San Deigo Day 2

Ghostrider the pattern is full. Today we spent most of the day exploring the CVN-41 Midway, a US aircraft carrier built during the height of WW2. She went servere restructuring following the war and served until the end of Vietnam before being decomissioned and turned into a floating museum in the 90's. As most people know I like military hardware and an aircraft carrier is about as big as they come, a virtual city afloat packed with aircraft and helicopters if the ship isn't enough for you.

We were able to go through all the decks of the carrier and see all the insides like engineering, kitchens, sleeping quarters, dining rooms (there were more than I expected), armouries, flightspace, ready rooms and even the island itself. The island being the tower on the deck that holds all the navigation, aircraft control equipment for the officers to do their jobs. My favourite of course
was the flight deck which was crammed with all US aircraft from WW2 to the late 80's which have been painstakingly restored. It was a little disappointment we couldn't actually climb into them but they did have real cockpits that had been removed from other aircraft that you could sit in, which I did. It was pretty much me and little kids competing too sit in them but I didn't care.

The biggest thrill of the day however was down on the mid deck where all the aircraft are stored where they had a number of actual US Navy flight simulators that used to be used before upgrading to the new models. In addition you also sat in actual cockpits from the plane you were to be using and I got to use the pride and joy of the RAAF, the F-18 Hornet. The control surfaces, aerodynamics
and conditions were not fully military but close enough with a full instrument suite and functional manual controls so you had to fight to stay in the air. I was in line as soon as I laid eyes on it all. There were 4 simulators in all and I was surprised that one of the other people I would be flying with was an ex Navy aviator, of course he was well into his 60's. Still watching him perform he
still had it.

The first thing we did was basic flight, tracking of targets and use of the instrumentation. Being a computer nerd I was able to acclimatise very quickly and soon after came dogfighting against generated opponents and each other. The missiles had been handicapped to only work at short range and had very little actual guidance so they were little more than dumb rockets so I decided to only do my handiwork with guns and scored 4 kills even with the flight leader screaming in
my ear to use a missile. Myself and the navy pilot came out even in those regards with the other people only scoring 1 or 2 respectively.

Following that came landings on a runway, this was fairly easy to be honest as the physics were nowhere near as harsh as some of the flight sims I have played and brought it in several times without issue. I never doubted the pilot would have any problems either but the others had to give it a few goes before we moved onto the final challenge, an aircraft carrier trap. The difference here was that an aircraft carrier is very short compared to a runway, aircraft carriers are also moving
both forwards and sideways meaning you have to change your headings to compensate and you also have to catch the trap which is a cable across the deck. You can very easilly hit the deck and miss the trap and have to fly around and try again which means you also have to keep a good airspeed, not too much you'll shear the tailhook off on the trap and not too slow you can't recover from a missed trap.

The flight leader also acted as the deck flight officer guiding you in, telling you if you were too high or low, too slow or fast. I listened to his instructions, watched my instruments carefully and used my own judgements of distance honed from years of gameplay and trapped succesfully the first time aroound which I then repeated twice more. My other squadron mates however had a lot of difficulty with trapping and if I recall correctly no-one else actually made a successful
trap because they either came in too high and overshit the carrier or the trap or too low and hit the carrier itself. It wasn't easy I'll say and it was only a simulation, I have a lot of respect for the people who can do it consistently for real.

At the end of the simulation (about 30 minutes in total) I was awarded a TopGun patch for scoring the highest (highest score of the day apparently) but I wasn't asked to enlist however. Either way it was a good day and I have so many photos of the occasion I wish I could have gotten a recording of the mission though.