My biggest carrier landing feat so far

[Dragon1-1]

This is what I did a few days ago:

I was flying a mission in campaign, and I took an R-60 after I took shot at a MiG. I lost an engine and part of the hydraulics system. The engine caught fire, so I cut it out and punched the extinguisher button. It kept burning, but it wasn't getting worse, and the ship was flying surprisingly well, so I figured, what the heck (I think fires and putting them out are WIP). While I was fighting fires, I noticed the bastard who shot me pass in front (evidently, he didn't think much of a Tomcat that was trailing black smoke). So, I shot my last Phoenix at him, more to get rid of a 1000lb weight than to actually hoping it'll hit, then, after that inevitably missed, took him out with a Sidewinder. That'll teach him to mess with cats.

I leveled out, turned back to carrier and punched off the tanks and then my last Sparrow (didn't think to pickle off the Sidewinder, but they're not too draggy nor weigh a lot), then started dumping gas. I lost my UHF radio, but the RIO's set still worked, so I used that. I lost combined hydraulics system. That meant no DLC, poor speedbrake, and problems with wing sweep. Thankfully, flight hydraulics worked. Also, hurray for the yaw string! I knew from training for civ sims that in an engine-out situation, the slip ball will lie to you - only the yaw string can tell you when you're in trim for single engine flight, since it measures actual airflow. You rudder away from the yaw string, at full throttle, it required almost a full boot of rudder, but it worked. The Tomcat is quite a handful flying on one engine, those engines are quite powerful, and though they're not far off center, they yaw the aircraft quite a bit. Worse, they also roll it, so anything you do is constant work on the controls. Fun times, and due to the fact I was coordinating the strike, I decided to just circle the carrier until the strikers were done. Not an easy thing to do on one engine. That said, while the A-10 barely flies on one engine, the F-14 seems pretty content once you get it in trim, maybe because it's just that damn powerful.

Next problem: I pass the carrier, and neither the gear or hook come down. Great, that's what the emergency gear extension is for. Took me a while to realize there was an emergency hook extension is there, too. Flaps worked, speedbrake... kind of did. No matter, I don't need speedbrakes when I'm running on one engine. The ship was set up as well as it could be. Having no idea about real procedures for that sort of thing, I decided to fly something resembling a bolter pattern, at 600ft, since I knew it probably could do that. I decided 6000lbs of gas was plenty, and dumped everything I had over it. Entered the pattern, slowed down, and it turned out that at slow speeds on one engine, the Tomcat is a real bastard. Trimmed the jet roughly level, on AoA, and then turned into the groove. Hands sweaty, hot under the googles, working the throttle, rudder and stick in all directions. Flying the ball. Ball doesn't want to stay in one place. LSO waves me off in close, what does he know about flying on one engine, anyway? Not like I could waveoff at that point, I'm worried what I'll do if I boltered (kick the rudders and light the remaining can, that's what). To my surprise, the hook grabbed the wire. I started to push the throttle to mil, but I had to immediately pull it back once I realized I trapped - the remaining engine would happily shove me right over the side otherwise (this is why I'm so far off centerline in the pic, I was far more centered on touchdown). One wire, but I didn't care, I was home safe, and with the jet. I didn't have NWS because of emergency gear extension (not that I think it'd have worked without combined hydraulics), so I shut it down right there. 

I'm getting better flying the ball in the Tomcat, but this was really the hardest trap I've had so far. It's a lot of work on the controls, while a regular trap has a lot going on at once, rudder only comes into play during turns. Not so here, and you don't even have the convenient slip ball, but a string tied to the nose. And on top of that, there's the ball, and your horizontal alignment, as well, which doesn't cooperate one bit with your attempts to keep your nose in the airflow. SC could use emergency comms, and for the Tomcat, I'd love to have emergency checklists stored in cockpit, so I don't have to make it up as I go the next time something like that happens.

[Hector45]

Well done, single engine traps are always challenging but fun.

[draconus]

On 1/24/2022 at 7:28 PM, Dragon1-1 said:

Entered the pattern, slowed down, and it turned out that at slow speeds on one engine, the Tomcat is a real bastard.

It caught me a couple of times off guard how unstable it gets despite easily limping over 100nm

[McVittees]

Great story! Bravo on getting down safely.