How do I land correctly on the carrier?

it seems anytime i touch the back half of the landing strip on the stennis I explode. It is most frustating to only have half the landing area to work with. Is this a known bug or am I doing something wrong? I can see that I am clearly over the deck and not striking the tail of the ship. In fact, my flight path marker is on the center of the wires and I can see I am over the deck when I touch down.

Not sure what you are seeing, you will need to post a track file for us to see and critique.

What I can tell you is having your flight path marker in the middle of the wires is wrong as it puts you way too low. You're not supposed to use the area before the wires to land. You should be touching down in a very small area that accommodates your tail hook catching the third wire. I can assure you 100%, without a doubt, that you are not on the proper glide slope.

When I am landing and I catch the third wire, my flight path marker is somewhere between the end of the landing area and the fourth wire. At least that is where it typically ends up when I am on the ball.

it seems anytime i touch the back half of the landing strip on the stennis I explode. It is most frustating to only have half the landing area to work with. Is this a known bug or am I doing something wrong? I can see that I am clearly over the deck and not striking the tail of the ship. In fact, my flight path marker is on the center of the wires and I can see I am over the deck when I touch down.

Use the glide indicator on the left of the deck, your fps should usually be at the end of the runway close to the edge of the deck on cat 2 (assuming carrier moving at 26kt), remember that the hook catches the wire before the touchdown of the wheels, and its way in the back of the aircraft and lower, also make sure you are on correct AoA as indicated by the AoA index and E bracket as it provides the optimal angle for the hook to catch

right now I am just trying to get aligned out of the turn and can't get that E bracket aligned right at this point. As soon as I get used to flying with full flaps and can get that trim to work right, I will work on using the e bracket and AOA indexer. Right now if I follow it I will end up in the ocean or back of the ship. I am just wondering why I explode when I land behind the wires.

right now I am just trying to get aligned out of the turn and can't get that E bracket aligned right at this point. As soon as I get used to flying with full flaps and can get that trim to work right, I will work on using the e bracket and AOA indexer. Right now if I follow it I will end up in the ocean or back of the ship. I am just wondering why I explode when I land behind the wires.

You're not landing properly - you're meant to get the E-bracket aligned BEFORE you make that final turn. There's no point trying to land before you've done that - in fact, you should learn that first - just fly to 10kft, go below 250kts, drop your gear and full flaps and then trim up till your velocity vector is in the middle of the E-bracket and then adjust your throttle so you aren't losing any altitude. Once you're settled just practice gaining/losing altitude with the throttle to get a feel for how to do it - this is how you fly the approach when you're on speed, using your throttle for pitch.

Best to check out some tutorials on how to land - you have to follow a really specific process and style of landing, otherwise it all goes to hell.

Edit: To actually answer your question, you're probably clipping the back of the ship with your wheels, because you're in the wrong landing profile and not doing it correctly.

+1 to what backspace340 said.

My advice to people learning to land on the carrier is to start by practicing carrier-style landings on a runway. Get your landing attitude right first, then work on landing consistently on the touchdown zone markers in the proper attitude. It's MUCH easier to learn how to do that when the runway isn't moving.

Once you can consistently fly a full carrier break pattern and put the Hornet down on the touchdown zone marker, then take it out to the boat and have a go.

If I can land without exploding, any one else can. Only times I do explode is when I coming in to low and hit the edge of the deck.

I have only made 6 attempt to land on carrier and died 2 times.... Not much time in the F18 before to...

Jump to 1.40 if you get bored with my flying technic. It is a mess.. Probably world record in skimming the sea before landing!

it seems anytime i touch the back half of the landing strip on the stennis I explode. It is most frustating to only have half the landing area to work with. Is this a known bug or am I doing something wrong? I can see that I am clearly over the deck and not striking the tail of the ship. In fact, my flight path marker is on the center of the wires and I can see I am over the deck when I touch down.

As for the actual question: You are right. There's indeed no reason for the aircraft to explode on deck unless you get a ramp strike or touch down at an extreme rate of decent. The aircraft should not explode if you touch down too early. The explanation to why that happens (if it really happens) could possibly be slight network desync or something like that.

That being said, granted where you say your FPM is, it's not unlikely that the actual problem is that the rear end of your aircraft is hitting the ramp. Don't forget that the track files sometimes can be a little out-of-sync, especially when fast-forwarding, so they can sometimes give a wrong picture of where you actually exploded.

As for the solution, the replies here are good. If you find your flight path marker pointing at the wires as you touch down, you are coming in very (dangerously) low. In fact, if you even see the wires as you touch down, you're way too low.

If you can't work out the ball-flying at this point (which is understandable), at least try to follow the advice to use trim to get the AOA right before turning final. You should barely need to touch the stick pitch control when landing. Same procedure regardless of runway or boat. Once you get this down, everything else (ball flying, correct altitudes etc) will get much easier. Good luck, and tell us how it goes! :thumbup:

Assuming you are on the CORRECT GLIDESLOPE, just align the left horizontal bar of your nose indicator at the base of the meatball rack and keep it there until touchdown. Trust it.

With this, I have 100+ traps on various wires, frequent 3-wire (no wire is a bad wire), only 4 bolters with zero crashes/ramp strikes.

we need track file

+1 to what backspace340 said.

 

 

My advice to people learning to land on the carrier is to start by practicing carrier-style landings on a runway. Get your landing attitude right first, then work on landing consistently on the touchdown zone markers in the proper attitude. It's MUCH easier to learn how to do that when the runway isn't moving.

 

 

Once you can consistently fly a full carrier break pattern and put the Hornet down on the touchdown zone marker, then take it out to the boat and have a go.

Maikop is perfect for this (Caucus map). Sure, it's the middle of nowhere in Russia (my wife says it's the capital of something and gave me the whole geo-political economic history of the region when I asked her how to pronounce it correctly) and the night life isn't much, but it's flat. You can practice break turns, flying around with the e-bracket centered, get accustomed to using the throttle for pitch control, turning without significantly affecting your pitch control...all those skills that make it possible to land on a boat without bending your airplane.

Bear in mind student pilots make hundreds of these approaches on land and billions in a sim before attempting the boat. Expect to die a lot until you get the hang of it.

I have a mission set up to allow you to pick your plane and just fly around. There's another one centered on Tonopah if you prefer scorpions to mosquitoes. Let me know if you want a copy, but you might need to edit it if you don't have some of the modules.

Bear in mind student pilots make hundreds of these approaches on land and billions in a sim before attempting the boat. Expect to die a lot until you get the hang of it.

Indeed, thankfully I have learnt to trim for on speed as soon as the gear and flaps are down. From then on you need to play the throttle like a finely tuned fiddle to control your descent path.

Very little stick input from on speed to trap.:pilotfly:

Bear in mind student pilots make hundreds of these approaches on land and billions in a sim before attempting the boat. Expect to die a lot until you get the hang of it.

Don't know of anyone that has actually crashed the sim, or had an approach so low they would have crashed when doing FCLPs. Comes down to knowing what information the ball is giving you, and that you don't use the VV to land on the boat.

One thing you'll need is self control. As you approach the carrier if everything isn't perfect. Go around again. No shame it doing that. Don't try and save it if it's not right. You'll just end up being a bomb and killing everybody near by.

Indeed, thankfully I have learnt to trim for on speed as soon as the gear and flaps are down. From then on you need to play the throttle like a finely tuned fiddle to control your descent path.

 

Very little stick input from on speed to trap.:pilotfly:

A lot of stick input from on-speed to trap, but it's roll and not pitch :joystick:

I've tried to consolidated a lot of info about how the navy lands their aircraft and why it's important. Things like hook to deck angle and links to great training video's.

On speed AOA Video - Getting ready for Case 1 Landings

You're in error about your view.

I you think you're high enough and explode then you're not aware - enough - of the length of the FA-18 behind you seat,

when you think to see you don't have runway enough, that's comparing your view with a land based runway,

and you're not considering the brake wires that decimate your necessary runway length.

To me it looks like he's right, if I hit short and touch down on the first portion of the deck I explode every time. In external view you can see this is not a ramp strike as the wheels are touching down on deck or at least if calculated in the engine as one it doesn't show that in the external. I did this a bunch of times when I was first failing to land. In my case I can say for sure in my early attempts I was attempting to horse it down when I thought visually that I was going to go long. It always looks like that to me even now and I had to make a mental note to stay on the ball and mostly ignore the boat or I feel the pressure to push it down every time. I'm now at maybe a 2/3 success rate with case 3, haven't tried anything else yet at the boat. One thing I've figured out is if I blow the setup and I don't roll out on final in the right groove I may as well go around because trying to get it in there at that point means I'm going to fail most of the time.

So from one explodified pilot to another:If you pay attention you may note that you're trying to push it in there because you feel like you're gong long, I stopped exploding bug or not when I got away from that. Lastly I'd say many of these guys make it sound easy, for them maybe it is easy. For me it was a lot of practice and not a little cussing just to get to where I am which is a long way from 100%. If you're seeing the same you're not alone.

I can get this close without exploding. :thumbup:

 

So from one explodified pilot to another:If you pay attention you may note that you're trying to push it in there because you feel like you're gong long, I stopped exploding bug or not when I got away from that. Lastly I'd say many of these guys make it sound easy, for them maybe it is easy. For me it was a lot of practice and not a little cussing just to get to where I am which is a long way from 100%. If you're seeing the same you're not alone.

Everything is hard until it's easy.

Many of these guys have spent DAYS working on the muscle memory to make this happen, so don't think for a minute anyone fired up the sim and was making night traps on pitching decks five minutes later. It takes a lot of effort.

The only way you're not going to master this is if you quit. Keep at it and you will get there, step by step, piece by piece. Learn one thing at a time.

Just learning how to play the throttle for pitch control...hours and hours and hours of flying around at 8.1 (ish) AOA stroking the throttle like it's...your best friend. Doing break turn after broke turn, trying to stay level, never mind managing speed at the same time. Doing approaches to land based runways until your eyes burn, learning when to go into the turn so you come out lined up on the runway.

Dropping gear and flaps, going into a ballistic arc and pancaking into the ground because you don't want to go to full burner to recover from the stall.

Rolling on to short final, loosing speed, and stalling into the ground.

Keeping perfect pitch for ten miles, then turn and watch it all go away as you shove the throttles into the corner to keep the grass out of your intakes.

Having the perfect AOA, then realizing you're thousands of feet too high, or hundreds too low, and the whole approach is shot.

Twenty mile finals trying to keep everything in place, only to lose it at the end and watch the last thirty minute of your life end up wreckage on the side of the runway.

I've broken every F/A-18C ever produced, and a few more besides. Thanks to me there are NO operational aircraft carriers. I decided to rebuild my flight controls (I learned a lot the first time) because the alternative is endless frustration. I don't have the time to make this a career (like some of those aforementioned guys) :D

Dirty up, and trim to an onspeed AOA on the downwind. Trim is your best friend when attempting to land on a carrier. Watching Case I tutorials on YouTube, and tons of practice, is how I learned to get the OK 3 wire. Goodluck! :)

I'm a bad boy...I just maintain speed around 150 knots and spot the deck...wrong but works everytime...

This is the most damage I can cause by landing short of the trap. Anything shorter means colliding with the fantail. New nose wheel oleo and a dent or two. :pilotfly: