Hi Tinstaafl
The only adverse ship issues are you have to build the thing. Up to 20 deg nobody saw the extra top hamper as significant. It does reduce the amount of flat deck for helo ops but the matelots love the extra storage space underneath it – warships never have enough – so they really use it to the full.
As to the aeroplane it needs no mods to cope up to 20 deg. Not even for gear fatigue as the gear was designed to cope with RAF rough ground spec useage and the RN do none of that.
May sound all too good to be true but that is really how it worked out. A total win situation.
Launch safety is hugely increased because you will fly for secs even if the donk seizes or the nozzles jam at the end so you will always have stacks of time to eject. With a flat deck launch, escially if the bow is down a tad, it is doubtful if you would make it before you got to the water. After all you don't launch expecting a big drama so it would tkae a second or so to realise what had happened. And that is about all the time you would have.
The handling is also superb. Talk about low workload. You get delivered into clear air at the right nose up attitude and appropriate AOA – all the stuff you normally have to fix for yourself. Normally the Harrier has a big trim change leaving ground effect from a runway STO -3 T/P as you leave the ground to +8 (out of 10) in free air!
When I started telling the boffins – especially the govt ones - how low the workload was off the ski-jump they clearly thought I had a company hat on and was overstating the case to have Invincible fitted with a jump after she was launched. So I did a hands off launch with an instrumented aeroplane for 35 secs after leaving the end. After staring at the staight line traces and the kine-theodolite external films (which also showed the tailplane not moving against a painted scale on the side of the aeroplane) they shut up and told their masters the RN needed the mod to the ship.
See you Saturday