2) The airplane seems to stop pretty quickly, even at the maximum landing weight of 75,000 pounds. There's the .cfg entry "cable_force_adjust" that I haven't fiddled with. Maybe that's it?
Yes, that's the one.
Try lowering to 0.75. If still to abrupt, lower it a tenth. 0.65, for example. You want it set to where the nose gear stops a little short of the end of the deck. Enough to turn back onto the rest of the carrier, if you see my meaning.
Another possibility, and this is useful if the plane veers too easily to one side or another when it catches the wire as well, is to move the hook's longitudinal position rearward some. Use 10 foot increments, and shorten to zero in on the correct setting. The farther aft it is, the less it will veer in an off-centerline trap. You don't want TOO much, or it will allow the plane to run off the end of the deck. And never veer off centerline, no matter where on the wires it catches, left/right. The below settings were the result of studying the NATOPS for the plane and the ship's air-ops, as well as a lot of research into just how far off a Hornet CAN land without tipping over.
For example, the FSDT F/A-18C tailhook section is
Code:
[tailhook]tailhook_length = 6.34//6.85
tailhook_position = -79.0, 0, 1.5//-49.0, 0, 2.5//-49.453, 0, 1.556
cable_force_adjust = 1.74
Note the longitudinal position. The Hornet isn't anywhere close to that long, but that's where we had to set it, or it would veer off and nose over/wing over at the slightest bit off off-centerline. It took some experimentation, but this is what I eventually wound up with. Same for the Cable Force Adjust. With the tailhook positioned that far aft, and given the plane's max landing weight, WOD requirement (35 kts) according to the NATOPS, and so forth, this is what it had to be.
Note that the settings in the aircraft.cfg do NOT affect the visual model in the least. Not these sections. Yes, the contact point section can change where the plane sits on, above, or in the surface of the airport, but that's a completely different animal.
Finally, make sure that the three contact point settings that control how the landing gear behave,
//9 Static Compression (feet, 0=rigid) //10 Max/Static Compression Ratio
//11 Damping Ratio (0=Undamped, 1=Critically Damped)
are set correctly for the landings on a carrier.
Remember that landings on a carrier means flying the plane down onto the deck. NO flare. Keep the same AOA, speeed, and sink rate, all the way down to where the wheels actually contact the deck. Navy planes don't flare for landing. The landing gear has to be sturdy enough, and have the capability of taking a much greater load, and flex rate, at touch-down.
BTW, since most of the carriers available for FSX steam at 25 Kts, I always set a wind of 10 kts over the angle deck. The speed the carriers steam CAN be changed, but it requires changing the sim.cfg file. And it must be calculated. Much easier to just add wind down the angle deck as required.
Hope all my babbling is slightly helpful...
Pat☺
Bookmarks