Greetings, I am new to the forum and a new simulator player. I came to simulator out of desire to fly from and land on the carrier in a match. I always loved trying to land different planes on the carrier in test flight and I wanted the challenge of doing in during gameplay so now I am hooked. Taking off from your carrier, destroying the enemy carrier and then coming back to land on your carrier is an extremely satisfying feeling, especially if you can get a trap first time with no bolter. I just wish the carrier had a larger role in the game, maybe it is too challenging but that is why I like it. Anyways the plane I have the most trouble with is the Skyhawk. Now, I believe it was designed to be so unstable in flight for a reason I cannot remember now but does anyone have any tips on flying this plane especially when it comes to landing on the carrier and keeping it stable when targeting using the walleye guided bomb?
Use damping at least
I usually tell people to expand thier deadzone a tad so things aren’t twitchy as much.
not sure what you mean … guess im still a bit of a noob
Whatever you do, save your control profile before messing with things, and make them incrementally named so you can rollback to a last known good state.
Always save settings.
Set up switch flight controll mode or smth like that in settings
And one of modes will be damping
Well, idk, when I was flying with a mouse-joystick, I just reset the values when needed
But remember, the A-4B doesn’t have it. Damping is only in later models including the squadron variand and all Israeli variants.
Ah, maybe
Then just fly, with experience will be fine
Don’t tell about damping. Let newbies learn to fly like a man.
Now that I have learned to fly this plane it is my favorite to fly in simulator, other planes seem so tame now. I love flying this thing about 50 feet off the ground .8 mach. its “squirellyness” makes it an unpredictable target for much faster planes and i usually get at least one or more “maneuver kills” forcing a tailing bogey to wreck.
still need some work on carrier landings. any tips? for instance what is everybody’s preferred carrier landing routine?
If you want to do it the “right” way, then google for “case 1 landing”. You need to maintain constant speed and adjust glide angle with throttle. You don’t flare but make a controlled impact on the wires. Too bad the AOA (speed) indicator lights don’t seem to work correctly in most planes.
On speed is 17.5 unit AOA.
Hehe, I used this page from Skyhawk manual to train landing in game )
Cut throttle, as you have flaps and throttle to fall back on, use your airbrake, and just focus. It’s arguable if the harrier is easier or not to land on a carrier deck (due to the TV design) but pilots say it’s like balancing a soccer ball on a ball point pen, so I’d say it’s pretty difficult, and it was my first carrier landing aircraft I mastered, I tried the A-4 in test drive, and landed a perfect catch on my first try (the mid most catch line)
It’s more about feel and using your eyes IMO, it’s hard to explain. Practically speaking, you just want to glide unless you have to push throttle.
The easy way is to find that lowest speed with landing flaps and gear dropped down, when aircraft is still easy to control and it can do level flight.
After that you can control it’s descend just reducing throttle a little or using airbrakes on and off.
Yeah, I guess I just fly it differently because I originally learned on the Sea Harrier FRS.1
Ah, I was talking about conventional navy aircraft.
On harrier I just found that it hovers at 65-75% thrust (depends on fuel and payload) and after that I fly it like helicopter. With SAS it’s easy.