There seems to be a lot of confusion by new Fleet Defender users over how to access and use the practice missions for carrier take-off and landing. This document was prepared to provide and easy to use guide for utilization of these missions.
2. Background and Hints
The F14 Fleet Defender design currently only gives you take-off and landing from the carrier. There are no land bases available at this time. Therefore to be successful in the simulation campaigns you must be able to get back aboard ship safely, which means practicing your landing techniques. The carrier is always steaming on a heading of 360 degrees magnetic, which means all take-offs will be on 360 deg and all landings will be on a heading of 350 degrees. The reason for the ten degree difference is due to the angle deck which is used for landing is offset by 10 degrees from the ships heading. The manual neglects to tell you of this difference, so remember to be on 350 before touching down.
Included in the FD design are three classes of carriers, the Forrestal Class, the Kitty Hawk Class, and the Nimitz Class. When using the Fleet Readiness Practice Landing Missions you can select which class you want to use through the "Difficulty Settings Box". You will find the USS Saratoga, CV-60 under the Forrestal Class setting, the USS Eisenhower, CV-69 under the Kitty Hawk Class setting, and the USS America, CV-66 under the Nimitz Class setting. Please note that in actuality the USS Eisenhower is a Nimitz Class carrier and the USS America is a Kitty Hawk Class carrier. Somehow they got switched around. All take-offs will be from the port bow catapult and all landings will be made on the angle deck area.
Before take-off make sure you have selected the carrier as Waypoint ( s key) and Nav mode, ( 5 key). Remember on landing approach you probably won't be able to see the " Ball " until you are about one mile from the carrier. Be sure and use the course and glideslope needles and monitor the AOA Indexer lights. Also don't forget to request landing clearance far enough out ( alt L ). Current experience by many of the FSFORUM members strongly suggests that you ignore the LSO commands.
For those of you who are interested I have prepared a detailed procedure document for carrier approaches under varying conditions. It provides information on headings, altitudes, speeds, and includes a set of graphics detailing each approach graphically. It can be found in the FSFORUM library 8 under the filename F14 CVA.ZIP and is Freeware.
3. Detailed Instructions
MAIN MENU SCREEN Select "CAMPAIGN
CAMPAIGN SCREEN Select "SQUADRON"
SQUADRON ROSTER BOARD SCREEN Select "CAMPAIGN"
LEFT BOX Select "OCEANA" (Turns Yellow when selected)
RIGHT BOX Select "MISCELLANEOUS TRAINING" (Yellow)
LEFT BOX Select "OK'
SQUADRON ROSTER BOARD SCREEN Select "DIFFICULTY"
DIFFICULTY SCREEN Set Difficulty Levels
Select Carrier Class (Forrestal, Kitty Hawk, Nimitz)
MISSION BRIEFING SCREEN Use "NEXT" or "PREVIOUS" to page through missions.
Select one of three FLEET READINESS TRAINING MISSIONS:
CARRIER LANDING (Day VFR practice)
LOW VISIBILITY ( Day restricted visibility practice)
NIGHT LANDINGS (Total night conditions)
Select "TAKEOFF"
4. Comments
Just a note of explanation for why I put this together. Over a period of months I have noticed a lot of traffic on the FSFORUM requesting how to find the landing practice missions and also how to land the F-14 aboard ship. In fact I have contributed answers to some of these queries. I thought it would be nice have a easy to use instruction file that could be referred to when help is requested.
If you have any suggestions or comments contact me, Donell Lewis at CIS 71062,2271.
This Document was prepared using Microsoft Word 6.0a and is free for the use of all F14 Flight Sim users.
