2fcknfst

I imagine landing pointy nosed airplanes on a floating platform as it moves through the ocean is a challenge, at the very least, with a high pucker value.

Neat job.

pfbz

....at night!

2fcknfst

... when all the lights went dead, and by pure luck, you find the luminescence in the wake of the carrier to guide you in.

Sounds awesome.

palladio

Sorry to derail the thread, but sure enough you can sometimes see exactly what you mention with luminescence in the wake. Unless the moon is out on a clear night, it's dark as a cave out there in the middle of the ocean, and it's not as if they turn up the lights on a warship for everyone to see. Basically all you have is a runway centerline and border lights, and the "meatball" glide slope indicator to the left. You are going about 185 mph until touchdown, and landing in an area about the length of two tennis courts. There are parked aircraft and flight deck crew standing just to the left and right of the landing area, so you have to be within a few feet of the centerline or you'll get a "wave off" and have to go around and try again. It's like a controlled crash landing and you are flying the aircraft under power, right into the deck. It's a very hard impact. If you compare the landing gear struts on a Navy fighter like an F-14 to an Air Force one like an F-16, they are much heavier. You'd literally break the landing gear off an F-16 if you tried to land it on a carrier. You can't slow down and flare like you would on a land airfield, because if you don't catch a wire and have to go around, you won't have enough power and airspeed to get airborne off the end of the deck. The instant you hit the deck you slam the throttle forward to max power, because the lag time it takes the engines to spool up. You don't pull the throttle back unless/until you catch a wire, which feels like hitting a wall in your car at maybe 20 mph.

If you're curious watch this cockpit video from an F-18 Hornet landing at night. The green lines are the cockpit heads up display. Then you'll see these tiny dots of light in the middle, which is the carrier. And mind you this video was taken on a crystal clear night in ideal conditions. Try it in the fog with zero visibility, in a driving rainstorm and/or high seas where your runway is moving up and down 15 or more feet. If you are exactly on the proper glide slope on a calm day, your tail hook is 14 feet above the aft end of the ship as you cross it, so there's very little margin for error. When the ship is "blue water ops" it's the only place to land other than the water. It's not like commercial airlines where if the conditions are really bad, you go to a divert airfield where the weather is better. You just have to land, or not. You are always low on fuel at that point so if you don't catch a wire on the first few passes, you have the added pleasure of trying to aerial refuel at night, before going back to try it again.

Daytime carrier flight ops can be a total kick in the pants once you get some experience, not unlike a good day at the track in a very fast car. However, there is nothing remotely fun about night carrier landings, no matter how many times you've done it. It's a combination of absolute focus, adrenaline, and controlled panic. Maybe like a pro golfer trying to make that one big putt to win the Masters, except that if you make it you don't get a trophy, and if you miss it, you're dead.


And here's what daytime carrier landing looks like in an F18. Note on approach the pilot inputs constantly moving the throttle and the stick to adjust for glide slope and center line.


There are some pretty good descriptions by other Navy bubbas here if you scroll down and look.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-lik...rcraft-carrier

Anyway, back to the 996!

2fcknfst

Great brakes and ***** of steel to pull that off.

Thank you for posting those.

bdronsick

Insane focus looks to be a 24 hour endurance race in sixty seconds

Freddie Two Bs

does driving any car still feels exciting once you're used to jet fighters?

Dock

Zero visibility?

palladio

Yes. In the middle of the ocean (or off hostile territory with no friendly divert airfield) there is no place else to go. So you land in whatever conditions there are at the time, including zero visibility. I've landed a few times where I couldn't see the ship until after I landed. One memorable one was in a huge thunderstorm at night with so much rain I couldn't read the ball (optical glide slope indicator on the side of the ship). I made two attempts at landing, but since I couldn't "call the ball" I was waved off (told to abort the landing close in) by the LSO. After that I had to go try to find the airborne tanker (an A6 Intruder) because I was nearly out of gas. Then the tanker went "sour", it had a problem and couldn't give me fuel. Other hijinks ensued I won't go into, but in the end I had to make a pass without being able to read the ball until seconds before crossing the back end of the boat. I was out of gas so it was either that or eject at night over the ocean in a storm, and pray that the rescue helo could find me. At that point it's all instruments and communication with the LSO (landing signal officer) who is standing on the port side aft on the ship on a platform and talking you down. It's one of the things that makes carrier flight ops different from any other kind of flying.

EDIT: For those who are interested I thought I'd add a few other peculiar things about landing on the ship. Since many of you race and/or drive at the track, you are familiar with control inputs, having to add corrections before they "feel" like they are needed, choosing your line, etc. If you watch that second video I posted earlier of a daytime landing, a couple of things to look at. The landing area on a carrier is angled at 9-14 degrees off the centerline of the ship. This angled deck allows jets to take off again if they don't catch a wire or "bolter", without plowing into dozens of airplanes and hundreds of crew sitting further up towards the bow. As big as the ship is, you need every inch of that space for parking aircraft. The ship is always moving forward when launching or recovering aircraft, because without the added apparent windspeed down the deck, you can't safely take off or land. So the ship will turn into the actual wind, then adjust its speed to get around 35mph of wind down the deck. When you are on final approach, your runway is not only moving away from you with the ship, it is moving away from you at an angle. So you are constantly having to make leftward corrections to stay on centerline. The speed of the ship also creates turbulence at the back end we call a "burble". The faster the ship has to go to make that 35mph of wind, the worse the burble. You have to be ready for that because it affects your landing and power corrections just as you are about to land. So before landing, you look at the size of the wake of the ship, to get an idea of what you will be dealing with as you are on final approach.

Also when you are on final or '"in the groove" as we call it, you are "flying the ball" not looking at the runway or deck of the ship. The ball is a reference datum line that shows if you or on, above or below glide slope. If you try to look at the deck before touchdown, your animal instincts will often make you pull power or try to land the plane. This is called "spotting the deck" and can be deadly. Being a tad too low on power can cause you to either crash into the back of the ship, or crash into the ocean if you don't catch a wire or "trap". So you are watching the ball the entire way until touchdown, with of course some peripheral scanning of centerline. If you watch the second video I posted previously of the daytime landing, again watch the pilot's many small corrections to the left with the stick, as he jockeys the throttle to control the altitude/glide slope. You can't push the stick forward for that, because you have to hold the aircraft at a constant airspeed and angle of attack in order to land safely and have the tailhook set the hook into one of the 4 arresting cables or "wires". Also watch from about 50 seconds, as he is in close. Note his head turns to watch the ball off to the left and he doesn't look forward until he hits the deck. You are flying the plane right into the deck under power, not executing a normal landing at close to stall speed like you would on land.

palladio

Oh sure, it's just a different kind of thrill. To be honest, the first time I got to sit in the right seat of the souped up GT2 at the track with a pro Porsche driver at the wheel, I nearly soiled my britches! Scared the heck out of me until after a lap or so I realized this was just a daily walk in the park for him. When I watch that cockpit video of the RUF Yellowbird at the Nurburgring with Walter Rohrl driving, it brings back that feeling of panic lol.

Dock

Using PLM?

palladio

This was in the 90's. PLM or "precision landing mode" hadn't been invented yet. The F-18's got an auto mode, but in the Tomcat, you had to fly it aboard totally on your own. The computers and "fly by wire" systems of the next generation of aircraft like the F-16 and F-18 enabled auto approach modes. Those technologies that were originally developed for aircraft later filtered down into cars, and hence the existence of ABS, PSM, PASM, electronic throttle, etc. etc.

I've flown F-16's, and they are so much easier to fly than an F-14, it's an eye opener. Sort of like the difference between driving a manual car with no ABS from the 1970's, then getting into a 2021 Porsche with all the electronic nannies turned on.

If you watch the first video I posted of the Hornet landing at night, when he's asked to call the ball at 3/4 mile, he gives his fuel state "7.0" which means 7,000 lbs left, then adds "auto". So he's telling them he's flying with auto engaged. I never flew the Hornet or any other carrier plane with auto modes, so I forget the details. However IIRC the Hornet had a couple of different levels of assist. One was auto throttle, which makes adjustments to the throttle to help keep you on glide slope, then a full auto mode which theoretically will control stick/rudders all the way to the deck. Back when I was flying, the Hornet bubbas were discouraged from using the auto modes unless absolutely necessary. Carrier landings are a perishable skill, that you need to practice daily to keep them sharp. So they only used auto after maybe several unsuccessful attempts to land at night and were waived off or boltered, or on nights where the weather or sea state was so bad, they felt it was the safest option.

Dock

The N model?

palladio

Yes, I flew the N as an adversary pilot at TopGun when it was still at Miramar. I also did an exchange program with the Air Force out of Saudi Arabia, where I flew the newest and better version made for the USAF at the time. Amazing airplane. The huge plexiglass canopy and the elevated seating position, it felt like you were sitting on a surf board in the air lol. It had so much thrust, that after burning a bit of fuel off it had better than 1:1 thrust to weight. So you could accelerate going vertical or straight up. Frigging incredible at the time.

As you know the F-16 was never a carrier based aircraft, so wasn't designed for the impact of carrier landings. I mentioned the difference in landing gear previously. Kind of funny, but we had a few problems with guys transitioning to the F-16N who tried to fly more of a carrier type approach and damaged or overstressed the F-16 landing gear.

Ok time to get back to the 996 before I get banned for hijacking!

palladio

And my bad, the RUF video I mentioned wasn't Walter it was Stefan Roser driving......with no helmet! There are better/long versions of this but here's the cliff notes version if you haven't seen it.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=447837145934828

Someone else here will know, I don't. But I'd guess the stock 996 GT2 has more HP/Torque than the Yellowbird?