Flying the Harrier
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I had a great time last night having a blast in the Harrier on a campaign. First time I’ve flown it and had great success hitting the intended target and destroying it. It all worked out really well until I tried to do a vertical landing then it all went wrong and I turned into a big flaming ball!
Is there a way I can just jump into a Harrier to complete some circuits rather than having to go through a mission to select it? Do I have to create a custom TE? The only place I’ve seen it to select is in campaign mode. I’ve tried going into dogfight etc. and using the dropdown to select a different aircraft, they all show up except the Harrier for some reason.
Cheers for any help.
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Create a TE and put a squadron of Harriers on a base (or any other aircraft you want to try out). Then simply frag a flight from that base (set Role to “Training” if you want).
BTW I’ve found that I can’t rotate the exhaust ducts on Harrier to full 90 degree down position for vertical T/O or Landing… ends up falling over backwards? I seem to have best luck with ducts at about 70 degree position??
Hope this helps!
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90 is fine for vertical t/o and landings.
you need to work on picth to maintain position. 70 deg is not practical since your noze would bee too high
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4.33 manual states, “Please note the nozzles are vertical at 80° due to the Harrier chord line.”
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yeah, 80 works best for me, but I used 90 for the first few flights.
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I use 90 for better visibility. What’s the reason for the resonance after landing? On pavement it seems pretty benign–just some light left-right skipping. But on the boat after landing, I find that as soon as I start taxiing it shakes itself apart.
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IRL the Harrier’s nozzles go a little more than 90.
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They do in game too.
Sharkey Ward references the 100 degree position in the Sea harrier as ‘Braking Stop’, in that when approaching the carrier at 400 knots, he would slam the nozzles in to the Braking Stop position which would give him a 4G deceleration maneouvre, pop the nose up a touch, gain a little altitude and leave him in a good position to transit into the hover position. This works in game as described. When in the hover, especially if you are trying to land on a carrier going at 25 knots, 90 degrees is to slow down, 80 idegrees will result in a static hover (and watch the ship go sailing off beneath you) and 70 degrees is a good angle for landing once in position, and 60 degrees enables you to catch up. Again, if you find you are overshooting the ship, you can use braking stop to slow down your forward momentum (just be aware of a loss of vertical thrust that you must compensate for with increased power)
Sharkey Ward also used the braking stop to good effect in VFR dogfights against F15s (if you believe such things :D) to cause overshoots against faster aircraft, and also to increase his nose tracking rate when in tight turns.
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…having spent a brief time in a RL Harrier trainer, and “slamming” the nozzles around…I tend not to believe such things. In the real airplane you get a pretty violent nose up pitching moment if/when you move the nozzles too quickly…pertty much like a flap transition on steroids. So I’m not sure what anyone really means by “slamming” the nozzles around. Very easy to depart the jet if you don’t do it right/smoothly.
And I seriously doubt any pilot with any sense would apply nozzles past the braking stop during up and away flight…knowing how the stops are set and how the lever moves getting past them.
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With all my time on LHD’s, I never saw anything even close. Even in the airshows nothing like that was done. We had the best harrier pilots in the world and one of them is now the CO of the F-35 squadron. The interaction between the RCS and nozzle position is delicate when controlling the A/C. The aircraft enters the hover very slowly when coming in to an LHD. It sounds like an exaggeration or completely made up.
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With all my time on LHD’s, I never saw anything even close. Even in the airshows nothing like that was done. We had the best harrier pilots in the world and one of them is now the CO of the F-35 squadron. The interaction between the RCS and nozzle position is delicate when controlling the A/C. The aircraft enters the hover very slowly when coming in to an LHD. It sounds like an exaggeration or completely made up.
+1.