Head slaps all around when I was watching this back editing. Literally hanging on by a thread whole time & many brain failures. Probably most stressed being in a mission!
Haha, nice that you survived :) You gotta follow Paco's orders. In place right 360 means in place right to a heading of 360, not locking up all kinds of Hornets :) Also, the night trap would have been easier if you had turned on your ICLS and you could have followed the needles ;)
Yeah I did have the 360 heading back north in my head & was following them out until I got distracted by a sky full of harpoons like Homer Simpson chasing a squirrel & lost my flight lol Wasn't sure if they turned back at some point so entered desperation flapping mode. Yes forgetting to flick the ILS switch up before going in was the biggest brain snap moment had for a while. Had plenty of time for it to dawn on me too! but night flying does wonders to the psyche.
Also talking about those harpoons, the amount of elements in this one was insane mate. Especially for a long mission. I am cringing just thinking how to set this up let alone sit down & test it all. Well done
@@ReflectedSimulations thanks, you have no idea how torn I was when the push call came. If i stayed on I risk blowing the mission, if I unhook I'm probably swimming in the pacific!
Good job staying oriented. During AR your ball is a whole ball out to the left. Skidding into the basket. I bound a knob to the rudder (L), to take out the parasitic drag of the probe. Might want to turn down the instrument lights even more-esp. engine. Kills night vision. Good campaign, nugget.
@@lankypilot778 Just one comment on what was mentioned here: There are various ways of tanking the 14. Some prefer to dip the left wing a bit more than the right. Some step on the rudders manually. Personally, I prefer to do as was mentioned and trim it out. I highly recommend this as it allows you to relax and just fly the plane with 2 controls rather than 3. If you do go down this road, you'll find yourself putting in a minimum of like... 10 clicks/taps of right rudder to try and keep it centered. Might require more depending on conditions. It's... quite a bit! That probe is... amazingly draggy! Especially, compared to all other planes in DCS, which aren't affected by sticking out their probes at all... (did a bit of a deep dive on this a year or two back, when this started bothering me...)
Mate, you're in a B: burners were banned for carrier take-offs in the B! =) Also - take off Nose Wheel Steering after you get hooked up to the cat, otherwise, when you do your wipeout, you break your gear, when you exercise the rudders (irl...)
I keep watching my wingman burn off the deck so I feel obliged to do same this campain haha. Maybe wise to revert back to mil power tho. Also interesting point with the NWS! Will do that from now on. Thanks heaps
@@lankypilot778 That's correct! The A used the old engines, which didn't generate enough thrust, so you needed to put on the burners to get airborne and _stay_ airborne on the other side of the pitching deck. It was a necessity, really. The new engines on the B, on the other hand, produced so much thrust even in mil power that shoving them into burner for launch was actually dangerous, as it could de-stabilise the aircraft! So, burners were banned during cat-launches on the B (and A+ and D, of course).
Christ almighty, mate! What a recovery!!! Beyond belief! :D I swear to God, that descent to the deck had me crawling up my chair in anticipation of the collision! I am impressed the landing gear survived! The flaps wouldn't come up, because you were doing 300 bloody knots with flaps down at one point and you broke them! =) Proably broke the NWS in the catapult and that's why it wouldn't come on - either that, or you failed to hit the right HOTAS button? Anyway, I am bloody impressed you made it back on deck! Great job! I _just_ finished this mission, myself, two nights ago and it's _terrifying!_ By far the hardest thing I've ever had to do in a Tomcat in DCS! Took me 4 separate attempts to finish it: Gave up on my first one, when I cocked up the tanker rejoin and never found them again; expecting to be doomed without the extra hit, I quit out when out of time. Then, 2 attempts ending in tears because I couldn't find the bloody carrier at the end... had plenty of fuel left (if you do things somewhat like the script expects you to, you get back on the boat in excess of 7k lbs without ever tapping the tanker), but got desperate trying to find the boat and just couldn't believe I had to fly _that_ far past the WP... TacView would later show me 3 miles off the damned thing! Gah!
Hahah yes in retrospect the nose wheel steering being damaged fits perfectly with a 1000ft decent at 3/4 mile 😅 I have to say was the most luckiest I've been, especially finding the carrier. Heading for the sh-60 spike on rwr saved me, totally fluked putting me behind the stern & then lucky timing again spotting the Hornets on approach. Would have ended up in the sea otherwise. Gosh I hope its daylight next op haha
@@lankypilot778 Yeah, I hear ya! I feel blinder than a bat at night! xD A little pointer for the debrief, if you'll have it: Your recovery was made extra difficult, because you were all sorts of late. You were supposed to get to 22nm DME from the waypoint Chig showed you and anchor there at 7k ft until 19.11, which was your push time. Radios went off at around the right time (Chig saying you were commencing), at which point you were 20 something thousand feet in the air, doing 400 knots and 14nm South of where you were expected to be =). This is meant in a constructive manner! This mission is HARD! I know! You lose SA, you get turned around, the darkness sucks and the EMCON _really_ hurts! Give me a TACAN and I can do this with _some_ confidence... but _this?!_ This was stupid hard to pull off! Just in case you are unaware of the procedures for a Case 3 (I assume, because you didn't show many signs of being aware of how such one goes in the video - please, shut me up, if I'm wrong!) the idea is that at the given time, you start your run in, from the expected height (so, 7k for you), with a descent rate of 4.000ft/min. When you hit 5.000ft ASL, you call "Platform", at which point you decrease that descent rate to 2.000ft/min, all the way down to your ceiling of 1.200ft ASL. That's your target and that's where you are supposed to keep it, level, right up to the 3nm mark, where your ILS starts to come in to guide you on glideslope. As soon as you get to the magic 1.200, you start to trim to get the thing on speed, then you "just" manage the course and the altitude with what inputs you have... which is _rough_ in this mission, because: 1, it's night and your visual references just aren't there, and 2, it's _bloody_ windy! Some side-wind, too, making it extra tipsy turvy at low speeds, low alts, in the dark of night... =). As a side-note, I'm not sure why we're having cross-winds in a carrier landing (other than gusts, if that's the idea?); last I heard, carriers turn _into_ the wind to facilitate landings... but maybe @Reflected Simulations can shine some light on the topic? =)
@@riman8493 thanks again, much appreciated! Yes the Case 3 has always being a lot to take in & I'm sure I would have struggled to get in right position again even with full tank. So tips are always welcome! To be honest I had totally written myself off reaching deck by that stage with fuel & the only procedure in head was spot boat, point nose at boat lol. I think that's called a Case 911 ;) Hopefully can get in & practice to get the procedure set on stone tho
@@ReflectedSimulations that's... Odd... I was pretty well aligned on my successful run in, but my tvv kept drifting right of the boat. That's usually a sign of cross wind. =/
