Doing some good testing and sucking ;) F-18

[macedk]

Long flight and I'll try to keep to the highlights ;)

 

Carrier and tanker and awacs are setup and I know my tacan icls and radio freq's (more on that later) ;)

 

Takeoff no prob, started parking hot and here we go.

Plan was to fly west (carrier is on a north to south track)

 

20 miles out I turn back and call the carrier "inbound" all good . At 10 miles "see ya at ten" all good. Desend to 2000 and close to the ship, they call me. Do my orbit counterclockwise over the carrier. As I hit south I extend and are looking for a 800, extend about 5 miles and turn in, getting ready for my break. Just before my break I Hit F3 for the "kiss off" nothing happens oh well.

 

My landing pattern is shitty and I get 2 wave offs and now fuel is low.....

 

I look in my briefing page and see I got the radio for tanker but forgot to put in the tacan.

 

But I have radio for awacs so I do it that way, to get his location and lock him up on radar .

 

Takling gas was not optimal and long story short, I came with 500 pounds and left with 2000.

 

Again my pattern work was dismal and I die by hitting the backside of the boat.

 

Good fun and a teaching lesson for me.

 

I more and more get why real pilots brief for a long time :)

[Harker]

Sounds like you trained a lot of stuff though and reacted appropriately to both the fact that you didn't trap (which can happen even to experienced pilots), but also the missing TACAN info. Most people would look on the F10 map, you actually contacted the AWACS and used the Bullseye reference to find the tanker. You even got some fuel. Yeah OK you hit the boat in the end, but you'll improve your pattern skills. All in all, good training.