Bankler

VERSION 2.2.0 Christmas update time! You can now download version 2.2.0 in the Original Post! Except from the usual guys who always help out (Matt Geders, Lex etc), this time I'd like to give an extra thank you and shoutout to Gregory Brett who have been really helpful and patient with all my never-ending questions. Also, big shoutout to the awesome people in Master Arms who I recently started flying with. Using this mission, we did a CQ event last Tuesday with 20 Hornets in the air. It was magnificent! For the future, I'm looking at tweaking the scoring system a bit after feedback from Lex. The current one is already working pretty good, but might be a little too forgiving in some areas. We'll see what happens. Stay tuned for that! CHANGE LOG 2.2.0 * After a trap, when you cut the power, the summary will now show up much faster than before. * Added hint that you need to stay still for a little while after cutting the power, until the score shows up. * You can now use the F10 radio menu to toggle the LSO feature on and off. For instance, you might want to turn it off if a player acts as the LSO. * Moved the SAR helicopter to the right side of the ship, 1.0 nm away. * Support for 20 players (8 players in Enfield and Ford flight can now start from Batumi in VFA-37 Hornets). * Renamed the player slots to Chevy, Colt, Dodge, Enfield and Ford 1-1 through 1-4. * The feedback will now print the players' names as well as their callsigns (Chevy 1-1 etc) to make it easier to see who's who in multiplayer. * LSO should no longer give you feedback as you cross the wake, but wait until you're actually in the groove. * The carrier's BRC is now 353 MAG (instead of 354MAG / 000 TRUE as before) as a workaround for the spooky DCS bug where you can't connect to some cat shuttles if the carrier is going straight north. * Tanker radio is now on Ch 19 (253.00) as per Gregory Brett's recommendation. * Script will no longer start running if you pass over the trailing ship above 1300 ft (solves the issue where it could trigger when you were flying in the overhead stack). * Pattern will now get aborted if you ever go above 2000 ft. * After the carrier turns south (which is after 4 hrs or so), the new BRC stated as you fly over the trailing ship will now say 173 instead of 353. Enjoy!

Made a trk-file (attached to the top post) and did some more testing. I can only reproduce the bug when the carrier is heading north (000 true heading). This made no sense to me. But after 5-10 repros when the carrier was going 000, and zero repro when it was going 359, I started to accept the fact that it actually MIGHT be related to the carrier's absolute heading... Maybe. Some speculation on what might be happening: Could it be that whoever programmed the cats and how the alignment error is calculated forgot to "wrap-around" at 360/000 when calculating the delta angle between the boat/shuttle and the aircraft? Psuedo code (including suggested error): var shuttleAngle; var aircraftAngle; var absDelta = Abs(shuttleAngle - aircraftAngle); [color="Red"]//Bug[/color] if (absDelta < 2 degrees) { HookUpWithShuttle(); } If the aircraftAngle is 359.0 and the shuttleAngle is 0.0, absAngle would be 359 (instead of 1, which it should be). As I said, pure speculation here, probably I'm completely wrong. But please let me know if I happened to nail it! :thumbup:

I've had this problem as well. At first, I thought it was related to the new IR Mavs, because my buddy had experienced the same problem the day before, when testing the Mavs, and the bug happened to me after I had fired four Mav G and went down for strafing runs. Unfortunately I could never find a solid repro, so the Mav theory might be pure coincidence.

This might be a Stennis bug, rather than an F/A-18C bug, I'm not sure (but it surely affects the current F/A-18 experience). Description: It looks like the alignment error range for hooking up with the shuttle is wrong at CAT 4, when the carrier is heading north (000 true hdg). On the other cats, it seems you can be a little off left or right, but you'll connect to the shuttle anyway. On CAT 4 however, your nose needs to point a little to the right. If you're ever so slightly angled to the left, the shuttle won't work. Repro rate: 100% Repro steps: 1) Let Stennis travel north (important that it's 000). 1) Start on Stennis (cold or parking hot). 2) Taxi to cat 4, and line up with the nose pointed just slightly to the left. Note that the shuttle don't work. 3) Go around, but this time line up with the nose pointed quite significantly to the right. Note that the shuttle now works, despite the fact that the absolute alignment error is now larger than in step 2. Possible cause of problem: See follow-up post below. FailedCat4OnBoat.trk CatFailTest_CleanCopy.miz

I just noticed someone else posted about this fact in another thread a week ago. https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=225090 Sorry for the duplicate. But at least you got some more measurements and some funny screenshots of many Hornets in a long line. Yay!

Well, yeah, you're right. But as I wrote in a reply, using the mission editor ruler suggests the same results. EDIT: Ooops, brianjmac was faster. Sorry.

I forgot there is a ruler in the mission editor (holding middle mouse button). Unfortunately I can't seem to take a screenshot when holding that button, but it shows around ~1045 feet (i.e 47 feet too short). Again, I might be completely mistaken. And to be fair, it's not the end of the world. Still plenty of space to park my jet. ;)

Inspired by Matt Geders' presentation of the problems he had with the getting the glideslope/meatball/etc math right, I decided to measure the Stennis model. I don't really have a scientific way of doing this. Even if I'd extract the model I wouldn't know for sure if 1 unit in the game engine equals 1 meter and such. But, according to the the almighty Wikipedia, the Stennis deck should be 332.8m (1092 feet). An F/A-18 should (according to the same lovely source) be 17.1m (I assume this is from nose to the rear-most point right between the horizontal stabs). So, I decided to put a bunch of static F/A-18:s on deck and see how many I could fit. I could fit 19. And then I even packed them nose-to-exhause (yuck!), effectively making them slightly shorter than 17.1m (right?). 332.8 / 17.1 = 19.46. Meaning if I should have around a half plane length over, after putting 19 in there. So, around 8-10 meters short? Please tell me I'm doing this completely wrong, and that the boat is as long as it should be, so my super-nerd-me can breath again. :lol: :book:

Would disabling the comments section be a reasonable solution? Of course I respect whatever you decide, but still sad to see the trolls win. Really enjoyed your content, buddy!

What was your technique? Did you just soften it by increasing the throttle a little, and/or did you raise your nose a little?

I was wondering the same thing, so I submitted a question to The Fighter Pilot Podcast and was lucky enough having Jell-O doing some research and giving me an answer. Listen to 07:10 in this episode: https://www.fighterpilotpodcast.com/podcast/022-test-pilot-school/ Spoiler: It's hard to say and it depends on aircraft weight. The aircraft will give you a warning message after touchdown if it was too rough.

Bug: According the the speed indicated in the F10 map, the carrier doesn't move with the speed set in the mission editor, but instead goes slightly slower. Repro: Put Stennis and a SH-60B next to each other, both going 25 kts north. Notice that the helicopter will be a little faster (25 kts as expected) while the carrier is only going around 24 kts. This can be verified by clicking the carrier in the F10 map and look at the speed indication. Current workaround: To make the two units move roughly next to each other, I have to assign the carrier a speed of 26 kts.

When an AI helicopter runs out of gas, it tends to land on the carrier and block parts of the aircraft landing area. Would it be reasonable to have him land somewhere else, or immediately despawn it after landing or something? Or is this stuff intended to be up to the mission designer so solve through scripting?

Thanks for all the encouraging and warm words. Really nice to hear that you're enjoying it! The tanker TCN is 2X (don't forget the A/A setting). This is in the brifing btw, but I should probably put it at the top. The tanker's radio frequency is 251.000. This isn't in the briefing since I've been lazy running easy comms. :music_whistling: Will make sure it's there in the next update (should also change it to one of the presets, is there any standard one?). This is really confusing. There are no folders in the download? It's one .miz file and nothing else. If you decide to unzip the file and extract the contents you'll see folders in there, but you don't wanna unzip .miz-files unless you want to examine what's under the hood for whatever reason.

VERSION 2.1.0 Time for an update! You can now download version 2.1.0 in the Original Post. Shoutouts to Lex (former F/A-18 pilot, go check out his nice Discord server!), Matt Geders on the Lex Discord as well as funkyfranky on the Moose team! CHANGE LOG * Added grading for all the groove parts (start, middle, in-close, ramp), so you can now get up to 200 points for a pass. * Corrected some LSO calculations. * Added rudimentary LSO voice calls. This is a work-in-progress but at least adds a little to the immersion. Thanks for the advice and the recordings, Lex! * Added a little sound effect to confirm that you have reached the trailing ship and you are welcome to start the next pass. * Fixed a bug where the auto-cockpit-setup procedure left some buttons on the UFC in the pressed state, sometimes causing weird aircraft behavior. * Removed four of the static aircraft on deck to make more room for player aircraft. * Removed MIST dependency. Enjoy!

As for the actual question: You are right. There's indeed no reason for the aircraft to explode on deck unless you get a ramp strike or touch down at an extreme rate of decent. The aircraft should not explode if you touch down too early. The explanation to why that happens (if it really happens) could possibly be slight network desync or something like that. That being said, granted where you say your FPM is, it's not unlikely that the actual problem is that the rear end of your aircraft is hitting the ramp. Don't forget that the track files sometimes can be a little out-of-sync, especially when fast-forwarding, so they can sometimes give a wrong picture of where you actually exploded. As for the solution, the replies here are good. If you find your flight path marker pointing at the wires as you touch down, you are coming in very (dangerously) low. In fact, if you even see the wires as you touch down, you're way too low. If you can't work out the ball-flying at this point (which is understandable), at least try to follow the advice to use trim to get the AOA right before turning final. You should barely need to touch the stick pitch control when landing. Same procedure regardless of runway or boat. Once you get this down, everything else (ball flying, correct altitudes etc) will get much easier. Good luck, and tell us how it goes! :thumbup:

I did some testing yesterday, to find out what's the reasonable distance to hit. This is what I came up with: At 400 kts IAS, firing at stationary MBT: To hit from the max laser range (~16nm) you need to be at 7000 feet. If you get within 10nm from the target, you can be as low as you want. A missile fired at 400kts / 10nm / 100 ft will hit the target.

That makes a lot of sense. I'll try adding some audio feedback for that. Thanks for the feedback!

I ran into this problem several times (the hook not detaching from the wire), waiting 4 minutes until they pulled me all the way back before it's released. No breaks used, turned on mil on touchdown. It seems to be related to the angle of the aircraft, in some weird way. What you can do, is just wiggle the aircraft from side to side with the nosewheel steering as they are pulling your back, and align your aircraft with the runway. Works every time for me, and the wire releases in seconds. Let me know if your got it to work!

Thanks a lot for the nice words and feedback. Much appreciated! Regarding the cockpit setup. Are you running the newest version (2.0.0)? In this version the cockpit should be setup automatically. HSI scale, TCN, CRS line, Hook override, anti-skid off, rdr alt. The only thing you need to do yourself is lower the hook. It only works in SP (and for the host in MP) and only right after loading the mission. So if you're playing single player and trap, but don't wanna take off but instead start over from behind the boat, please press ESC, Exit, and Fly Again to reload the mission. If you just pick another slot, the auto-cockpit-setup won't happen.

My guess is that the implementation of the E is a little easier, since it doesn't have a camera. Meaning if they would have went with the F first, it would have taken longer before the first Mav reaches us. That said, the Mav E will indeed be a little awkward, since we don't have anything on the jets to lase with. Guess I should see it as a good opportunity to investigare how to setup and use JTACS. :book:

That was a really nice dev update, Wags! Really transparent! Sorry that you lost a programmer from the team. It's not easy to replace someone who has deep knowledge of the existing systems.

Yeah, very true. What I usually do if I'm trying to help somebody down, is that I use the F2 external view to take a look at their aircraft and see if they have trimmed up or not. Obviously though, this isn't always an option, and not that realistic.

Formski: Good catch! Right on target!

Huh, that's interesting. Do you know the background of why they are white in the sim?