Sharp climb on gear deploy

[Athalon020]

Hey all,

 

Bought the F-18 during the sale and have struggled mightily with the carrier style landing due to a lone issue where the plane noses up heavily on gear deploy below 250kts. While I've had a bunch of experience with airfield landings, the Carrier-style pattern and landing procedure is a struggle.

 

Following the tutorial mission instructions, I'm going to full flaps at 250kts and then dropping the gear as the plane slows below that speed. The problem is that the plane will nose-up sharply once the gear is dropped and my sink rate will go from around -600 to +1300 almost instantaneously, so I'm suddenly a lot higher than pattern altitude, low on speed, and struggling to get the nose back down. In this situation while the airspeed is dropping my instinct is to feed it throttle to keep it from stalling, which would increase my climb rate, but that would throw me off even further! Needless to say, this starts a series of up-and-down movements for the rest of the pattern.

 

I've watched both Matt Wagner's and Jabbers' videos on the Case 1 landing pattern and neither of them have this happen when they lower the landing gear. I have noticed that my elevator trim moves to nose-up once the gear is down and locked, leading me to believe that this is the culprit but I have no way to see their controls in the videos to know if their trim is changing as well. Since this problem always throws the plane upward it completely hoses everything done prior to that, and because of it I've been unable to hit the carrier deck since I'm having to calm the plane down.

 

Is this normal behavior or have I done something wrong? I simply cannot figure out how to keep the plane from having this massive pitch change since full stick-forward isn't enough to correct the nose-up attitude.

 

Thanks!

[Jetguy06]

Hey all,

 

Bought the F-18 during the sale and have struggled mightily with the carrier style landing due to a lone issue where the plane noses up heavily on gear deploy below 250kts. While I've had a bunch of experience with airfield landings, the Carrier-style pattern and landing procedure is a struggle.

 

Following the tutorial mission instructions, I'm going to full flaps at 250kts and then dropping the gear as the plane slows below that speed. The problem is that the plane will nose-up sharply once the gear is dropped and my sink rate will go from around -600 to +1300 almost instantaneously, so I'm suddenly a lot higher than pattern altitude, low on speed, and struggling to get the nose back down. In this situation while the airspeed is dropping my instinct is to feed it throttle to keep it from stalling, which would increase my climb rate, but that would throw me off even further! Needless to say, this starts a series of up-and-down movements for the rest of the pattern.

 

I've watched both Matt Wagner's and Jabbers' videos on the Case 1 landing pattern and neither of them have this happen when they lower the landing gear. I have noticed that my elevator trim moves to nose-up once the gear is down and locked, leading me to believe that this is the culprit but I have no way to see their controls in the videos to know if their trim is changing as well. Since this problem always throws the plane upward it completely hoses everything done prior to that, and because of it I've been unable to hit the carrier deck since I'm having to calm the plane down.

 

Is this normal behavior or have I done something wrong? I simply cannot figure out how to keep the plane from having this massive pitch change since full stick-forward isn't enough to correct the nose-up attitude.

 

Thanks!

 

 

It sounds to me like you are deploying your flaps at the same time as your gear, both at 250 knots.

 

 

 

I can't remember where I read it, but I saw some advice that I follow, and that is to deploy gear at 250 knots, but wait to deploy flaps until ~190. By that point, the nose-up tendency should be much more manageable, and you shouldn't have as hard a time staying on altitude.

[Nospin44]

There have been alot of posts about this in the past. Seems to be an issue with everyone new to CASE1. My advice is to use speed break and dont drop gear or flaps til around 200 instead. Helps alot.

[Harker]

You're supposed to drop gear and flaps at 250, but would should also hit 250 during the initial break, not after. If you deploy during the level turn, the ballooning effect will be much lower.

Apart from that, once you roll out on the downwind leg, counter any upward pitch with the stick and once you start dropping from 800ft to 600ft, trim for AOA to 8.1.

[Deano87]

Yep go for gear and flaps during the break turn. You want the air brake out as well so by the time you roll out from the turn you’re already slowing to something like on speed. But the main thing is just be very proactive in pitch. Fly the Velocity vector to the horizon and keep it there as the speed decays. The aircraft will naturally nose up as the FCS is trying to attain a higher AoA then you have currently. Initially just counter this with stick inputs until you start to slow down to where the E bracket comes into the HUD. At that point start trimming to onspeed and get ready to catch the deceleration with the throttle.

[Knives]

You are deploying the flaps too early which cause the nose-up.

 

Instead respect the flaps speed. To Half when you are at or below 250kt and to Full when you are at or below 175kt.

 

Setting the flaps to full at 250kt is a bad idea. Unless if your air brake is on and gears are down to ensure that the plane decelerate fast enough to 175kt before the flaps transit to full configuration.

[bbrz]

Instead respect the flaps speed. To Half when you are at or below 250kt and to Full when you are at or below 175kt..

 

Where have you got the 175kts limit from? The NATOPS manuals says 250kts is the limit for half-full and the pattern description also says at 250 gear and flaps down.

 

I don't have any problems keeping pitch and altitude under control when using this procedure, regardless of the speed during flaps extension.

[aceofspades9963]

Just push the stick fwd to maintain 600ft don't worry about catching the E bracket until you get slower and you begin to sink relax the stick ,trim for on speed and should work out just fine.