Cannot get landings at all

Sorry guys I was wondering if I posted a .miz file if someone would give me some pointers on what Im doing wrong.

Ive watched as many videos as I can find, Ive RTFM, and done the training missions over and over and over again but I cant seem to landing right or even consistently bad, its always totally different for me. And this is landing on both land and CVNs.

My main problem is always bouncing up and down with the trim, I cant seem to get it anywhere near where it needs to be even with a straight in approach to a huge airfield. If I post a file with my controls showing, would anyone care to make observations to help me figure this out?

My throttle management seems to be getting better, I can keep the E bracket somewhat in the same place but like everyone when I drop flaps I lose my trim and after I level out for final I jump up 100 feet again. Believe it or not Im having somewhat better luck landing on the carrier but boy is it the ugliest landing the Navy has ever seen. :music_whistling:

Sure post a track or video.

It sounds like you need to forget the landing part to start with and practice flying on-speed, using throttle to control the velocity vector NOT the stick. Once you have that down, landing is just the same except you place the velocity vector on the runway once you are at a reasonable glide slope.

Don't try to trim until the flaps are down. I put gear and flaps down at the same time during the break then hold trim for ~3 seconds to get in the ballpark, fine tune when level to be centred in the E bracket. If you go straight in, put gear down at 250kt but wait a while for flaps. Maybe 180ish, then you won't get as much pitch up. Use brake if you need to speed up the deceleration, it will go down automatically when you put the flaps down.

Sorry guys I was wondering if I posted a .miz file if someone would give me some pointers on what Im doing wrong.

 

Ive watched as many videos as I can find, Ive RTFM, and done the training missions over and over and over again but I cant seem to landing right or even consistently bad, its always totally different for me. And this is landing on both land and CVNs.

 

My main problem is always bouncing up and down with the trim, I cant seem to get it anywhere near where it needs to be even with a straight in approach to a huge airfield. If I post a file with my controls showing, would anyone care to make observations to help me figure this out?

 

My throttle management seems to be getting better, I can keep the E bracket somewhat in the same place but like everyone when I drop flaps I lose my trim and after I level out for final I jump up 100 feet again. Believe it or not Im having somewhat better luck landing on the carrier but boy is it the ugliest landing the Navy has ever seen. :music_whistling:

"Power for altitude and trim for pitch." - throttle management

Just practise On speed AOA

Fly level at 2000 feet

Pull the throttle back and open speed brake full.

When the speed hits 250kts

Drop the gear and go flaps full.

Hold the nose level (2000 feet) as the speed comes down (Press forward a little)

As the speed gets near 150 - 140 release presure if needed and start adding a bit of up trim.

Also, bring the throttle back up and catch 130 - 140kts and still stay at 2000 feet.

Keep triming now for onspeed without moving the pitch (No presure in pitch on stick) and stay level (Control height) By using the throttle only.

Center the E bracket in the HUD with the flightpath marker by trimming.

Watch Lex

The first video in this thread

He go's through energy managment when coming in and out of a corner. Practise what he does in that video.

.

My main problem is always bouncing up and down with the trim, I cant seem to get it anywhere near where it needs to be even with a straight in approach to a huge airfield. If I post a file with my controls showing, would anyone care to make observations to help me figure this out?

Let go of the stick, once your flaps are down the FCS will try to hold your AOA, no more need to use the stick for pitch, just trim for on speed then use only the throttles to manage decent rate and lateral stick for line up.

Its easy, but if your not used to FBW it can be hard to wrap your mind around it at first.

Ok guys so here it is, sorry in the beginning while saving it I accidentally slowed the game down. I thought my frame rate just really dropped but I'm just an idiot (this is what you have to work with.)

As you can see I also turn into final too tight, bounce all over hell, and I don't know what to work on first, getting the velocity vector at the right AOA or getting the E bracket somewhat level. Right now I'm trying to do both and I think that makes me pitch up and down wildly.

Heres a link to the same track I uploaded to youtube if that's easier for anyone.

I actually think Im getting worse at landing the more I practice.

F-18LCSucks.trk

get the AOA locked in first... then use the throttle to"aim" where you want to land. Dont worry about where the e bracket is until the velocity vector is inside the bracket and stable. Then it's a simple throttle modulation to move the bracket vertically where you need to go.

From what you've written it's not clear (to me) that you understand that the E bracket moves relative to the VV (and only the VV, i.e. not the horizon or anything else) to indicate where the correct AOA is. You should only aim to align the E bracket to the VV by trimming trying to stay level, while on downwind AFTER dropping full flaps and LG, and once aligned, it will stay there. Sure it will move if the nose moves, but it will come back to alignment once you're on speed again.

Try not to move the stick vertically at all once you've aligned the bracket with the VV, until you understand the above.

Sorry if I'm misinterpreting what you wrote.

This is the best I could do after 1 attempt (Not) LOL awhile back.

As you can see I'm only halfway through the break (See Tacan DDI Course line) when gear and full flaps are (down 250kts) holding level all the way around. G's at 1% of speed 350kts = 3.5G's 300kts = 3g's 250kts = 2.5G's You hold this bank and (G's Lowering as speed lowers) throughout the turn while staying level.:cry:

The only thing I would correct here in my video below, that I normally do, is not drop the wing, raise the wing (Up down up) to stay level.

What I'm doing is controlling my lift by dropping the wing, normally I will find that sweet spot bank around 30 degrees or and (less) as you slow down into the downwind.

That's how I control the lift. I even add some trim up so as I come out of the break I'm close to on speed and just refined the trim.

I show the controls in this video

Bankler's CASE 1 Recovery training mission.

For the carrier landings, I always set my trim up long BEFORE landing..so, by the time I'm lined up and about to hit the deck, my flight path marker/velocity vector and E-Bracket are 'synced' (i.e. the FPM is inside the E-Bracket) so it's basically, from that point on, focusing only on the stick (movement).

Your speed control is hampering you big time. At one point there, you all down but at 317kts. When you do the break, chop the throttle, drop gear at 250, maintain 1% of airspeed as g. When you got about 180 its, start to feed in flaps. Now, trim for AOA on the downwind leg once your speed is 150kts and don't touch the pitch on the stick while doing it. As you turn, your nose will drop, do not worry about the AOA in the turn, only the VV and maintain the VV with throttle. As you roll out on final, there should be no need to adjust pitch with the stick, only use the stick for direction and the throttle to align the VV on the threshold. Now keep making little commits with the throttle all the way down to keep the VV on the centreline of the runway and do not flare as you reach the ground. Chop the throttle and if necessary, chuck out the air brake as you touch down.

It looks like you just need to practice flying without using pitch. The issues you're having is you get it trimmed to onspeed AOA and then you start using pitch inputs instead of power which is whats throwing your AOA off.. Also you're flying around very low at the end of the video and doing extremely shallow and off centre approaches. You can work your way down to 600ft downwind legs once you've got to grips with things but at the moment it looks like your best bet is practicing long straight in approaches so you can get configured and stabilised on approach a reasonable distance out. Situate yourself 10 Miles out at a couple of thousand feet, This will give you time to get lined up and fully configured, then just practice flying the 3.5 degree glideslope down to the landing. Once you're all configured then just fly level until the threshold of the runway gets between 3-4degrees below the horizon, throttle back a touch and the VV should start to sink, power back up to catch it on the threshold of the runway and fly it in from there, adjusting your vertical VV position with POWER not pitch.

Once you've got that cracked, set yourself up a bit closer and a little lower and 90 degrees off to runway heading (as if you were on a base leg of a normal circuit) and practice making a level 90 degree turn onto final, 30 degrees of bank and adjust your descent rate during the turn by using POWER not pitch. The turn can be made using no pitch stick inputs, only a bit more power. Just before you roll out from the turn throttle back to stop the balloon you'll get as you roll wings level, and again get ready to catch the VV as it falls down to the threshold of the runway, again... with power, not pitch.

Also I couldn't tell if you were doing it in the video or not but don't bother around with going to half flap and then full flap on landing, As soon as you get below 250 knots go straight from AUTO to FULL and go Gear down, The aircraft will schedule the flap extension automatically not to overstress them. As soon as you have those two things selected the next job is just hold the VV on the horizon using a bit of forward stick and then as the speed decays (and the stick comes back to the neutral position) start feeding in up trim to get the AOA bracket lined up with the VV. As thats happening you want to be coming in with the power to arrest the deceleration of the jet. Remember you are fully configured so you are draggy and you're slowing down quickly, you need to be ready to add power to catch the aircraft at onspeed.

Practice flying straight and level at high AOA, flaps and gear down. Note, you don't have to keep an eye on the vertical speed indicator, just keep the velocity vector on the horizon in the HUD. It doesn't want to stay there, requires a gentle hand on the throttle. Note, you have a ton of drag in that situation, you have to give it a LOT of throttle to keep it there. Takes some getting used to. Once you got that down, *touch* the trim button, you'll see you can dial in a very precise amount of AOA.

Next, try some level turns. You'll be amazed at how much throttle you need. Takes a while to get the hang of that. Fingertip control. Relax your shoulders. Breathe lol.

Once you got that down, try some straight in approaches.

Personally I found it very difficult to figure all that out in the pattern, there's a lot going on in the downwind. To fly a tight pattern you have to be able to predict what the jet is going to do, and use your muscle memory to make it do right. Takes a little practice to develop that muscle memory.

Yeah it floats in the flare. I guess I could figure that out but I'm too lazy, I just fly the durn thing into the deck every time.

I am in a similar place. What I have decided is what Deano suggests, long straight in approaches. I also cheat a little by looking at the airspeed and I have the engine page on the right screen. I use N1 as kind of a tachometer. I know that airspeed will be in the 135-140 range and N1 about 70. So when things aren't working out these are two additional bits of info to throw into the equation. I know when all is well, all you should need are the velocity vector, the e-bracket, and the AOA indexer, but when those are not right, additional info helps me. The speed is very important as approach is dang close to stall speed. If that strip has ILS, you might want to set that up too. If not, find a strip that does have ILS. Flying as you are in the video just make the downwind leg 10 miles long and 3000 ft altitude so you have a 10 mile approach. I am currently using the Quick Action Case I Carrier to practice. You start 8 miles out which makes getting the ICLS set up kind of stressful cause there isn't a lot of time. Last night I did about 30 carrier landings. Toward the end, I noticed my success was actually going downhill, so I quit.

At 9:49 You look stable and at that point you could have trimmed for correct aoa.

Then you turn left, you apply pitch input and get way low on speed. you correct speed and find yourself going up now, I'll bet you are cursing the hole way ;)

This hole trim for speed had me baffled for a long time, It is like eating with chop sticks if you don't know the technique :).

A couple of pointers:

1. You have to do a lot of things at the same time and be very upfront with inputs.

I see you loose speed and realize and then taking action. At this point you are just behind the jet and the best way is to clean up and do it all over.

2. On speed: It's a bit unnatural if you ask me and you do the classic thing when low on speed ...pull the nose up and then throttle up. Reverse that and just don't get so low on speed. If she beeps at ya, then you are about 4-5 seconds too late in your inputs.

Also, when on speed, no pitch movement is required or very very little (diamond almost don't leave the center on the lower left control input screen). When i bank to 30 degrees ,the throttle controls the pitch and I have to stop the roll with a tiny bit of counter roll. So tiny right stick and throttle stick to control pitch. Lex made a very good video on this.

So to sum up, you really have to be "on it" and it takes practice. In time you will also develop the skill to hear where you are and crosscheck your parameters. Once u get the hang of it, your workload decrease by 70%, because now you feel comfortable with what you are doing :)

I know when all is well, all you should need are the velocity vector, the e-bracket, and the AOA indexer, but when those are not right, additional info helps me. The speed is very important as approach is dang close to stall speed.

Here's the thing, Speed isn't important. The 1G stall speed of the jet changes a lot with weight, but what doesn't change is the AOA at which that stall happens. A stall can only happen if the wing goes beyond its critical AOA, REGARDLESS OF SPEED.

So that's one variable taken care of, you don't need to care about speed.

Second Variable is AOA.. You trim the AOA to onspeed and then essentially forget about it, the jet takes care of that itself. So the jet cannot stall because the aircraft is maintaining an AOA below the wings critical (Stall) AoA, as long as you remember not to pitch the aircraft using the stick.

We now find ourself in a situation where speed takes care of itself because its byproduct of AoA and Weight, and AoA takes care of itself because you've trimmed the aircraft to hold the ideal landing AoA, so now as the pilot you're only left with one variable to manage which is your descent rate. This is controlled by power and is displayed to the pilot by the velocity vector on the HUD.. Essentially once you're configured and trimmed Onspeed the only thing you need to care about is where the VV is saying you will impact the ground. Put the VV on the end of the runway, and keep it there using changes in power only.. SIMPLES.

At about 11:00 in your video, your approach isn't so bad, but you are kinda low on each one, but that's not too bad because you are flying a flat approach and eventually intercept the proper glideslope. BUt on your first landing, I think you maybe freaked a little bit on touchdown because your speed and AOA looked mostly good, but suddenly you were shooting up high again. Did you as a reaction jerk the stick back and hit power? The 2nd landing was much better, albeit a little low.

v6,

boNes

At about 11:00 in your video, your approach isn't so bad, but you are kinda low on each one, but that's not too bad because you are flying a flat approach and eventually intercept the proper glideslope. BUt on your first landing, I think you maybe freaked a little bit on touchdown because your speed and AOA looked mostly good, but suddenly you were shooting up high again. Did you as a reaction jerk the stick back and hit power? The 2nd landing was much better, albeit a little low.

 

 

v6,

boNes

He was over 220 knots with nose up on the first landing :)

Lol thanks guys. All this is really helpful. Honestly I think my biggest mistakes happened in the turns as I was still pitching the plane when it would go nose down. As I understand it now I need to be applying more throttle a bit before the turn to 90 to prevent that.

Also DONT TOUCH THE PITCH!!! :) That's going to be the hardest thing for me to forget as it (to me) feels so unnatural. I'll keep at it with these tips and videos. I'll get it soon and I know I'll laugh at this in time but yes there is much cursing lately in my household. But I am flying a Navy jet so, theres that.

I have a vid on AOA, on-speed and other crazy concepts. May help you out.

:)

Try to anticipate the movement of the velocity vector. You seem to overcompensate when the vector starts moving up and down. Since the jet engines are slow to react to your throttle the velocity vector will also be slow to react. So what you do when the VV starts dropping is you apply throttle, probably more than necessary(at least that's what I always did). Which means that when the vector starts rising again you have to cut throttle. And again you will probably overcompensate.

Instead try to get ahead of the curve. Instead of waiting for the VV to stop and start moving the other way. Change the throttle setting before it stops.

For example. If the VV is dropping fast you apply throttle and then when you see it slowing down, immediately cut back a little on the throttle. This may keep the VV from overshooting when it starts moving back up again.

Trying to anticipate the VV movement and acting instead of reacting helped me a lot.

Holy cow what a difference a few good worded posts can accomplish! Im starting to get it now. Landed several times nice and softly on first pass. The only thing I cant get down now is the start of the trim. As soon as I drop gear and flaps I am ready for the nose to pitch up, but my trim is so slow Im always about 2 miles past my 90 degree turn before I have trim set to correct AOA.

Then its a nice long flight to runway for touchdown. Don't know how I will get trim set up so fast for carrier turns. How does everyone else trim it so fast?

Holy cow what a difference a few good worded posts can accomplish! Im starting to get it now. Landed several times nice and softly on first pass. The only thing I cant get down now is the start of the trim. As soon as I drop gear and flaps I am ready for the nose to pitch up, but my trim is so slow Im always about 2 miles past my 90 degree turn before I have trim set to correct AOA.

 

Then its a nice long flight to runway for touchdown. Don't know how I will get trim set up so fast for carrier turns. How does everyone else trim it so fast?

For carriers everything happens extremely quickly, mainly because you should be hitting 250kn 90 degrees through the 180 degree initial the break turn, so you actually go full flap whilst still in the turn. By the time you roll out downwind your speed is probably around 180 and you should have gear down as well. As i'm rolling out from that turn onto the downwind I hold UP trim for about 2.5 seconds and that gets me in the ball park of where I need to be (i'm still flying the velocity vector at this point with stick inputs but once the aircraft settles into its trimmed AoA its about right) , after that its just a bit of fine tuning needed to get on speed before starting the turn onto the groove.

ok thanks Deano87. I wasn't using stick for pitch at all as soon as I lowered landing gear and flaps. I thought I was supposed to do all trim at that point but its clear now. I appreciate everyone's input and helping me figure this out. I'm landing smooth and softly every time now, even getting the carriers no problem. Now I just need to get those patterns down instead of sitting in the groove for 20 minutes or flying way past the runway.

ok thanks Deano87. I wasn't using stick for pitch at all as soon as I lowered landing gear and flaps. I thought I was supposed to do all trim at that point but its clear now. I appreciate everyone's input and helping me figure this out. I'm landing smooth and softly every time now, even getting the carriers no problem. Now I just need to get those patterns down instead of sitting in the groove for 20 minutes or flying way past the runway.

You can use the stick to control pitch right up until the moment you are trimmed onspeed. So holding the velocity vector on the horizon as the aircraft (with flaps and gear) down slows to a more reasonable speed will definitely need a push on the stick. Once you've got it all trimmed and stabilised on speed then you can stop using the stick for pitch and fly it on power instead.