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 August 13 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 August 13 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 August 13 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 August 14 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.

[draconus]

On 8/17/2025 at 11:28 AM, CTB said:

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

What would you look for in case 3 anyway when you're supposed to be glued to the instruments?

If you overflew the carrier due to bad approach it's easy to do 180 keeping steady bank, speed and alt. Then you do the same 5 miles downwind and you're back on the same course.

You have to decide before if you do ACLS (you use data link then) or manual using ICLS.

TACAN points you to the mother but you set the HSI course to the final bearing number so you can line up miles before trapping.

SC guide contains good follow up on procedures so you don't just start your approach from anywhere. You get your distance, alt and bearing from mother after inbound call.

Why trial and error and come up with your own "gaming tips" when all is there already proven IRL?

[RustBelt]

On 8/21/2025 at 6:19 AM, draconus said:

What would you look for in case 3 anyway when you're supposed to be glued to the instruments?

If you overflew the carrier due to bad approach it's easy to do 180 keeping steady bank, speed and alt. Then you do the same 5 miles downwind and you're back on the same course.

You have to decide before if you do ACLS (you use data link then) or manual using ICLS.

TACAN points you to the mother but you set the HSI course to the final bearing number so you can line up miles before trapping.

SC guide contains good follow up on procedures so you don't just start your approach from anywhere. You get your distance, alt and bearing from mother after inbound call.

Why trial and error and come up with your own "gaming tips" when all is there already proven IRL?

I wonder, do they know the FAA gives out the text books online for free? 

[draconus]

2 hours ago, RustBelt said:

I wonder, do they know the FAA gives out the text books online for free? 

Do they come with free tips?

[RustBelt]

21 hours ago, draconus said:

Do they come with free tips?

I don’t know what that means, so …. No?

They just teach you how to fly airplanes.

[draconus]

12 hours ago, RustBelt said:

I don’t know what that means, so …. No?

They just teach you how to fly airplanes.

That won't cut it. It seems you need 1 page of "TOP10 best helpful tips" to learn anything these days.

[RustBelt]

One easy way to get great at DCS that the BEST players don't want you to know!

1. Read books.

Edited August 28 by RustBelt

[CTB]

no need for the sarcastic comments.

When people are learning, rules of thumb help build up practical application and build confidence and experience.

I clearly said at least for practise purposes so they could get familiar and get a feel.

You can read all the text books in the world but you need practical application to get the feel.  Besides not everyone has the time to spend studying books, some of us want to fly in the sim and can then finesse with proper procedures and patterns.

There is no sense in memorising procedures if you are unsure of how the aircraft handles.  What I said sets out a mimic of the pattern so they can quickly and easily see if their approach angles work or not.

 

In fact reading back what you said it wasn't that different to what i said in respect of flying the downwind.  But the OP was asking about lining up and the difference between the runway heading and the ship heading.

Edited Friday at 12:05 AM by CTB

[draconus]

20 hours ago, CTB said:

In fact reading back what you said it wasn't that different to what i said in respect of flying the downwind.  But the OP was asking about lining up and the difference between the runway heading and the ship heading.

No, the OP wasn't asking about anything and was spreading halfworking workarounds while you totally disregarded that in Case III you can't see any ship for reference, especially at higher altitude.

[CTB]

Ok my bad, I thought you two were having a go at me.

But still each man to their own, if thats how he wants to do it to figure stuff out thats up to him.

Obviously I was talking about visual, so he can work out his angles and practise.

[Ivandrov]

1 hour ago, CTB said:

Ok my bad, I thought you two were having a go at me.

But still each man to their own, if thats how he wants to do it to figure stuff out thats up to him.

Obviously I was talking about visual, so he can work out his angles and practise.

Visual isn't very helpful in a Case III, as it's Case III because visual flight conditions are poor and you'll be doing instrument flight. The two skillsets of visual flight and instrument flight have less in common than most people would think.

 

I'm not sure what's wrong with reading the HSI in OP's post. I find it quite easy to read and easy to get positioned at the proper radial and DME (Case III stack) regardless of what angle you come in from. It should be pretty easy to get a feel for the HSI in a training mission, referencing the F10 map to check if you know approximately where you are and where you need to go.

 

If you want to try using in-cockpit tools only, you can reference the GND STAB TID. If you're connected to Carrier Data Link, you'll get a datalink host marker you can compare your position against.

Edited Sunday at 05:57 AM by Ivandrov

[carbolicus]

2 hours ago, Ivandrov said:

 

I'm not sure what's wrong with reading the HSI in OP's post. I find it quite easy to read and easy to get positioned at the proper radial and DME (Case III stack) regardless of what angle you come in from. It should be pretty easy to get a feel for the HSI in a training mission, referencing the F10 map to check if you know approximately where you are and where you need to go.

In the old days before GPS and glass cockpits - which I remember well - you got used to using an HSI or cross-referencing two VORs to establish at a glance where you were and the courses to steer to get to where you wanted to be.  It’s hard at first (much mental arithmetic and visualisation needed), but if you’re doing it all the time you get used to it and it becomes second nature.

Using moving maps etc on MFDs on modern aircraft means these skills become rusty, but you need them to fly the Tomcat and the Phantom - and it’s much more satisfying too!