A/C Navigation

[goosegagnon2]

I was thinking about something the other day about navigation out in the ocean. Lets say an aircraft flies out of visual range of an aircraft carrier, how does the aircraft find its way back? since the ship moves then techincally it won't be in the same spot when the aircraft flies back. Does the aircraft carrier have a special vor freq. that the aircraft tunes into? or is there some other some simple contraption that the Navy uses?

 

[Gatordev]

Nowadays, there's several ways to find your ship, whatever it might be. TACAN is the primary means, which is the UHF version of VOR. There's also datalinks that constantly update certain aircraft that are so equipped w/ info on where the ship is, along with a bunch of other information. Lastly, there's always radar, either from the ship or from the aircraft and the good old radio.

So here's a question for others. How far have you gone w/out comms from Mom or anyone else. It was 130 miles in a helo for me, and that's not the most comforting feeling.

 

[HooverPilot]

450 miles in the war hoov. Not the most fun, but all worked out well.

By the magic of ducting, I actually had crystal clear comms w/the ship at 300-350nm @ 200' but nada comms at 450nm.

 

[Brett327]

Nowadays, there's several ways to find your ship, whatever it might be. TACAN is the primary means, which is the UHF version of VOR. There's also datalinks that constantly update certain aircraft that are so equipped w/ info on where the ship is, along with a bunch of other information. Lastly, there's always radar, either from the ship or from the aircraft and the good old radio.

So here's a question for others. How far have you gone w/out comms from Mom or anyone else. It was 130 miles in a helo for me, and that's not the most comforting feeling.

That's still well within the ESM horizon, for those so equipped. The boat is usually pretty noisy as far as radar, and the SPS-48 and 49 are usually a prety good indication that it's the boat.

Brett

 

[TurnandBurn55]

MIDS=awesome

 

[goosegagnon2]

so what is the difference between UHF and VHF? i take it UHF stands for Ultra? is it a more powerful signal or?

 

[nittany03]

Different frequency band. Very High Frequency versus Ultra High Frequency.

UHF=300 Megahertz-3 Gigahertz
VHF=108-132 Megahertz.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_spectrum

 

[Brett327]

so what is the difference between UHF and VHF? i take it UHF stands for Ultra? is it a more powerful signal or?

For all practical purposes, they're the same as far as comms go. The military tends to use UHF, partially to deconflict with the civilian frequencies.

Brett

 

[HH-60H]

Hmmm, w/o comms maybe I have gone 120ish miles. The 60F/H doesn't have radar, ESM, data link, or any other means of locating home other than the radio and TACAN, we do it old school. Once you lose lock you pray that they gave you a good steer and the other ship has their TACAN up.

 

[Gatordev]

That's still well within the ESM horizon, for those so equipped. The boat is usually pretty noisy as far as radar, and the SPS-48 and 49 are usually a prety good indication that it's the boat.

Brett

ESM horizon, yes, if you climb up. We were down at 500 feet looking for a wounded fisherman w/ lots of thunderbumpers above 3000. But if we climbed, which we did, we also got our datalink back. Homeplate was, of course, no where near where they said they were, but fortunately at 130 miles, even a pencil beam is pretty wide and Link locked up.

@HH:

I thought you guys had some kind of datalink in the F? Not like ours, but something that was still nice to have. Maybe I'm getting confused w/ the Sierra's UHF SATCOM.

 

[A6-EA6]

I've been almost 1000nm from Mom on long range strike missions and strike "practice" missions. The ship gives you a "PIM," or Position of Intended Movement before you take off and you use that as the starting point to start looking for the boat when you get back. Most of the time the Shoes driving the boat end up far away from the PIM after chasing the wind or running for water or air space so we'd have to use our radar while farther out and look for a few blips close together (one big blip for the boat, another close smaller blip for the destroyer or frigate plane guard).

As you might figure from the math, 1000 miles is more than 2 hrs out and 2 hours back, the ship can actually get pretty far in that amount of time, even at 20 kts. The E-2 Bubbas were always a great help giving us a steer back towards home. It was even more fun when the ship was in EMCON and they'd have all of their emitters off so they couldn't be found by the bad guys. Then we'd have to turn off our radars as we got closer than 50nm and find the boat visually, which was fun at night too. Makes me want to head back out on cruise again....:icon_mi_1

 

[HH-60H]

@HH:

I thought you guys had some kind of datalink in the F? Not like ours, but something that was still nice to have. Maybe I'm getting confused w/ the Sierra's UHF SATCOM.

No datalink, but we have a POS system that can send snapshots of tactical info btwn helo or properly equipped CV's (some of them have taken the gear off). It can be useful in certain specific situations, but overall not so much.

 

[skidkid]

Ok this is more a Helo guy qyuestion but who has flown to the wrong ship?
I have damn Tacan was down.

 

[HH-60H]

There are 2 kinds of helo pilots: Those that have flown to the wrong ship and liars.

 

[mules83]

So A4s, how did you find the boat back in ww2 flying wildcats and hellcats.....


joking around as always