The Navy hates using the boom-basket setup and call it "The Iron Maiden" as it is hard to plug into
Just to correct the smutty humour a little from personal experience, the iron maiden is very easy to plug into because the basket doesn't get affected by the receiver's bow wave to any appreciable extent: the hose is indeed quite hard
. The piloting technique used is quite different to a traditional hose-and-drogue, where you line up in the waiting position, pick a reference ahead of you on the tanker and try to ignore the basket as you move forward into contact. With the iron maiden you look at the basket a lot more (if not all the time, then most of it) and fly the probe directly in. The difficulty comes in staying in
and this is where the iron maiden is unforgiving: the acceptable range of movement is only a couple of feet in each direction, beyond which probe damage is a serious risk
, a task made all the more challenging as fuel mass increases and some throttle-juggling around the max dry / min reheat power 'jump' becomes necessary. You quickly learn how long it takes for a reheat selection to take effect: "min reheat on the left... pause... pause... handful of power off the right before shooting forward and ripping the probe tip off"!
The traditional set-up is a more satisfying courtship: difficult to get in, but most flexible and enjoyable thereafter
