Repair on Stennis, OMG are you kidding me?

[-0303-]

When repair starts, Spitfire is instantly moved and placed with tail outside the deck. It didn't roll over the side, so I could start the engine and pull it up. I then took off fine. It gets damaged every time fuselage hits deck though (meaning after finishing every repair).

 

Ok, moving plane on repair is not a bad idea at all. Assuming no confusion with multiple planes. --><-- This close to working 100%. I assume it does work with F-18, F-14 and such, they just didn't check with non-carrier planes. Incredibly easy fix, just move the coordinate a few meters.

 

I'll search bug section before I make a proper bug report.

 

Edited May 23, 2020 by -0303-

[speed-of-heat]

I suspect the pushback code, is being triggered and it pushes back the plane so that the main gear is close to the deck edge for the f18... and I suspect that carrier ops were never intended for the spitfire on a modern carrier... as you say. Please don’t fix it because , like this because you need that few meters to get everything on the deck... changing it for tail draggers only would be ok.

 

What’s fascinating is the pushback code was triggered by a repair... time to try it in the Hornet...

[-0303-]

Of course I meant fix it for the tail draggers only. Also, It was moved X, Y and rotated not just pushed back (but you probably meant that). Noted this in patch notes:

DCS Su-33 by ED

If the player on Su-33 requests repair on the deck, his plane should be moved to a free parking place

Again, I think moving while repairing is a great idea. In real life, it would not be repaired where it crashed, blocking landing or blocking catapults. But it didn't move until after 170 seconds. For "realism" one could discuss insta-move or more realistic minimum 170 seconds to move the wreck. Edited May 23, 2020 by -0303-
edited out stuff unsure of

[-0303-]

Tried repair Su-33 on CV (repair on Stennis). Got placed beautifully (see image). But since crossing elevator lines makes Su-33 go kaboom, it did just that when trying to taxi out after repair. Otherwise repair worked fine. I'll expect F-14, F-18 to be placed the same.

 

Also tried I-16 (repair on Stennis). Figured it's small enough to not stick tail out. Went kaboom the instant it was moved (just after down-counting from 170 sec). Hmmm ... need to try if I-16 also goes kaboom on repair on Kuznetsov.

 

So effectively Su-33 and I-16 are now unrepairable on Stennis deck.

Update: I-16 doesn't always explode & P-51 doesn't always fall overboard, both might get stuck though. I-16 can be repaired, dragged off deck edge & NOT being damaged after repair. Bf 109-K4 can be repaired & dragged off deck edge.

 

Edited June 24, 2020 by -0303-

[speed-of-heat]

It also gives us a "park" option, albiet it takes 3 mins to park. at least in the F-18 it parks and doesn't explode

[-0303-]

"park", Is that an F8 crew command? On Stennis or only Supercarrier?

[speed-of-heat]

its neither at the moment :)

[-0303-]

I don't own the Super Carrier (SC). Took a 260 nm trip in Aerobatics Server to SC to see if it was landable. It was, also refuel, rearm, repair works.

 

Except same issue but with a twist. First repair it was placed on catapult with tail wheel on hookup spot (see pic) which is a little funny. Subsequent repair it was put on aft left elevator with the same issue, tail wheel outside deck. So one can expect to placed on catapult or any elevator at repair.

 

Edited May 31, 2020 by -0303-

[-0303-]

It also gives us a "park" option, albiet it takes 3 mins to park. at least in the F-18 it parks and doesn't explode

That should go on a wish list. Having ground crew "park" the plane ... well, isn't that what they do?

The command mechanism is already done, just need an F8 crew command option.

[AndytotheD]

Why should the devs dedicate time to making non-compatible aircraft compatible? This is a non-issue.

[-0303-]

No, it very much is an issue. Of course we should be able to do reasonable, directly aviation related, "stuff" within the environment. You suffer from a severe lack of imagination. In WW2 war time they didn't, in Norway evacuation, dozens of hookless tail draggers did land on 2/3 as large (*1) carriers by plan not accident. Hurricanes and Gladiators on HMS Glorious. Naval planes landed by battle damage or mistake hookless, on carriers. A Spitfire landed on USS Wasp.

Moreover, it used to work, now it doesn't. Programmatically, the needed fix is minuscule in effort. They just need to distinguish tricycle plane from tail draggers. The algorithm seem to assume every plane is a tricycle and use the "nose wheel" as reference when placing. So add: "If taildragger then add one extra "nosewheel"-to-main-wheel-distance" from deck edge, or something.

Wave-Off!: A history of LSOs and Ship-Board Landings

By Robert "Boom" Powell

link

page 45

It was not until 1933 that the development of larger aircraft forced Royal Navy to install arresting gear and put hooks on airplanes

 

page 54

... June 1940. Furteen Hurricanes and nine Gladiators of the RAF landed aboard HMS Glorious. Not one of these airplanes had a tailhook. They were flown by pilots who had never landed on a ship at sea. Not one airplane was wrecked.

aided by sandbags in tail and lowered tire pressure

page 54

On 7 june three Hurricanes successfully landed on Glorious aided by 40 knots of wind over the deck ... The next day, ten more Hurris, eight of the slower Gladiators ... flew aboard.

page 69

[uSS Wasp, Spitfire] lost it's auxiliary belly tank, and the pilot was the choice of ditching or trying to land. In what is still considered an amazing event, the pilot made it back onboard.

...

...

"How much time do you have in Spits?" ... "About 128 hours overall, but this was my first time in a Spitfire"

page 75

There have been examples of hookless airplanes making land-ings on carriers, the most significant being the RAF flying on board HMS Glorious and the Spitfire on USS Wasp mentioned earlier. The experiments with the huge C-130 Hercules and the overloaded Vietnamese L-19 will come up later. All these were deliberate.

...

...

Martin "Red" Carmody ... made his first carrier landing on USS Saratoga ina SBD Dauntless. In the tedium of holding overhead, he had turned the Automatic Direction Finder (ADF) to Bob Hopes's radio show ... landing pattern he was not able to turn the volume off ... Crossing the Ramp, Red misstook the LSO's arm waving for a cut ... because he did not feel a tug he braked to a stop. The next thing he knew the LSO was on the wing with his face in Red's screaming at him ... for not only ignoring the waveoff but forgetting to lower his tail hook.

I've seen youtube video of another bomber/torpedo [Avenger?] land hookless due battle damage.

~

 

*1) WW2 carriers are very closely 2/3 in size of the Stennis. USS Stennis (CV 74) 332.8 m, USS Wasp (CV 7) 209.7 m, HMS Glorious

220 meters.

[AndytotheD]

Before getting into the minutiae I will say that if we had world war 2 aircraft carriers then you’d have some justification. However we don’t, and getting into the minutiae of it, the aircraft had to be specially modified and weighed down. Modifications we don’t have. In addition that’s cool that you’ve seen unmodified carrier planes landing on a world war 2 carrier without a tail hook, but again, you’re trying to land an unmodified Spitfire Lf.IX on a Nimitz Class aircraft carrier. They are not required to be compatible and the devs shouldn’t dedicate time to fixing something that ostensibly is only a bug because it’s being forced.

[-0303-]

Stennis is 58% larger than WW2 USS Wasp and obviously easier to land on. Some of the Hurricanes were prepared, the other planes not. Compatible? A flat surface is a flat surface when it comes to the actual landing.

[speed-of-heat]

Total number of spitfires to land on the stennis ... zero... total number to land on any other us super carrier ... still zero... fun that might need fixing when a dev gets a spare moment sure... otherwise... no it shouldn’t be expected to work.

[-0303-]

Found the battle-damaged-hook landing video [6:45].