Watching carrier landings on YouTube. One guy forgot to even put his tailhook down.
But wouldn’t there be/isn’t there a video camera on the end of the tailhook w/ a heads-up display for it so you can watch the Optical Landing System for general orientation and also know how the hook itself is lining up to the arresting cable? Is that perspective of no value?
Isn’t the relationship between the tip of tailhook and the arresting cable the one point of alignment for which every other adjustment is being diddled?
Yes, but there’s room for error (WRT hooking the cable), and the consequences of failure to do so are not severe. Standard practice, as soon as you touch down on the deck, is to apply full thrust so that if you do happen to miss the cable, you just lift off for another attempt. So on those occasions when you actually do miss the cable, no biggie.
The other thing is that (the last time I checked) there are three arresting cables strung across the deck. The pilot aims to catch the middle cable of the three. If he lands a little short, he’ll catch the first cable, and if he lands a little long, he’ll catch the third cable. So the touchdown precision you’re calling for just isn’t required; a tailhook camera adds cost and reduces performance, and provides little value.
I can’t see why such a camera would be useful at all.
Like any runway on land, a carrier has lights as well as electronic data that indicate whether the pilot is on the correct glideslope to land on the runway. If a pilot follows the glidepath indicated by these instruments, the aircraft is going to land where it is supposed to.
The idea of having a picture of where the tailhook is at any particular second doesn’t seem relevant in any way. It would be like having cameras on the front bumper of your car, focused three feet ahead of the front wheels, so you could see if your wheel is going to hit the curb or something. Well, by the time you see the curb coming on the video screen, it would be just a fraction of a second before you either hit it or miss it anyway. People just drive between the white or yellow lines, knowing that if they do that, they will not be guided into a curb.
Well a camera would have helped the guy who didn’t even have his tailhook down…
And it would be exactly like having a camera underneath your car showing you the exact perspective of something that needs aligning. Only it doesn’t have to be focused 3 feet in front; it can be focused on exactly the point of contact at the end of a glidepath from the perspective of the item that needs to strike that point, instead of 15 feet above it.
I suspect going forward more of the adjustments will be automated anyway, and human control relegated to backup.
I’m not understanding why a camera is needed – the whole point of the meatball is that the entire aircraft is aligned and set on the proper glideslope to put both the whole airplane as well as the arresting gear right on the spot where it needs to land.
To say it another way, a pilot on an airliner can use a roughly similar visual cue from runways to make sure the aircraft is on the proper glideslope. He doesn’t need a camera mounted above or behind the main landing gear in order to get a perspective on whether or not he’s on the proper glideslope to have the main gear touch down just beyond the numbers – because the lights on the side of the runway are performing that exact function.
A camera would be useful if the pilot screwed up, if there was an equipment failure, and/or if the landing crew screwed up. But how often does that happen? Cameras add weight, increase drag, and may not survive repeated landings.
OTOH, the Navy may be allergic to combining cameras and tailhooks. (too soon?)
ETA: the couple of previous posts weren’t there when I started typing. …
The relationship between the pilot’s eye point of view and the deployed tailhook is fixed. If you aim your face to hit the deck at the right spot (and then actually do so), the hook will also hit the deck at the right spot. If your face hits 10’ too far forward, so does the hook. All that is built into the design of the aiming aids for landing.
I’ve never done carrier landings, but we deal with the same thing in large aircraft. My goal is to have the gear touch down at a particular spot on the runway. It’s always 85’ 6" behind me and about 24’ 6" feet lower than my eyes assuming nominal approach speeds. As long as I aim my face to hit the right spot, the gear does so too. To be sure, I’m aiming my face at a different spot on the runway than where the gear does hit. But again that difference is a fixed quantity and is built into our visual aim points and into our electronic guidance.
Aside for Machine Elf:
AFAIK, nowadays there are 4 wires on a US carrier. And even properly deployed and targeted hooks sometimes bounce over the wires necessitating a go-around.
How much help would it have been? Forgot to put your hook down? No different from the missing the wire, or having the hook bounce over the wire, which happens on a regular basis. This is why you apply full power as soon as you touch down, regardless of what else is happening. If the hook catches a wire, great, you come to a quick stop, and you idle your engines. If not, you’re all set to pitch up, lift off and go around again, without waiting for your engines to spool up.
Forgetting to put your hook down is not at all in the same “uh-oh” category as forgetting to put your gear down. And even if it were, having an indicator on the instrument panel is cheaper, easier, and lighter than having a camera on the tailhook.
My guess is that being able to see the tailhook via a camera and trying to line them up would actually make landing more difficult. You’re better off steering by the lights and just assuming the tailhook is down there where it’s supposed to be.
I’ve never landed a plane on a carrier but I have shot a revolver at a target. And the first thing they teach you is to not focus on the target. If you focus on the target, you’re going to miss. What you need to do is focus on your revolver. The principle is that if you pay attention to your revolver and shoot it correctly, the bullets will hit the target correctly.
It’s the same in golf where they tell you to focus on swinging the club correctly rather than focusing on the hole. Or in archery where you focus on shooting the arrow correctly rather than on the bullseye. The target can’t pull you in so just ignore the target - the target is a passive object that you have no control over. You control the plane/revolver/club/bow - focus on those. Just follow the correct procedure and it will put you at the target.
Little Nemo: In tactical unguided bombing we had a vaguely Skywalker-ish saying that reflects the same idea: “Be the bomb”.
Translated: put yourself in the right place in the sky and all success will follow from that. Over-focusing on the target and the aiming sight, especially for non-computed sights, just ensures a gross miss.
