat. Just retracting the gear will not retract the front one then.

It sounds like the current behavior of our module should be changed then because ours does indeed set the lbar switch to up not when in mil but at the end of the cat shot.