Simviation Forums

I installed Flight Deck 5 for FSX in my PC. For those of you who are carrier pilots or are familiar with carrier flight ops, my question is;

How high must I be five miles from moving carrier deck in order to be on the correct glide path? Also how high off the water is the deck of a modern nuke carrier?

5 miles is pretty far out.  I think the ball is called around 3/4 of a mile.  I also believe the usual glideslope is 3

[quote]5 miles is pretty far out.

[quote][quote]5 miles is pretty far out.  I think the ball is called around 3/4 of a mile.  I also believe the usual glideslope is 3

Are you sure, I'm positive I've read somewhere that carrier approaches are between 3 to 4 degrees.  13 is way steep.

13

[quote][quote][quote]5 miles is pretty far out.  I think the ball is called around 3/4 of a mile.  I also believe the usual glideslope is 3

[quote][quote][quote][quote]5 miles is pretty far out.  I think the ball is called around 3/4 of a mile.  I also believe the usual glideslope is 3

In an actual flight ops on a carrier, the jets normally pull back on the throttle quickly once they are over the arresting cables. In FD5, this does not happen. The reason I cited five miles was that that's the moment the scene starts and already they're calling the approach too high or too low. My approach speed was 130-150 knots. My few successful landings were when I was about 600 feet one mile from touch down. I need to adjust the sensitivity though because it was hard keeping the aircraft steady.

In an actual flight ops on a carrier, the jets normally pull back on the throttle quickly once they are over the arresting cables. In FD5, this does not happen.

Landing on the carrier is mostly continuing the approach until the jet slams down on the carrier deck, no round-out, no flare, just on AoA and on the ball.  Pilots are trained to not take their eyes off the ball to watch the deck at the last second (called "spotting" the deck), then, once they feel the hit of the deck, they jam the throttle to full in case they don't catch a wire, they have enough power to get back off in the limited space.

glidepath is 3 degrees, call the ball @ 3/4 mile out

5 miles is way out there. most patterns are flown at 600-1000ft and within 1 mile of the deck.

its a fast event, practicing touch and go's without the wires from takeoff to touchdown is usually less than 90 seconds