Landing and Air Refueling Please Help!!! I apologize for the annoyance
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Aerial refueling is probably an order of magnitude harder, in the sim, than landing … but even landing is tricky / underrated.
Stevie’s way (Navy way) is one way to go but the Viper is more delicate than a carrier based plane, you do have to focus on minimizing vertical-velocity at touchdown, especially if your plane is heavy (fuel and stores).
The typical (Air Force) method is to approach a bit fast … AOA around 11 degrees (viz. FPM around the top of the “staple” bracket) and nose-up around 8 degrees. (Thinking: no plane ever fell out of the sky because it was going a little too fast)
Then flare to nose-up ~12.5 degrees, touching down with a vertical velocity around -100 fpm.
If you do it right, your nose will remain high (never dipping below ~10°) and you won’t bounce much. Throttle back to idle and keep nose high (aero-brake) +13° while you roll out down the runway. Use light taps on rudder, to keep straight.
I usually don’t hit the wheelbrakes until final 1000-2000 ft markers … depending on gross weight.
Some tips, specifically for BMS…
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Try a higher FOV. This gives a greater sense of speed, sink rate, peripheral vision… I like around 100° for a widescreen monitor… maybe 115 or 120° for ultra-widescreen. (You can edit the ‘falcon bms.cfg’ file to go higher than 80°.)
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Reduce your HUD brightness … it can be hard to “see through” the HUD and keep eyes focused on the runway. Actually, it’s very helpful to practice landing with HUD switched off. The FPM on the HUD has a little bit of lag… and bounces around, distractingly, in turbulence.
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Ok to be a little aggressive with the throttle … try not to hit the burner or idle stops, but varying from ~20% MIL to ~60% MIL is not unusual. (The engine is slow to respond, at low rpm… so even if aiming to raise power from 20% to 30%, it helps to open throttle up to 40-50%, briefly, then back down to 30%.)
if your throttle device doesn’t have a consistent, reliable “feel” for position, keep an eye on the nozzle-position gauge (near the fuel-flow indicator). Pay attn to how the sink rate (FPM marker on HUD) rises and falls, in response to that engine nozzle position. It’s easier to do and feel, than it is to describe in words. But for me, learning to calibrate on that visual indicator of throttle-power, greatly improved my landings.
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A few clicks of nose-up trim, on approach, to hold your desired attitude can really help develop a feel for using throttle to control AOA / sink-rate. If the weather is calm and you get it dialed in just right, you can take your hand off the stick entirely, until the moment start your flare.
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Don’t loop too much on TR#3 landing practice … the jet is very light and forgiving, in that mission setup. Practice landing heavier configurations too… eg. for TR#3, land then do a hotpit refuel, take off and land again. Totally different feel.
TR#10 is also good… ignore the training range (drop a few smoke bombs if you want but keep tanks and pods) and practice landing at the nearby alt field … you’ll have about 5,000 lbs fuel remaining and high-drag stores (and a more modern block jet). Very different feel, yet again.
HTH
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Hello,
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Pay attention to always have your NWS deactivated until something like 60kt (I can’t remember the real value on F-16, but this is what is done on other aircraft in real life). Otherwise, any tiny movement on your rudder will lead to a total disaster.
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Keep the nose up as much as possible for aerobraking. When you feel that the nose is falling, go with it, do not counter it.
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Never break continuously. Always perform 1 second breaking sequences spaced by a 1 second brake release phase, as long as your NWS is deactivated.
It should work !
Radium
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Probably best concentrate on getting the landing down, then go back to the AAR. Good advice above on the NWS, but i’m inclined to think is more likely an issues with sink rate or touchdown speed. There’s a lot to be think about on the last few seconds. would be worthwhile practicing the AOA control with speed, while not under pressure to land. Suggest you do slow fly-overs at low alt with gear and AB out, and get your throttle control for desired AOA into your muscle memory. Try with light and heavy AC to see the difference. Lots of good videos out there, but suggest watch last 6 mins of the one below. Want to point out some basics which you may/not know. The FPM shows where you AC is going ref the horizon. You need it to be almost on the horizon at touch down. Staple shows AOA relative to FPM, so it follows where ever the FPM goes. Mistake many make is to ‘put the FPM’ in the middle of the staple’. What you need to do is put the FPM on the threshold (on final should be less than -5, ideally about -2.5), and then with the throttle, put the staple over the FPM (throttle up depress it, and down raises it). Initially you will have to make small pitch adjustments to keep the FPM on the threshold, and get the doughnut on. The flair at the end will reduce your sink rate just before touch down.
For the AAR, as OAK says, practice, practice practice. AAR is primarily a formation exercise and requires good airmanship. Simplify your task, practice as a wing of an AI lead, and stay finger tip, or better still, practice with a human pilot. Make this second nature, and like the throttle control for the landing, get it into muscle memory. Then go to the tanker. Too many get frustrated with AAR, because they have not mastered formation flying first. The act of hooking to the tanker always feels bugged to those of have not done it once. Note you don’t get the director lights until you connect!. The lights only tell you that you are to far forward or back. So when they are off, you got to get steady, so the boom operator can put the hose in. If you need a little 1on1 help PM me.
EDIT: If you don’t have it, get TACVIEW, invaluable tool for training/learning
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Another tip for AAR: Learn to fly formation first. Set up a simple TE with an AI flight (training / sweep) with really long legs, command the AI to “take the lead” and then try to stay on his or her wing. This will set you up nicely for lining up with the tanker, getting to your first “pre-contact” (always a great experience!) and then, hopefully not too much later, your first “wet contact”.
It’s practise, practise, practise, but it’s very rewarding once you accomplish it and you’ll be asking yourself (much like before and after learning to ride a bicycle) later down the road: “Just what was so difficult about this?”
All the best & please keep us posted on your progress!
Uwe
PS: Being sober during AAR also helps greatly… I am speaking from experience :lol:
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First, what’s your controller? And do you have a system that is fast enough to avoid glitching or stuttering?
A good controller is critical, as is a PC that’s totally up to the task of running BMS. (At max settings, preferrably.)
As for landing, there are plenty of good tutorials that tell it like it is. Stabilize your airspeed at 160 knots on final, get on glideslope, set the flight path marker on the numbers,
pull it to the far end of the runway as you cross the threshold, cut the throttle smoothly, fly the FPM, don’t balloon. Keep the nose up as long as you can after the main gear touches down. Apply max rearward pressure to the joystick to get all the wing braking you can.As for tanking, it’s all about tiny precision stick and throttle movements. You don’t really move the joystick, you just apply a tiny bit of pressure to it. SMALL corrections.
After spending quite a bit of time practicing, I eventually became pretty good at doing absolutely crazy landings that would get me grounded for life the FIRST time I did one in real life if I were an actual F-16 pilot. Take off, loop the field, drop like a stone, crank out the gear, flirt with disaster at the 300 knot gear limit, spiral around to bleed energy with the airbrakes out, slap the numbers, touch & go, repeat. Lots of quick 180s to the other runway as well, all under declared emergency condition so the tower doesn’t get bitchy.
Just having FUN and getting really good at landing without bending anything, no matter what the approach conditions are.Do this drill a lot and before long you’ll be able to land in your sleep.
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it’s very helpful to practice landing with HUD switched off.
A few extra tips for practicing no-HUD landings …
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ask airfield for QFE (field elevation). on approach, calibrate your analog altimeter to that … it’s a big, easily visible gauge that will give you a sense of your sink-rate, and how far you are above the tarmac – it really helps learning to time the flare.
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the green circle on the indexer (left of HUD) is your friend, in more ways than one – unless you raised or lowered your seat, it’s positioned almost exactly 13° below the gun cross… so when the green circle is lit, and roughly even with the PAPI lights at the runway threshold (and the PAPI shows 2 red 2 white) you’re at optimal speed, attitude and glideslope.
And once you touchdown, raise your nose to bring the green circle up to the horizon – that will be 13° nose-up attitude, for optimum aerobraking.
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Landing in one sentence
Put the thing
-o-
On the thing
]
On the thing
On the thing
||||Gesendet von meinem SM-G930F mit Tapatalk
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Landing in one sentence
Put the thing
-o-
On the thing
]
On the thing
On the thing
||||Gesendet von meinem SM-G930F mit Tapatalk
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20211003/d2d147dc29a2a0ec6acdbe6fe25018c8.jpgWill you accept a modification to this exquisite sentence, like this:
Put the thing
-o-
On the thing using the throttle
]
On the thing using the stick
On the thing
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Come over to the Viper Training Group invite is in my sig block we have some great folks who can work with to get you were you want to be.
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if your throttle device doesn’t have a consistent, reliable “feel” for position, keep an eye on the nozzle-position gauge (near the fuel-flow indicator). Pay attn to how the sink rate (FPM marker on HUD) rises and falls, in response to that engine nozzle position. It’s easier to do and feel, than it is to describe in words. But for me, learning to calibrate on that visual indicator of throttle-power, greatly improved my landings.
The blocks with the Pratt and Whitney engine don’t have a nozzle that varies under MIL power… and not all jets cockpits have it so high and easily visible.
So I developed this little visual aid…
https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?42945-Visual-Throttle-Overlay-new-tool! -
For me, once lined up, I concentrate on the lights. Also you have to feel what the aircraft is doing and adjust before you go out of limits, small corrections, correction in, correction out. If you leave it in, by the time it takes effect, you’ll not be able to recover, so input in, input out, see if the correction works before adding more. Just my two cents.
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Use the PAPI lights to understand if you are high or low. Or learn to use the ILS system.
At the end is not impossible
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@smikey
I found this very helpful for landing the F-16 properly in BMS. I hope it will help you as well.F16 Landing Tutorial.pdf
Regards,
TC2 -
@tomcattwo I also found the article useful but I would change a sentence on page 7
from “You will want to control the location of the FPM with the stick and the AOA with the throttle.”
to …“Control the location of the FPM and the AOA with the throttle and the Bracket with the stick”.
This will affect step 3 of the summary on page 10. -
@jc1
That document was from around “original” Falcon 4.0 (1.08) and SP 1 or 2 (way before BMS 1.0) and was not my own work (a guy named Mirv, who I greatly respect). He is correct that you use the stick to place the FPM on the position of the runway where you want to touch down, and use the throttle to control the relationship/placement of the FPM on the bracket at the point you want it to be at for the right AOA/airspeed (my personal preference is at the top of the bracket for ~11 degree AOA).
Regards,
TC2 -
The doc briefly mentions trim … it’s never been clear to me, if RL viper pilots use pitch-trim to set their nose angle… or just apply a bit of constant back-pressure to the stick, throughout the final approach.
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I can land blindfolded and drunk, hell sometimes I even come in at a bad attitude just to make it a little more challenging. But AAR? No way! I connected once or twice back in the Allied Force days, but never long enough to take much fuel. I thought TrackIR was going to solve that for me…nope! I am the PIO king!
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@buzzkill yeah, AAR is hard, there is no way around practising, decent hardware and keeping the skillset fresh by doing it regularly.
Regarding your mention of Track IR I can recommend to freeze Track IR once you move in for contact with the tanker. You want changes in the visual cues (such as the top of the HUD or the gun cross vs the tanker) to be from actual movement of your jet, not because you move your head. It made a huge difference for me once I did that -
@smikey
Regarding AAR, what Fish44 and Hoover (and others) said…practice, practice, practice…
Here’s a few additional hints I have found that help:-
A sensitive throttle and stick are really important. Throttle motions when you are approaching/contact position are extremely tiny. In those last few feet between pre-contact and contact positions, find the “sweet spot” on your throttle setting where you are just maintaining 300 knots airspeed. All other motions from that spot are very incremental, and the speed change is not instantaneous…you will learn to gage when you are moving forward or aft and will begin to anticipate when to make another incremental throttle correction to maintain position. It is a muscle memory thing (practice). On my throttle (Cougar TQS), I have made throttle movement very tight, allowing for good control of incremental movement to control airspeed. My middle finger actually rests on the throttle case to let me make very fine adjustments from the “sweet spot” to “feel” how much the throttle arm is actually moving.
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One of my pre-fueling checks includes shifting the HUD to remove the altitude bars and only show the FPM and speed box. You do this using the VV/VAH HUD switch on the Right console - move it down to the bottom position to declutter the HUD. Some folks actually turn the HUD off entirely…When you are near or in contact position, you should not see the airspeed deviate too much at all from 300 knots. If you see 302 or 298, you are going to have a hard time getting back into position if you fall off the boom because the jet does not react instantaneously. Just watch the relative movement between you and the tanker and anticipate with incremental movements of the throttle.
Next, select HUD DED DATA switch (Right console, HUD section, 3rd switch from the left) to DED DATA (up all the way). This will display DED info on the bottom of the HUD. Then, before approaching, on the ICP, select List->2 to select the BINGO page in the DED. Now you will be able to see the fuel level right on the HUD as the tanker gasses your aircraft up, and this allows you to keep your eyes on the “sight picture” in the HUD and still see how long you will have to hang on to the boom. Know the number of pounds of fuel you will see when your jet is fully gassed up, because the Boomer will automatically disconnect when you are topped off. -
On the approach to contact position, get a good clear picture in your head of what the bottom of the tanker looks like in relation to your HUD frame when you are in the correct position and strive to maintain that picture. Ignore course, and even speed, and concentrate on maintaining that “sight picture”.
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As Fish44 mentioned, the light system on the tankers is not intuitive. As you approach contact position (KC135), you will see a "gross correction " red light telling you to move forward, back, up or down. And then, flashing , and then, no lights! WTF!! Actually that’s what you WANT to see, precontact. When the lights go out, your aircraft is in the zone where the Boomer will fly the boom to your fuel receptacle. So when the lights go out, STABILIZE in that position until you hear the Boomer call “Contact!” At that point you will be happy because the juice will begin to flow and the director lights will come on again…and they will be your salvation to stay on the boom. Being on the boom helps stabilize your aircraft somewhat as well.
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Once in contact, fly the director lights. If the fore- aft director light creeps forward, push the throttle ever so slightly forward. Then compensate again when it starts back. If the fore-aft director light moves aft, pull the throttle ever-so-slightly back, then compensate. Try to keep that light centered with airspeed…little little little movements.
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Same for up/down. If the up-down light goes UP (at or towards the “U” on the director lights), you need to go UP to get it back to the middle. Ever-so-slightly pull back on the stick - FPM just a single pixel above the Horizon Line line, then compensate the other way to the Horizon Line again TRY TO AVOID Pilot Induced Oscillations! which are caused by too much stick followed by overcompensation. Ever-so slightly above the Horizon Line then back to zero. Keep the up-down light centered as much as possible, but better too low than too high. When your FPM goes above or below the Horizon Line, this can also affect airspeed, so keep an eye on the fore-aft director lights also.
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It’s a balancing act. Just keep practicing…little, little, LITTLE movements on the stick and throttle. You can do it!
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Do your refueling in Realistic mode…YOU CAN DO IT!!!
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Practice on a TE that has a really long, straight tanker track. Staying on the boom during a turn is a whole 'nuther level of challenge!!
Hope some of these hints help.
Regards,
Tomcattwo -
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@tomcattwo said in Landing and Air Refueling Please Help!!! I apologize for the annoyance:
- As Fish44 mentioned, the light system on the tankers is not intuitive. As you approach contact position (KC135), you will see a "gross correction " red light telling you to move forward, back, up or down. And then, no lights! WTF!! Actually that’s what you WANT to see, precontact. When the lights go out, your aircraft is in the zone where the Boomer will fly the boom to your fuel receptacle. So when the lights go out, STABILIZE in that position until you hear the Boomer call “Contact!” At that point you will be happy because the juice will begin to flow and the director lights will come on again…and they will be your salvation to stay on the boom.
To even be more precise on that it’s like a traffic light. I goes from steady to flashing then off