The organization, coordination, efficiency, and clarity of deck operations is legendary, and God knows I can hardly make out who’s reading whom among the multicolored players (and pilot) during this clip.
This query: On land, I have in mind some kind of dialogue between pilot and control tower, ending with “cleared for takeoff.” And that’s that for conversation outside the cockpit.
But during these carrier ops, who’all is speaking to whom’all? This guy (the Topside Petty Officer, to the various color shirt guys? To the pilot (I see him do the flap wiggle–who told him “OK, let’s see the wiggle…?”
How many channels are open? Meaning: pilot to tower; pilot to ground crew; crew to crew; tower to crew…, And when is it time for yakking and when does the procedure play out SOP?
(Also, I know there was a thread on this, but I can’t remember: Is that “control tower” on a carrier the “bridge?”)
I can’t answer the specifics for aviation let alone naval aviation. My answer for voice channels is at most two. For communications systems the F-18 communications capability doesn’t support more.
The KY-58 is an encryption module not a separate radio. The Link 4 is a data link, so there’s no voice. I have no idea what, if any, information potentially passed via the Link 4 is relevant to launch operations.
In terms most of us are more familiar with radio is not a person to person phone call. It’s a conference call. Everyone operating on a given channel can hear everything said on it. On the Army side we referred to just listening to maintain situational awareness as “eavesdrop communications.” It also speed things along while avoiding confusion since one person can issue orders to everyone on a channel at once. There’s a practical limit of having high power radios with big relatively big antennae needed to transmit with enough power for the required range as well. Even if it weren’t for that limit, as a former armor officer I can also attest to the challenges of trying to manage multiple voices speaking in your ear simultaneously. The more channels you have the greater the chance of people talking on top of each other.
I thought of this at the heart of OP, and actually set the terms (“how many channels?”) thinking that there must/might be multiple ones to prevent having one big open cocktail party. Along with protocols of when to talk, when to shut up and listen, and when to do whatever you’re supposed to do, or now know what to do since the most recent comm.
That is, I’m pretty sure tower-to-pilot is a one-on-one, but maybe not. Because they’ve got a lot of stuff to go over particular to them, I’m thinking, and there certainly is the non-chaos of tons of stuff the deck crew are doing, and I’m wondering about their oral communication.
Come to think of it, the “deck crew” intercommunication must have an interface with “off-deck”/tower command as well.
It does more to enable crazy than prevent it. On one channel, where everyone is running through an established procedure, people are at least aware when someone else is talking. You lose that if they don’t even know when someone else is talking. Think of having two cell phones held to each ear versus one three way call.
It also gets more difficult if you have to pass information to more than one party if they aren’t on the same net. Is the pilot AND the crew on deck both ready for the launch? If they are listening on the same network you don’t need to ask twice and then listen for responses on separate nets. Think of those two cell phones but the mic on one is always muted while talking to the other.
The deck crew, plan, and tower all need to be synchronized to launch safely. It doesn’t mean everyone on the deck crew needs to be able to do business on that network. (I vaguely STR they do their internal work with hand and arm signals anyway.) It means someone probably should be capable of doing the external business with the other key players.
An example of two networks that make me think of being in the crew role. Once upon a time I was the safety for a tank qualification range. For range operations we used to networks - admin and firing. Admin dealt with tanks up to the place they would eventually start their qualification run from and handled all the other admin business. One, and only one, tank would be switched to the firing frequency for their run managed by someone specific within the tower. My job was based on that shooting tank. I drove along behind them in a completely unarmored HMMWV and was only on the firing frequency. I didn’t care about the admin except for times when there might be a gap. I certainly did care about what the tower and firing tank said to each other and needed to be able to talk to both at once. Twice the tower gave the next tank authorization to load and test fire their machine guns as soon as they came up on the firing frequency without confirming my location. Both times I was still downrange. I cared a lot at that point. I couldn’t be synchronized with both the tower’s orders and the firing tanks actions in a timely fashion if I had been on a different net. I would have been waiting for someone else to tell me and would have been slowed telling them both that we were NOT doing that until I was somewhere nice and safe.
I could be mistaken, but if no problems arise, and once the nose gear is attached to the shuttle, I don’t think the pilot is speaking with anyone. All routine communications are handled with hand signals.
There are a handful of people on the flight deck who have radios on their person, and a few stations on the flight deck have phones/intercoms for launch & recovery communications.
The “Air Boss”, who is the officer in charge of everything that happens “on the roof” and in the airspace immediately surrounding the boat, has several radios to talk to specific persons or stations on the flight deck and the aircraft in flight. His/her position is in Primary Flight Control (PriFly), which is basically the air control tower for the boat, near the top of the island (the Bridge is where the boat is driven [sorry, “conned”] from, and is the Captain’s domain). The Boss also has a ridiculously-loud PA system on the flight deck called the 1MC - it’s loud enough to be heard over dozens of jet engines at various power settings when the deck is at it’s busiest… and loud enough to cause instant hearing damage if you’re close enough to one of the deck-edge speakers and the Boss is pissed (side note - the Air Boss is ALWAYS pissed. It’s part of the qualifications for the job.).
All the colored jerseys, flight deck helmets (“cranials”), and “float coats” (the float coat is a personal flotation device that all flight deck crewmembers must wear during Flight Quarters [Flight Quarters is the Naval term for flight ops in progress on the boat]) mean something:
[ul]
[li]Red are ordnance crews, firefighters, and EOD.[/li][li]Blue are aircraft handlers and tow drivers.[/li][li]Yellow are flight deck directors and handling officers, and the Air Boss & his/her staff.[/li][li]Green are catapult & arresting gear crews, and Air Wing aircraft mechanics & technicians.[/li][li]Purple are fuel crews.[/li][li]White are Quality Assurance, safety observers, Landing Signals Officers, medics, VIPs, and cargo handlers.[/li][li]Brown are Plane Captains, the mechanics & technicians who inspect the aircraft for safety of flight. “Brown is best, the other mechs & techs are Green with envy.” Yes, I was a Plane Captain…[/li][/ul]
These colors can be mixed to further delineate specific people or functions (i.e. yellow shirt/float coat and green cranial are catapult & arresting gear officers).
There are also signal lamps on the island, to notify everyone on the roof about the flight deck’s status (for example, a green rotating lamp indicates a “green deck”, which means flight operations are underway and aircraft will be taking off & landing).
“Standard” pilot-to-controller communication doesn’t begin until after the aircraft has launched; pilots don’t request taxi or takeoff clearance, and the Boss doesn’t give either of those over the PriFly radio. If a pilot has been taxied to the cat and has been hooked up, he’s assumed to be clear for takeoff unless the Shooter gives the SUSPEND signal, and/or stands in front of the aircraft ON the catapult track. Only then will the pilot pull the throttles back.
Thank you to all. DinoR started off on the money. The Boom and Fubaya PDF and reference to the F14 walkthrough (from which I jumped to others) are amazing.
Many questions from me undoubtedly to come.
Alls I know is theFlightDeckLife youtube channel has a new subscriber.
There was a good documentary about this stuff a while back, “Top Gun” or something ;). Left me with a real affection for the image of one of Tom’s cats getting prepped for an early patrol, wings fully swept to save space and back-lit by the rising sun. Had some other crap about volley ball, I skipped through those bits, just wanted to watch the flying scenes. I might have watched it seven times on the big screen, but who’s counting?
The F-14 is my favorite plane and this thread led me to YouTube where I watched this episode of Sea Wings which starts out with sunrise on the carrier deck (albeit with an A-7 and no Kenny Loggins) and this video with the guy who actually did the tower flyby for the Top Gun movie, then I ended up on this video.
The submariners insisting that their craft be called boats rather than ships makes sense; they’re just big torpedo boats with a trick up their sleeve. Why do the sailors call carriers “boats”? Simply irony?
If you like the Tomcat, youtube “Fighter fling” the annual video compilation the fighter guys made to show at the big year-end party to prove their superiority over the Attack guys. The F-14’s final huzzah was a thing of beauty.
As has been said, communication of a flight deck is mostly nonverbal – the jet gets waved up to taxi up to the catapult, the guy in charge of the catapult signals the pilot to check his controls, the pilot does the ol’ spectacles-testicles-wallet-and-watch Catholic prayer (or equivalent) on the stick, cat guy holds up a hand with a thumb up to indicate his end is ready and he saw all the control sufaces wiggle, pilot salutes, pushes the throttle levers to the firewall and grabs fixed handles on the sides of the canopy frame, deck guy swings his hand down in a graceful arc to touch the deck/bend over below where the wing is about to go by, a guy in an armored glass bubble sticking up out of the deck between the catapults sees that signal and pulls a lever to pour on the steam, and the 33-ton aircraft is flung over the bow at a level of acceleration bested only by Top Fuel dragsters and space rockets.
Kinda NWS because the intercom audio is pretty much a screaming orgasm. If you’ve been on the Aerosmith-themed rollercoaster at Disney World, a cat shot is three times the speed in the same distance/time.
PBS had a 10 part series named Carrier. Episode 2 covered a little bit of the roles of the various teams involved in launching and recovering planes. Pretty interesting show but a bit high on the interpersonal drama and light on the nerdy technical details IMHO.
The Naval Aviators (and, by extension, the rest of the Air Wing, and a not-insignificant number of the enlisted ship’s company) call it “the boat” to piss off humorless SWOs*. Marines, both Air Wing and ground-side, call it “the boat” as well… because Marines. Since all my experience with the afloat Navy was during my 11 years in the Marines, all Navy ships are therefore “boats” to me.
Surface Warfare Officers, a.k.a. “black shoes”. I’m sure some of them have a sense of humor somewhere within themselves, but in my (admittedly limited, Marine Lance Corporal) experience dealing with SWOs personally on an LHA, a large number of them seem to have had a humorectomy when they pinned on their water wings.