Simviation Forums

I've been practicing carrier landings in the MSFS X F-18, and no matter how smoothly I touch down the nose wheel always breaks off and the carrier then speeds away from me. Is this a known glitch? If not, any suggestions appreciated. I bring the stick to the full aft position after touching down and the nosewheel still breaks off. I straighten the nose prior to touchdown to correct for the crosswind. Running out of ideas here.
Thx,
Papafox

Tried reducing the realism-setting?

I think there's another solution; at least I think there was some similar thread in the past, though I don't remember... Try the search-fct. maybe?!  ;)

An approach speed of 130 knots is best, and a descent rate that does not exceed 700 FPM.

Do your best to hold the plane as horizontal as possible, to keep the nose from slamming into the deck.

Thanks for the suggestions. I've just done a hundred landings this morning and now about half of them produce no damage.

My feeling right now is that the damage model for the nosegear is set way too sensitive, and as such it is more of a game than a sim. I'll do a bunch more and see if I can figure out precisely what is breaking the nose gear (sink rate is below 700 but maybe it is not kicking out enough crab with the rudder).

I have an active F-18 pilot who lives across the street and I'm hoping to figure it out so that he's not breaking the nosewheel on every landing too and poo-pooing this potentially great sim.

I've bounced a bit on hiting the deck, and it's acted a little strange at times, but I've never broken the landing gear while landing on a carier in FSX. Have you tried turning the crash settings down?

Esselbach,
I turned the damage settings down to half realism as an experiement, but the broken nose gear still happens sometimes with decent landings (speed within 5 knots of 130, wings level, no excessive crab, sink rate well less than 700fpm). I really don't want to mess with the realism setting though because I fly all other planes at full crash realism and I consider that toggle to be a cheater switch.

For years I flew MSFS 9 with the Captain Sim F-104 and made simulated flameout approaches from 15,000 ft abeam the touchdown zone. These were really dicy and I crashed sometimes, but there was always a reason why I crashed (excessive sink rate, hitting the tailpipe due to excessively high pitch attitutude, etc.). What bugs me about these F-18 crashes on the carrier deck is that I don't see a reason for them.