I've been having a great deal of trouble making it through the "Carrier Practice" mission in FSX-SE.

After much practice I seem to be able to make a successful landing about 50% of the time and after many attempts have managed to get 3 successful traps in a row, but 5 remains elusive.

In particular I constantly find myself landing short with the AoA indicator telling me to lower my nose more.  What am I doing wrong? I attempt to come in at about 600' with speed of 150kn but basically have to have the nose so high that I can't even see the carrier. I keep lowering the nose to see where the carrier is then pulling up again to maintain height till I think I'm on glide slope but keep being told I'm over speed, my nose is too high and ultimately end up coming up short of the deck. Is there meant to be a way to tell if your on or below glide-slope? I know the meatball is supposed to help but I find it so hard to read and it's usually not visible above the instrument panel anyhow.

How do you guys set up for a successful landing?

Adjust your seat height up and assure that flaps are fully extended, To see all try using the A key to switch panel views , as well you are running too fast, get the speed down to 140 on approach, remember that there is a 30 knot headwind over the deck that will affect stall speed.

 

Best CJ

If you watch cockpit footage of the real deal, you'll see that pilots plant the flight path marker on the touch down point and then adjust power to keep in the middle of the AOA marker to the left of the FPA (that technique is also used in the F-16 on land runways, with the difference that you'll flare it before touchdown).

However, the default F-18's flight dynamics aren't good enough for the marker trick and the AOA marker is missing from the HUD.

 

There's a freeware F-18C that is more realistic and therefor should be easier to land:

http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,16514.0.html

I have not verified this, but you should be able to put it into the default Carrier mission by replacing the "Sim=FA-18 Hornet 11" line in "Carrier Tutorial.flt" in "FSX\Missions\Tutorials\CarrierTutorial" with the "sim=" line from any of the FSXBA's [fltsim.x] entries in the Aircraft.cfg.

If not, you'll have to dig around how to set up an AI carrier flight. There should be plenty of info about this out there.

2 hours ago, Bjoern said:

 

There's a freeware F-18C that is more realistic and therefor should be easier to land:

http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,16514.0.html

I have not verified this, but you should be able to put it into the default Carrier mission by replacing the "Sim=FA-18 Hornet 11" line in "Carrier Tutorial.flt" in "FSX\Missions\Tutorials\CarrierTutorial" with the "sim=" line from any of the FSXBA's [fltsim.x] entries in the Aircraft.cfg.

If not, you'll have to dig around how to set up an AI carrier flight. There should be plenty of info about this out there.

Good idea, but one thing I may want to correct.  You would use the title= line from whichever new freeware F-18 you choose and put it into the sim= (to replace FA-18 Hornet 11) inside the " FSX\Missions\Tutorials\CarrierTutorial"\.FLT file.  Use notepad to open the .FLT file and to do the editing.

Edited March 1, 20188 yr by charliearon

Sounds like you are too fat with fuel. Overweight will put you at a high nose attitude even when a little fast. 

Edited March 1, 20188 yr by Henry Street

Thanks for your responses.

As it is I'm attempting to do all the Acceleration Missions with out making any modifications, or using save and restore points. While it would be easy to make 5 in a row by saving after each successful landing and re attempting till a have another success I kind of see this as cheating. For the same reason I'm wanting to complete the mission with stock aircraft and standard fuel and would prefer not to use other 'cheats' such as hiding the dash or flying from an external view, but perhaps the simulator's shortcomings don't make this feasable.

As for salvaging a failing approach, what should I do if I'm set up perfectly at 135kn with the meatball centered and AoA indicator showing the yellow circle and I find I'm sinking? I find myself in this situation time and time again. Invariably I pull the nose up a little and possibly add a little power in an attempt to keep the meatball centered (if I can see it) but obviously this winds up going pair-shaped fairly quickly. What would be to correct way to respond to an impending undershoot?

1 minute ago, Slartibartfast said:

Thanks for your responses.

As it is I'm attempting to do all the Acceleration Missions with out making any modifications, or using save and restore points. While it would be easy to make 5 in a row by saving after each successful landing and re attempting till a have another success I kind of see this as cheating. For the same reason I'm wanting to complete the mission with stock aircraft and standard fuel and would prefer not to use other 'cheats' such as hiding the dash or flying from an external view, but perhaps the simulator's shortcomings don't make this feasable.

As for salvaging a failing approach, what should I do if I'm set up perfectly at 135kn with the meatball centered and AoA indicator showing the yellow circle and I find I'm sinking? I find myself in this situation time and time again. Invariably I pull the nose up a little and possibly add a little power in an attempt to keep the meatball centered (if I can see it) but obviously this winds up going pair-shaped fairly quickly. What would be to correct way to respond to an impending undershoot?

If you are on AOA, you use throttle to control rate of descent (or climb). Use pitch to maintain AOA/airspeed. I cannot stress enough the importance of being at the correct weight. 

The real world USN pilots fly the pattern on instruments until they get to the "90" which is where the carrier is about 40-45 degrees off the left side of the nose. If you are having problems with lineup on final, they are most likely caused by not breaking correctly at the start of the pattern. 

Have you done any research outside of flight simulator about how to fly the Case I pattern?

 

Hi,

All great info for successful trapping posted above, but what type of controller are you using, and have you adjusted the Null Zone and Sensitivities so that control surfaces respond more directly inline with your stick inputs including Throttle response.
FSX default joystick sensitivity can be a little slow to react and the nullzones can also be a little sloppy. Suggest moving your Controller Sensitivity Slider setting Full Right and NullZone to about 25-30% Left.

And no this is not cheating, its just tuning. You'll be surprised how snappy your aircraft will then respond to control inputs.

18 hours ago, charliearon said:

Good idea, but one thing I may want to correct.  You would use the title= line from whichever new freeware F-18 you choose and put it into the sim= (to replace FA-18 Hornet 11) inside the " FSX\Missions\Tutorials\CarrierTutorial"\.FLT file.  Use notepad to open the .FLT file and to do the editing.

Good catch; thanks!

On 3/2/2018 at 11:53 AM, Jethro said:

...what type of controller are you using, and have you adjusted the Null Zone and Sensitivities so that control surfaces respond more directly inline with your stick inputs including Throttle response.

I'm using an X-56 Rhino (by Sietek) and haven't noticed any sluggishness as such. In fact the F/A-18 seems extremely responsive on all axis and after a quick look I appear to have all three sensitivities cranked to max and null zones at nil.

 

On 3/2/2018 at 10:46 AM, Henry Street said:

Have you done any research outside of flight simulator about how to fly the Case I pattern?

I've done a little and in fact that's exactly what I'm doing now ;)

I've read this guide, which is why I've been approaching at 600'. The guide also discusses the concept that air speed is controlled by AoA and descent rate is controlled by throttle (the opposite of what one would initially guess) which has been a great help but I'm struggling to tell when I'm actually on the glide slope in the first place. It can also be extremely hard advice to follow when the meat ball turns red and you're already over speed but it certainly helps when trying to fine tune the approach to begin with.

I've also read several other threads and watched a few real-life videos but the techniques implied don't seem to apply that well to the mission at hand.

Anyway, after making a save point just at the beginning of approach and making many, many practice attempts I seem to have been able to increase my survivable average to about 75% of approaches so perhaps I'll be able to stick 5 in a row in the real mission now. I'll see how it goes.

Thanks for you help :1+:

Edited March 3, 20188 yr by Slartibartfast