New Viggen Pilot – Loving the Module! Looking for Clear Info on Overhead Pass and (Possible?) Overhead Break Landing

[Zev]

Hi all,

I recently purchased the AJS-37 Viggen module and I’m absolutely blown away by it. It fully lives up to Heatblur’s incredibly high standards, and I’m genuinely impressed by what this aircraft can do and the capabilities it brings as a combat jet.

I’m still very much at the beginning of the learning curve and working on getting more familiar with the aircraft, but I’m enjoying the process a lot so far.

Right now I’m trying to get a clear understanding of two procedures: the overhead pass and the overhead break landing. I know these are two different things, but I’m having trouble finding solid information on how they should be performed in the Viggen.

For the overhead break landing in particular, I’m not even sure whether this procedure was ever actually used by the Viggen in real life—if it wasn’t, I’d love to know that too.

I did notice that Chuck’s Guide briefly mentions the overhead pass, but the actual execution isn’t fully explained. The AJS-37 Flight Manual (RC2.1) also touches on it, but not in a way that gives me enough confidence to perform it correctly in DCS.

So my question is:

Does anyone have a detailed explanation or tutorial for the Viggen’s overhead pass, and can anyone confirm whether an overhead break landing procedure exists (and if so, how it’s done)?

Any guidance, references, or videos would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance, and fly safe!

[TOViper]

Welcome to the Viggen-world!

RC2.1. page 146 should give you guidance for the overhead pass.
Fly over the airfield in 500m AGL with 550km/h.
Adjust forward speed in downwind to reach the "10km" baseleg in 500m and 320 km/h (this requires switching master mode to LANDN P/O and then back to LANDN NAV; this is called flip-flop; otherwise the CK will use the "20 km" approach pattern geometry).
Once aligned on the runway center line, start final approach and aim for ~3° glide path.
Extend landing gear.

The head up display (SI) guides you all night long ... just follow it.

The rest you know for sure ...
 

Edited November 16 by TOViper

[Rudel_chw]

2 hours ago, TOViper said:

RC2.1. page 146 should give you guidance for the overhead pass.

 

Thanks for the keeping the manual updated, I used it as a guide when editing my landing training mission .. here is an Overhead Break landing video that I recorded while developing that mission, hopefully it will be useful to @Zev

 

 

[Zev]

Both TOViper and Rudel_chw — thank you for taking the time to help me out.

TOViper, your pointer to the manual (and the work you’ve put into updating it) really helped me understand the procedure more clearly. I also joined your Viggen.training website, which you keep wonderfully up to date — really great resource, thanks for maintaining it!

Rudel_chw, the YouTube video you made based on your training missions was exactly what I needed to see what should be happening during the maneuver. The combination of both resources has definitely given me a much better idea of what I’m supposed to do and what cues I should be looking for in the cockpit.

It’s a bit unfortunate that some bugs related to this are still unresolved. I hope they can be addressed at some point, even though I’m aware the module is quite old now and some of these issues have been around for a very long time — so I’m not entirely sure how realistic that hope is.

Regarding the overhead break landing, I still haven’t found definitive information on whether this procedure was ever used by the Viggen at all, unlike aircraft such as the F/A-18. If anyone has solid historical or procedural references on this, I’d definitely be interested.

Once again, many thanks to both of you:

– TOViper, for the manual updates and the Viggen.training site.

– Rudel_chw, and I hope you’ll eventually find the time to port your NTTR missions over to the Kola map — would love to fly them there!

Edited November 17 by Zev

[Rudel_chw]

12 minutes ago, Zev said:

It’s a bit unfortunate that some bugs related to this are still unresolved.

 

What bugs? I edited a dozen training missions and the only truly bothersome bug I found was the unrealistic endurance of the battery.

 

12 minutes ago, Zev said:

Regarding the overhead break landing, I still haven’t found definitive information on whether this procedure was ever used by the Viggen at all, unlike aircraft such as the F/A-18. If anyone has solid historical or procedural references on this, I’d definitely be interested.

 

Maybe @renhanxue can help with this.

 

12 minutes ago, Zev said:

I hope you’ll eventually find the time to port your NTTR missions over to the Kola map — would love to fly them there!

I did three missions there, but DCS offers too many other modules that I want to study too, so I ran out of time.

Eduardo

 

[Zev]

7 hours ago, Rudel_chw said:

 

What bugs? I edited a dozen training missions and the only truly bothersome bug I found was the unrealistic endurance of the battery.

 

 

 

Thanks for the reply, Rudel_chw!

When I mentioned “bugs,” I was mainly referring to the small issues you note inside a couple of your missions — for example:

In the Landing (Short Direct Approach) mission, the destination indicator displaying LB1 instead of LF1, even though the actual guidance is correct.

In the off-road takeoff mission, where FARP ATC only responds to helicopters.

Nothing major, of course — just minor quirks that can be confusing for someone still learning the aircraft, especially when trying to understand approach procedures. Your missions actually helped me identify what was happening, so thank you for that.

7 hours ago, Rudel_chw said:

I did three missions there, but DCS offers too many other modules that I want to study too, so I ran out of time.

Already found them, and they are really great. Always a fan of your missions you’ve made for DCS! Keep up the good work.

[renhanxue]

On 11/17/2025 at 10:07 AM, Zev said:

Regarding the overhead break landing, I still haven’t found definitive information on whether this procedure was ever used by the Viggen at all, unlike aircraft such as the F/A-18. If anyone has solid historical or procedural references on this, I’d definitely be interested.

The overhead pass is in the manual for the real aircraft (the diagram from the DCS manual that @TOViper posted is taken directly from the SFI part 1, but with the text translated to English) and I guess if you execute it aggressively enough it kinda becomes an overhead break, but I don't have any solid information about how it was typically executed in the wild back in the Cold War days.

There is a note in the SFI though about a "free approach" which basically just means staying in NAV mode with LF as your destination until you join the final, more or less as close to the field as you dare (see diagram below, the line marked 6). The only caveat attached to this is a restriction that if you join the final at less than 10 km from LF (approximately the touchdown point), then the approach must be done visually even if TILS is in use. Since the Viggen never really had any problems slowing down quickly (because of the huge delta), I'd speculate that people who wanted to come in hot mostly just used this approach.

On a side note, in the Swedish Air Force the overhead pass procedure was referred to as slinglandning ("slingshot landing", or possibly "loop landing", where it's loop as in a loop of rope, not as in looping), and the SFI does use that term as well. Immediately before the Viggen era it was also known informally as a "Barbro landing", referring to the PN-521/R nav radar beacon/primitive ILS system, which for some inexplicable reason was nicknamed Barbro. In older aircraft you'd use it both to navigate to the field and then establish yourself on the glideslope in instrument conditions. In the Viggen you didn't need this because you had the integrated nav system plus TILS, but the Draken and Lansen still relied on it (or its successors, Anna and Anita).

If you really want to study this diligently, you can also refer to Flygvapnets Navigeringshandbok (the Swedish Air Force Navigation Handbook, linked edition published 1977) which was the textbook the air force used for pilot training. Chapter 15 is all about landings. It's in Swedish, of course, but that's just part of the experience!

[Rudel_chw]

29 minutes ago, renhanxue said:

On a side note, in the Swedish Air Force the overhead pass procedure was referred to as slinglandning ("slingshot landing", or possibly "loop landing", where it's loop as in a loop of rope, not as in looping), and the SFI does use that term as well. Immediately before the Viggen era it was also known informally as a "Barbro landing", referring to the PN-521/R nav radar beacon/primitive ILS system, which for some inexplicable reason was nicknamed Barbro. In older aircraft you'd use it both to navigate to the field and then establish yourself on the glideslope in instrument conditions. In the Viggen you didn't need this because you had the integrated nav system plus TILS, but the Draken and Lansen still relied on it (or its successors, Anna and Anita).

 

Hello and thanks a lot for providing all this background information. My own preference is to stick to the procedure stated in the manual, as it works well both in visual conditions and IFR conditions and is suported by both the radar and the navigation computer