#F18 CARRIER LANDING YOUTUBE FULL#

this is far from a 'textbook landing', in fact this one is kinda ugly, but you can notice the HUD symbols and how they work as an observer:

#F18 CARRIER LANDING YOUTUBE FULL#

The angle of attack is important in the real world because its very critical to ensure the landing gear and hook interact with the landing wires/cables on touchdown, or you'll miss the arresting wires, get yelled 'BOLTER, GO AROUND', go full afterburner and pray you have enough airpspeed to climb and try again. Then that means burning fuel you are low on, waiting for your next turn to land.

I believe the hook needs to contact the arresting wire BEFORE the main wheels touch the carrier deck. It's maybe not as critical on an airport landing, but the plane is designed to land a certain way for the geometry of the landing gear. Hornets and carrier aircraft are designed to NOT FLARE upon touchdown. You can't flare on a carrier deck, there is no space to do so. You get everything ready to do a straight in approach and let it slam into the deck, and as you hit, you go full throttle full afterburner, in case of the bolter (miss the arresting wires). Under your airspeed indicator, you will see three numbers grouped lower left. The top of those three is your AOA angle of attack in degrees. I'm not sure what AOA should be for the SuperHornet, as my info is for the older legacy Hornet, and the Super is much bigger and heavier, but you should start by trimming to maybe 8 degrees AOA as a starting point, see what your results are like in future, maybe post them in this thread. Under the AOA degrees, you'll see your Mach number in percentage of mach at that altitude, so unless you are deep into afterburner, it will usually be a subsonic number, or less than 0.99. Under that is your G's being pulled at that moment. The W symbol, shows the waterline, or exactly where the nose of the aircraft is pointed.

F18 carrier landing youtube