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Stupid Questions about Naval Aviation (Part 3)
- Thread starter Top_Gun_1_0_1
- Start date
If i were you i'd make snide remarks when they take forever docking the boat and ended up 25 feet off...at .5 knots
I remember a guy in my squadron's first landing on the boat - it was terrible - just bounced back and forth several times before just PLANTING it. Meanwhile, the DH known as the squadron hard-ass is waiting to hot seat from him and you could read his lips from across the flight deck: "WHO THE FUCK WAS THAT?!" Upon getting back the ready room, he was greeted with all the applause and ribbing a FNG deserved after a landing like that. Our Readiness O said "Hey that's great man! Now you're almost current since you can log three landings!"
Why did you slick off the jet? Did you get defensive approaching theater minalt? Your BFM obviously needs work, bro...
Now, about that turd of a pass you just threw...
I once had a skipper literally order me to go see the flight doc and get my eyes checked after I threw a scary night pass (a little too much power off in the middle... mil... nope, that won't be enough... burner... WAVE OFF LIGHTS... Taxi into the one-wire.) For the young'uns, that's what we call a NO GRADE, or a turd, denoted by the brown square on the squadron "greenie" board where landing grades are displayed for all to see.
On the plus side, paddles told me I earned "closest to the pin" that fly week for nearly hitting the round-down.
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Yes, harrier dudes get their landings graded by an LSO, much like people with tail hooks. There's no board though, and it's only an issue if you have a pattern of sucking. The shorthand and grades very similar to what we got in flight school even though the process is different.
Are your launches graded? That always seemed like the hard part to me.
That's what we call pass/fail. It's also a self-critiquing evolution...
Hard? Compared to landing a 20 ton machine onto a moving spot? No, it's not hard nor graded. You personally (as a noncarrier pilot) could launch from the ship with little effort.
Harrier launches........not a cat stroke.
Takeoffs afloat are not much different than ashore, just higher stakes since you can't really abort once you're moving. You do the same runups, set full power, maintain centerline and wait for the nozzle rotation line. Other than the choppers whizzing by on the right, it's like normal takeoff except you rotate the nozzles when you hit the end of the deck instead of a calculated airspeed. If you're asking about vertical takeoffs, those are pretty much only from a ship for hover checks during FCF's.
