Helpful tips about how to do align to the "correct heading to the back of carrier" in f14's case 3

[Ddg1500]

Hello, I would like to share my experience on how to align to the correct heading to the back of the carrier in f14's case 3.

Before contacting the carrier, make sure you switch on all the things right(TACAN, ICLS, Data Link, Radio, etc....).

After you contact the carrier and receiving its "final bearing" and turning the course nob to its direction in HSI, Here is how to align to the back of carrier:

1. If the given final bearing is (let's say 57 degrees), then you should steer your aircraft's heading to the opposite side of that direction (+180, 237 degrees)，which is the "exact opposite side of the of outer course needle, the side without the arrow", and fly towards it.

2. If nothing goes wrong, you will see that the direct "direction indicating small triangle"(the outer most small one), is slowing and graduately moving towards the outer course needle(from either left or right), meaning you are aligning.

3. After the triangle and the outer course needle is getting fairly close or overlapping, the inner needle will start to approach to the center, meaning you are getting very close to the course, it could be the time when you should begin steering the nose back to the course arrow direction.

4. However, there could be times when you will find that the outer triangle will get really slow aligning to the outer course arrow when getting close,  that is the time your should steer BACK left or right to the course direction and start aligning, 

5. If i did not get it wrong, "the outer course arrow is the course direction of your aircraft" and the "inner one is the course of the carrier"

6. If you are getting aligned closer(triangle and arrow are closing) and start steering the aircraft to the side where the inner arrow rest on(either left or right side), the course will align more precisely and faster, which is when you steer to the side the inner needle rest on (like 90 degrees left or right to the outer arrow) .

Many Tomcatters do know how to do approach in case 3 either manual or ACLS through Youtube tutorial, but they find it struggling to establish the correct heading to the back of the carrier, the HSI symbology of the cat is not so easily understandable to that of the hornet. 

nullThat's all I got, you would need more experience and improvise to do this thing, my explanation is pretty unflexible

f14 case3 heading .trk

Edited Wednesday at 01:21 PM by Ddg1500

[Ddg1500]

you can also try other way.

1 you have a good spatial awareness that can imagenate the direction of the carrier runway and fly and align towards it, which could be very confusing sometimes.

2 you fly a circle around the carrier and align to the back, which is very unreliable because you don't know how much turn is right to maintain a circle

3 you f10

Edited Wednesday at 10:55 AM by Ddg1500

[Ddg1500]

I recommend to use the free flight mission in Caucasus to train with this, with more training you can understand about the aircraft more, and with greater flexibility，

 

some of the important details are hard to explain and is wordy, i think the reflected simulation or the heatblur manual should make a tutorial about it

Edited Wednesday at 01:20 PM by Ddg1500

[RustBelt]

I can’t follow this, why not just fly it like any HSI? You’re doing too much math the HSI already does for you visually on the circle.

DCS pilots have some wicked bad basic airmanship skills.

Edited Thursday at 05:46 AM by RustBelt

[CTB]

On 8/13/2025 at 11:51 AM, Ddg1500 said:

you can also try other way.

1 you have a good spatial awareness that can imagenate the direction of the carrier runway and fly and align towards it, which could be very confusing sometimes.

2 you fly a circle around the carrier and align to the back, which is very unreliable because you don't know how much turn is right to maintain a circle

3 you f10

I tend to do number 2, but it’s a bit of a pain without a head tracker.

you could do a high level check, ie mimic approach at higher altitude to check the turn rate, using one of the boats as a marker on the downwind.

at least for practise purposes.