MooneyTail

While your definition of the groove is mostly correct, I'm not sure where you got your numbers. During case I or II, you should be in the groove for 15-18 seconds. During Case III it will be from roughly 3/4 Mile to touchdown, however long that takes. If you start falling outside of 15-18 seconds, the LSOs start to note it in your pass comments as they have someone who will actually time everyone's groove length. For example, if you were 19 seconds, you will earn a (LIG) (that's read as "little Long In the Groove) tagged onto your pass comments. Given that that is in parentheses, it is a little deviation and you can still get graded an OK. If you were on the opposite end, and only had 10 seconds in the groove, you would get a NESA (Not Enough Straight Away) and since it is a full deviation, no matter how good the pass is, the best grade you can get is a Fair. It should be noted that the severity of deviations are in 3 second increments. Hopefully I didn't make that too confusing.

The correct way is to do a level break and then once on downwind, descend to 600'

Yeah RED, you've got it right. And one more thing, you will probably never get marshaled on any radial that doesn't end in zero or less likely, a five. They wouldn't, for example, marshal you on the 261. They would just marshal you on the 260.

For higher wind conditions (think 40+ KTS), the basic angle could be set to 4.0 degrees, but that will still give you an effective glideslope of 3 degrees. You have to remember that unlike a stationary runway, the ship is moving away from you and the slower your closure is, the flatter your glideslope will be. The IFLOLS will be set to a basic angle and then it makes adjustments based on what aircraft is entered into the system and it's H/E value. All of this is done to ultimately give the aircraft's tailhook an acurate 3 degree glideslope to the target (generally between the 2 and 3 wire). If there are rough seas and the lens stabilization can't keep up, or if the dynamic H/E value consistently drops below the safe 10 ft hook to ramp clearance, then the LSOs will rig MOVLAS (Manually Operated Visual Landing Aid System) and manually control the ball and ultimately, the aircraft's glideslope.

I'm assuming if it's true to life then it is 3.5 degrees which will give an effective glideslope of 3 degrees (due to ship's movement), and as for the range of the meatball, it'll be however far you can see it from haha. Realistically you should make out where you are on glideslope at roughly 1 to 3/4 of a mile though. Again, that's if it's modeled to real life, and I haven't been able to extensively tested it in DCS yet myself.

The truth is that there as many techniques to hitting your approach time as there are naval aviators doing it. Try some techniques until you hit on one that works for you. Some people nerd out and do all sorts of crazy calculations to hit it. Personally, I've found that flying a constant ground speed and one-minute turns account for all of the variables and can give you nice whole-minute turns in marshal. Note that 240 kts ground as *roughly* 4.5 miles/minute. The book says +-10 seconds. In real life, you're expected to hit your time +-1 sec or so. Since everyone is altitude de-conflicted in the stack, you have 30 radials on the holding side and 10 radials on the non-holding side of protected airspace to play with (since you need to be on altitude by those limits). If you find that you are ahead for example, you can start S-turning within that protected airspace to give yourself a few seconds, etc. That can help you hit your time. At the end of the day though, it's just a simulator. You're not going to anger anyone on the virtual carrier if you are within 20 seconds every time. If you are trying to be as true to life as possible, strive for being within at least a couple seconds.

Kola, the only fault I see is that approach are on buttons 15 and 17 (named A and B respectively). The reason being that you're talking to Marshal on button 16 so it's easy on the older radios to go one click left or right to get to the appropriate approach button. As for the straight-in marshal vs 30 degrees off, it will vary by carrier. Some boats will generally put you on a 30 degree offset and some will put you on FB reciprocal. Keep in mind that the marshal radial can depend a lot on sea space and airspace in more restrictive areas such as the Arabian Gulf. Additionally, generally you'll want to start slowing down at 10 miles and start to configure at 8 to be dirty and trimmed up on-speed at 6 miles. Approach will only tell you when to configure or hold the gear if they are trying to correct spacing issues. Hopefully this helps out