I thought I had already posted this on this forum, but maybe it's just me getting old
Recently I saw a video from the new Chinese aircraft carrier, which is in fact an old Russian aircraft carrier that was bought, restored and modernized by China.
The video features some J-15 takeoffs which are very impressive. The J-15 is a Chinese version of the Sukhoi Su-33. The impressive thing is: they don't use any catapults. Instead, there are some articulated chocks in front of the main gears, blocking the aircraft. These chocks then disappear and the aircraft takes off using the raw power of the engines and the ramp in the front of the carrier.
See here:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fXNIWsN4uo[/youtube]
Of course, after seeing this, I wanted to try it in the simulator, just to compare. And I managed to get an excellent experience out of it
Here are the things I used:
- P3D v3 (or FSX Acceleration, would be the same)
- AICarriers 2 (freeware, to place and control any aircraft carrier anywhere)
- Bear Studios J-15, a payware package including the J-15, the Su-33 and the Chinese aicraft carrier which is seen on the video above.
The main thing to get an exact same experience as real life Chinese pilots is NOT to use the FSX/P3D catapult command. Instead, you should only use the key combination that attach the aircraft to the catapult, then use it again to detach from the cataputl (instead of triggering it). When attaching the plane to the catapult (by pressing SHIFT+I), the chocks appear and the jet blast door raises, just like on the Nimitz for example. Here is how it looks like in the sim:
And here is what you see from the cockpit. The runway is short, VERY SHORT !
From there, it's easy: full throttle, stick backwards, check flaps down, and press SHIFT+I to detach from the catapult and thus disable the chocks.... and away it goes !
And no, despite the low speed on takeoff, I didn't end up in the water
