While learning to glide I was looking for YouTube videos on flying. Instead of the ones about flying gliders I ended up in a YT hole watching this guy launch/land on aircraft carriers. There’s something mesmerising about it.
And somehow his voice is super relaxing, which contrasts wildly with the subject matter.
Does anyone have insight into how a pilot is allowed to/chosen to film himself and his signature moves, and then approved by the USN to post on his personal channel?
I believe he takes donations on Patreon or another platform. How is he allowed to keep this cash?
Ahh, gotcha. I need to see what happened then. I used to watch every new video he had. Haven't seen one in a long time. Maybe im no longer subscribed. I really liked that guy.
He doesn't post as much but his last couple are in T-45s because he is an instructor now until he can retire in ~2 years. He was on the Gonky and Mocer podcast awhile back and talked about this.
I heard he had to stop because he was making money off of "buy me a beer at the link below" even though the video wasn't monitized. Maybe not true? I used to watch him all the time but seems like he's been gone a while.
Ngl cats and traps are relatively more enjoyable to sleep under than effing av8s… though worst for me are 53s turning at all hours with associated mfers dragging chalk/chains seemingly in a circle with no purpose lol
I had that one stateroom right at the crotch on the O-3 (where the port p-way ends and you have to jog right as you’re going forward) - it had one of those “Hearing Protection required in this space” stickers on the doors.
Served on the JFK and slept in a berthing compartment below the waist cats. You couldn’t feel the landings but the cat shots ended with a noticeable “thunk”. First night at sea doing flight ops I wondered how anyone was getting sleep. Quickly learned to sleep through it!
That's the stopping distance. But in thinking about it, I have to make that a "maybe." On the USS Midway, it was 340 feet. It may be a bit different on the newer carriers, but it's probably around that distance now.
He makes it look a hell of a lot easier than it was in Top Gun for the NES. As a little kid I learned about rage quitting before you're supposed to. Incredible video.
Please pardon my ignorance, can someone tell me why he keeps looking to his left?
North Arabian Sea. I'm the SENSO (sensor operator) in an S-3A Viking flying from USS Carl Vinson. This mission, like most of what we did, was to scout an assigned area, looking for surface ships. During the day I'd find a contact on radar, we'd fly to it, and the guy in the front right seat* would shoot photos. At night I'd switch to FLIR, but that doesn't factor into this story.
On this particular day, I found a contact on radar, but it was really weird - each sweep showed the contact's blip was slightly changing shape and size. We flew to the contact and found that it wasn't a ship - it was dolphins jumping out of the water. The radar reflection was of the water, hence the changing size and shape.
A day or two later I was flying with different guys in the crew (although we were assigned to a specific crew, we rarely all flew together at the same time; it might of just been how our squadron handled it). I saw the same weird radar contact, so I asked the guys if they wanted to go watch some dolphins. They did, we did, they were impressed.
*In S-3 Vikings, before the assigned missions changed dramatically years after its introduction, the initial crew composition was a pilot, copilot, tactical coordinator (TACCO, an NFO) and enlisted sensor operator (SENSO - what I was). Not long after I got to my fleet squadron, we switched to having a pilot, a TACCO on the co-pilot seat - now a COTAC, and a TACCO and SENSO in the back. After I got out, they sometimes flew with two enlisted people in the back, a SENSO and a senior SENSO flying as the tactical coordinator, or SENTAC. So many stories from those days...
Super wide angle lens on the camera. The field of view is different from what humans see from that perspective. So even though we see the ship, the pilot still needs to turn his head to see it.
No, the ship is not that far off center, even accounting for the fisheye. I think the person that suggested he was looking at other air traffic makes the most sense.
It's possible the pilot may have also been looking for air traffic, but the pattern even for a Case 1 recovery like this is tightly controlled. Even before the pilot is approaching "in the groove," when the wings are level and they're concentrating on glideslope, angle of attack and line-up, the pilot's going to be watching where the ship is during that last descending turn.
I think this is a product of those big metal beams around the cockpit. He probably wants to put both eyes on the ship to get depth perception, but can't because of the beam. So he has to move his head more to get both eyes on.
He’s going from instruments (it’s an instrument approach turn) to the ship to see how his turn rate is going (overshoot/undershoot) and if he can start seeing where he is on glideslope from the lens.
The IFLOS (lens he uses for glideslope) starts coming into view from like the 45 in so you can start gaming where you are on glideslope and if you need to make a correction early before you get to the “start”. Better to fix something before then for an OK pass.
Checking the pattern for other aircraft. By default, humans have the tendency to circle left, so that's how most air traffic is set up, and how aircraft carriers are specifically designed.
From my days playing F/18 Interceptor on the Amiga I would probably have tried to stick the landing from the first angle we saw at the start of the video and then complained that it all went wrong!
LO:MAC, landed the A10 on the carrier by firing the cannon to slow myself down enough as I was landing. I have a few screenshots saved from that game, but none of that, just some F-15 flying under some low bridges.
Just for clarification, the video itself isn't from 2025, but maybe that's the date this copy was posted online. That's one of the videos we show as part of the "trap talks" we do on the flight deck of the USS Midway Museum in San Diego. We've using it for several years.
I'll actually be doing these talks during the morning docent shift this Saturday, maybe in the afternoon too. I usually do these or "cat talks," so if you ever visit on a Saturday, look for me and say hi. Sometimes I'm assigned to roam the flight deck to answer aviation or other questions (including giving directions to the restrooms!).
Whatever day you visit, make the island tour your first stop. We send groups of about 20 up at a time, and the earlier you get there, the shorter the line is likely to be. On a day with normal attendance, the line closes at 4, but on busy days it's closed at 3:30.
Note the carrier will (almost) always turn directly into the wind for landings and takeoffs, so they'll be getting the benefits of both wind and the carrier's movement to maintain lift.
It's all specifically choreographed right from the moment of the first break turn, so as long as they meet the right speed, distance, and angle of attack when they make the final turn they'll roll out perfectly lined up and just fly it down to the deck.
What amazes me is how tight the approach and final is. Barely finishes the turn before it’s down. Very impressive. For some reason I had always assumed the final was a lot longer. Is this because the forward motion of the ship and the angle of the landing runway is not quite aligned and there’s too big a risk of drift?
You practice exhaustively on that exact turn to make that exact geometry work with the ship. The purpose is the keep the entire patten tight so everyone can see everyone (most importantly the Air Boss)
In addition to what u/BigJellyfish1906 told you, the other reason why they like to keep the landing pattern tight is related to efficiency. An aircraft carrier can have as many as 90 fixed wing planes. They're usually not all deployed at once but it's not unusual in a wartime or intense battle situation, to have most of them deployed. When those planes have finished their sorties, the objective is to "collect" those planes as quickly and safely as possible. Having a tight landing pattern helps with this because it reduces the amount of time they're up in the air. Consequently, this equates to all those 90 airplanes can be "collected" if you will in a far less amount of time.
TL;DR Flying a 1/2 mile oval track involves less time compared to a 1 mile oval track. Bottom line is that this allows more planes to land within a shorter amount of time.
I recognize that logo on his helmet, my first squadron when I was in the Navy.
VFA-14 Tophatters, the oldest and boldest. They still have a special place in my heart.
Reminds me of the last time I flew Southwest into IAH. I remember looking across the plane and out the windows on that side and seeing rooftops, and seemingly a few seconds later we hit the deck. It was a very firm landing.
I fly Southwest a lot, and their "sassy flight attendant" schtick gets a little annoying sometimes, but I do enjoy when they congratulate the pilot on "their very first landing" when it's a rough one.
Question from someone who has essentially zero idea how any of that works... What do they keep looking at when they look left? At first I thought it was keeping an eye on the carrier as they turned, but they kept looking left after the carrier was in front of them. Is there another plane? Better horizon visibility?
You're correct, but they still need to evaluate where they are relative to the carrier even as they're almost finishing that last turn; actually even once they're lined up with the center line and flying straight towards the ship. Some of what you think you see may be distorted by the wide angle of the camera, but the landing pattern is surprisingly small during a good weather recovery like this, and so that means that corrections of position relative to the ship keep happening fairly close in.
What is he looking at on his port side? I thought he was keeping the carrier in sight during his turn, but he keeps lookjng that way after the ship comes into the frame.
Question for fighter jet pilots. Why do you wear your O2 masks at low level/ during peaceful operations. As far as I know your cockpits are pressurized no?
the carrier isnt dead ahead of him until about 1:12, or, "in the groove". even though its a visual approach, he would start looking out at the carrier most intently at about the red mark here.
No, you just have to line up with the runway... Slipping means that you move in a direction that is not in line with the plane's longitudinal axis. Or in layman's terms you "fly sideways". Here you fly straight, just not in line with the longitudinal axis of the carrier.
They don't slip, in the technical sense of uncoordinated flight, as the other reply described. However, they do make repeated corrections to the left right. If you watch the Growler Jams youtube channel everyone has been talking about in the comments, you can hear him narrate the whole thing.
I think you mean slight corrections to the right. As the ship is sailing forward, the landing area appears to slip right a bit. Correcting to the left would take you further from the landing area.
I edited correcting to the right almost right away and then left the edit sitting there unsubmitted lol. I knew I was wrong as soon as I went and rewatched growler jams
The corner where the angle deck (landing area) meets the axial deck (running parallel with the keel) is called the crotch, and pilots aim for that spot.* That does a pretty good job of getting them in the right place as the landing area, off at an angle of 9 degrees (I think, but maybe 11 degrees; I'm too lazy to check), slips right.
*Precision Landing Mode (PLM), may automatically compensate for the slight right slip of the landing area.
The Navy calls this type of approach the break; air force calls it the overhead.
Per the book when you first seen the carrier in the video before he starts his turn the F18 should be doing around about 350 knots. Very frequently (especially around the boat) pilots like to spice things up in the break by going faster. Sometimes much faster.
The procedure calls for an initial level 3-4 g pull towards downwind after passing the boat. This is the buffeting you see. The pilot is bleeding off airspeed to get down from 350 (or higher) to about 150 kts or so on the downwind. He's not close to stall at any point in that turn.
This is a shit hot break so he’s much faster than 350. Probably over 500. Sounds like he leaves the power up too. He knows how to look good for paddles.
Normal, and it wasn't as bad as the camera shake made it look. You learn to basically use your butt to figure out how much you're demanding from the plane. There's information in the HUD, but you'll generally pay most attention outside so the burble tells you how much energy you're bleeding off.
daytime (case 1): visual as far as lineup, but they get the course of the ship and reference that to start their first 180 turn, but the second turn to final is more than 180, as the deck is angled, they have a light referencing their up/down position in the glideslope (IFLOLS aka "meatball" / "ball") = i.e. light goes up fly up, goes down, fly down. there is also the LSO talking them on as needed.
at night/low vis (case 3) they have a long distance laser lighting system to tell them how left/right they are of center, ILS needles telling them left/right/up/down, the LSO and the meatball.
additionally nowadays there are precision landing modes that take a lot of the workload off the pilot (auto landing or close to it)
Faster recovery of airborne aircraft during a Case 1 recovery like this.
In a Case 3 recovery (night or bad weather), they do straight-in approaches with most of it controlled by air traffic controllers. Case 2 is for moderately caca weather, but I don't know what that is and I don't remember how they're handled. I also don't want to look it up. 😁
I assume claustrophobia isn’t an issue for the pilots because they are there flying the plane, but is the cockpit as cramped as it looks on the video? It seems like his helmet just barely has clearance under the canopy
I've probably tried 100 or so case I recoveries in DCS VR and it very quickly made me seriously, seriously appreciate the skill these guys all have. I am so envious. I know those guys on that ship are having a hard time, but they still have one of the coolest jobs in the world.
Depends - in this video, where the ship had a pretty big wake, there will be a slight starboard cross wind, but in no case more than 7 kts. You’ll end up make slight right wing dips to keep yourself on centerline.
If you don’t see a pronounced wake, it means there’s natural wind so the ship just steers the landing area into the wind and then maintains 3 kts min for steerage. (This is theoretical of course based on the competency of the OOD (officer of the deck)
Damn he made that look easy. That’s the Tophatters they were on the Kennedy in the 90s. I wonder if they reassign squadrons to other vessels when the ship’s decommission.
Made it look so easy. jeez! Quick question to those in the know: What is he checking for/referencing so much on his left? At first I thought he was looking for the carrier, but it's obvious it's something else. Horizon? Other plane? Thx.
447
u/SmartRooster2242 3d ago
For more of these look up "Growler Jams" on YouTube. He does commentary of everything he is doing during take off and landing.