Ok guys......
For everyone who showed up to train, I want to say thankyou for the participation and effort by everyone who stuck around and flew both the first and second sorties. The second sortie by far was much better and I think the Group came away with a few lessons learned on how to perform the basics on catching the wire of a moving carrier in general.
The Mission for the evening was quite simple. To form up with your Flight and to head out to the carrier location and to practice the following techniques using 75% fuel with default weapons loadout.
1. Touch & Go
2. Full Stop Landing with Trap
3 Taking off from a moving carrier
What actually happened ??? The first sortie quickly turned into a nightmare for command and control reasons due to the fact that when the key command was given by the respective Flight Leader to have the AI Wingmen to return to base, the "AI" went dumb and kept flying in formation and made controlling the descent into the approach pattern of the carriers unrealistic and quite dangerous. The first sortie saw way too much attention being paid to the what the AI wasn't doing and not enough attention being paid on what was supposed to happen according to the training plan. I learned a lesson on this sortie especially as a leader.
Between the first and second sorties, we decided to just edit the mission parameters and deleted out any participation of AI and only have human flown aircraft made available for take off. The second sortie saw as a result (4) Corsairs and (2) TBM's fly out and enter the pattern for the carrier landing.
The second sortie saw the following happen. Good Touch and Go techniques for the initial approach but marginal results on the actual trapping and coming to a full stop landing on a moving carrier. Out of (6) aircraft, (2) completed the mission and RTB'd back to Ie Shima in one piece.
Landing the Corsair is nothing like landing the TBM on a moving deck that is for sure. The technique is clearly different for each bird and has to be practiced on constantly to just maintain proficiency. Angle of attack on approach, engine and prop settings in the pattern, flaring as you cross the back of the carrier for either aircraft is different and requires a lot of attention and practice as a result. These skills do not come over night but rather over time.
On an administrative note, the Skipper (Bosti) was busy getting our new member Hitcher up to speed with his mod downloads to just be able to fly the mission sortie with us. Once we had everyone and everything organized properly, our second sorties results was much better than the first.
Those pilots who showed up and participated in the training sorties are the following:
1. Rino
2. Bosti
3. Hitcher
4. Lobo
5. Ranger
6. Saipan
7. Thunder
In closing guys, for those of you who seek additional training on your airmanship, please let me know or go through your Flight Leader to arrange a time and date outside of training or official flight operations to make this happen.
Many thanks !
