Aircraft carrier question

[joe bob]

I have used the great freeware program that places a carrier some miles in front of you while airborne.
I would like to start a mission on deck though. Are there any programs that allow this.
I have looked at flightdeck and it appears that might work. All I want is the carrier not the aircraft included.

I was also wondering about the Virtavia EA-6. I have read on another post a long time ago that there were issues with the launch bar position or something like that. Did anyone ever get that sorted out?
Thanks

[Tako_Kichi]

You can start on deck by slewing (or flying) to the carrier, positioning your aircraft and then saving the flight. Load the saved flight whenever you want to start on the carrier again.

The 'Ark Royal' by Flying Stations comes with saved flights with a c172 on deck. Start any of the saved flights, switch to your plane of choice and then re-save the flight so that you can restart with your preferred aircraft.

[expat]

Here is the only way I have got this to work. Fly to and land on your moving carrier. Taxi to the launch area. Press "Pause" - this is critical. Save your flight. When you load the saved flight later you need to press Pause again. If the plane quickly rolls forward, etc. I press Slew quickly and then un-Slew and the plane should then be standing still on the moving carrier ready for your cat sequence.

[orionll]

There was a thread about this a while back: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?54341-Can-you-start-on-a-carrier.

[joe bob]

That thread gives me a headache!
I opened Lincoln departing Whidbey and got this.
I have the Nimitz package for aicarriers2 installed


No one has tried flightdeck?

[Sieggie]

I think the Saved Flight technique only works for carriers on a scheduled path. If you are using AICarrier I do not think it will work.

The only way I have ever made AICarrier work is to create an airport with nothing but a location at the carrier deck height. Install it into FSX with some name like Yankee Station (YSTA) for instance. Then create a waypoint (YS) at the exact same location. You then tell AICarrier to start at waypoint YS and launch you plane at airport YSTA. If everything works correctly, you are on the deck. Then tell the ship to start moving and away you go. You will have to play with it a bit. I think I have my deck height set slightly wrong because at least once or twice it will fall through the deck, but eventually it works and I am on the deck. I think if you set the height slightly high, the plane will fall gently to the deck, slightly low, it will fall gently to the lower deck then into the water. Something to play with that I have made work through brute force.

Dave

[orionll]

Dave is correct. You can only save a flight if you're at a carrier on a scheduled route. You cannot set the saved flight as your default flight, because the default flight, by default, is set to use real world time. This means the carrier will most likely be in a different position by the time you load your flight (unless you're extremely lucky and happen to load at exactly the same time and day of the week).

[expat]

I stand corrected here. The method I described above only works with an existing Carrier Track, not the basic AI Carriers where you just drop a carrier whle in flight.

[joe bob]

So just to clarify what I did, I installed the USS Lincoln and opened the Lincoln departing Whidbey Island.flt with FSX. I had not saved anything because I never saw the carrier just what was in the screen shot above.
There is a KML file in the package but it doesn't say what to do with it.

[Sieggie]

If you can find the carrier and land on it, you should be able to save the flight and be on it the next time. I believe the KML is to load into Google earth and see where the carrier track is.

Dave