An Italian way of refueling?

[Delta-canard]

I've been learning the Harrier and I love this plane. Managing the first successful AAR was an extremely satisfying moment, thanks Deephack's tutorial!

I stumbled on a series of interviews with an Italian Harrier pilot. In one of the videos, (about 17 minutes into the video) he recalls an episode of his exchange tour with the USMC, when he was flying as a lead with a junior Marine pilot who struggled with the refueling. At some point, they decide to switch refueling pods since, as he explains, it is much esaier to refuel from the right pod as there are more references when on is looking at the basket...

No that's disturbing. Every single sim tutorial AND pilot testimonial I've seen said you should never look at the basket and I certainly went into PIO when tempted to glance at the basket and this guy (who seems to know a bit about flying the Harrier) sounds like he'd do the exact opposite!

[MAXsenna]

In real life you have true FOV and 3D vision. In the SIM I look at the basket all the time in the corner of my eye, while I focus on other cues. But after a LOT of sessions/practice it got really easy though.
In the beginning, it was good advice to not look the basket until I knew where to place the aircraft, and now AAR is my favourite waste of time. It's really soothing actually. So when I finally got around to try AAR in the Harrier, I had to guess where to "place" the basket, and I connected on the first try, and stayed connected for some reason. Couldn't really believe it happened though.


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[buur]

Where else should you looking if you want to hit the basket? It is the easiest thing you can do.

[deephack]

Usually the advice to to actually fly formation with the tanker as accurately as you can with certain reference points. Done correctly the probe will naturally find the basket. Because the probe is so off to the side in the harrier to refernce it versus the basket is pretty much impossible, especially in the sim with limited fov.

[Delta-canard]

That's what I was doing. For a reason, I learned to refuel the Harrier from your video. The whole series is a must for anybody getting into the module. Thanks for the great work!