Deck Landings
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I teach deck landings to the mil, if you want to know more, PM me.
The Veloceraptor of Lounge Lizards
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I did an awful lot when I worked offshore, one of the best bits of advice I recieved from a very experienced captain was "imagine the silhouette of the aircraft on the deck and place the aircraft on the silhouette."
Along with have your approach gate height and speeds spot on it was the best advice I ever had, and one of thefirst bits I passed on to newcomers during line training.
VH
Along with have your approach gate height and speeds spot on it was the best advice I ever had, and one of thefirst bits I passed on to newcomers during line training.
VH
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Deck Landings
The ultimate adrenalin rush came from your first night D/Ls and then the first time you do stern-facing landings with the ship full ahead.
That said the most challenging D/Ls were oddly enough on an aircraft carrier where the Flight Deck chappies had marked out a half-a-postage-stamp area astern of the island where, with blades folded (Sea King HAS1) we could be on immediate readiness and still operate the fixed wing. The target was a 2ft diameter circle for the starboard wheel. Sitting in the cockpit with Phantoms landing was nerve-racking to say the least.
Best D/L was on a US carrier where the bl**dy thing was so big I actually lost site of the ocean. Such luxury.
Like the skill of hovering deck landing can be made to look simple but the reality is that proper instruction and regular practice are essential ingredients. The impressive Lynx video makes light of the fact that getting it down is one thing but keeping it there if you don't have the luxury of 'HARPOON' is beyond most commercial ops so our limits are much much less, maybe 2 degrees of pitch and roll and 10 feet of heave. Modern systems employ deck movement monitoring that take into account rates of change to P/R/H as opposed to the max amplitudes.
G.
That said the most challenging D/Ls were oddly enough on an aircraft carrier where the Flight Deck chappies had marked out a half-a-postage-stamp area astern of the island where, with blades folded (Sea King HAS1) we could be on immediate readiness and still operate the fixed wing. The target was a 2ft diameter circle for the starboard wheel. Sitting in the cockpit with Phantoms landing was nerve-racking to say the least.
Best D/L was on a US carrier where the bl**dy thing was so big I actually lost site of the ocean. Such luxury.
Like the skill of hovering deck landing can be made to look simple but the reality is that proper instruction and regular practice are essential ingredients. The impressive Lynx video makes light of the fact that getting it down is one thing but keeping it there if you don't have the luxury of 'HARPOON' is beyond most commercial ops so our limits are much much less, maybe 2 degrees of pitch and roll and 10 feet of heave. Modern systems employ deck movement monitoring that take into account rates of change to P/R/H as opposed to the max amplitudes.
G.
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To emphasise one of Geoff's points, check-out the motion the Blackhawk has to contend with in the following vid between 0:29 and 0:40 secs:
.. and just how annoying ship-roll can be even when you're not flying (below):
To emphasise one of Geoff's points, check-out the motion the Blackhawk has to contend with in the following vid between 0:29 and 0:40 secs:
.. and just how annoying ship-roll can be even when you're not flying (below):
Geoffers, the dreaded 6 Spot. Oodles of room
and an aft facing: the MGB oil let go all over the talking ballast in the back about the time I took this photo, they were a little annoyed.
I thought the sliding onto the fwd spot on Engadine, at night, with another of the 737 course parked running on the aft spot was......character building?
For the OP, there are an enormous number of variables involved in shipboard DL's. Wind direction, sea state, ship's head, deck markings, W&T, obstructions are but a few of the factors to be considered. Those of us with a little knowledge may actually be dangerous, as our advice may have nothing to do with your operation or could actually mislead you.
I'd suggest a more specific explanation of your ops, or contact someone like TC to get personal training.
But remember the important point: enjoy it
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Great vids and excellent examples of military/coastguard deck landings/winching, even if they are at the extreme end of the scale. By contrast a commercial deck operation in the North Sea is considered to be 'unstable' if pitch or roll exceeds one degree of movement and pilots are limited to aa maximum of four degrees of movement.
Notice how the pilots never try and match the pitch and roll movements of the decks. This can be done (in lower sea states with larger vessels) but would be a non starter in these conditions.
You can almost feel the disrupted air curling round the structure and well done for waiting for that that sweet spot!!
I would have been terrified to have to make that landing
Notice how the pilots never try and match the pitch and roll movements of the decks. This can be done (in lower sea states with larger vessels) but would be a non starter in these conditions.
You can almost feel the disrupted air curling round the structure and well done for waiting for that that sweet spot!!
I would have been terrified to have to make that landing
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Jeacott; 'fair dinkum'. Would like to learn more about how those positioning systems work!
Isn't that what the USCG craft is doing in the winching vid?
Jeacott wrote: Nowt to do with ships roll, or deck landings. That was a failure of the positioning system, IIRC.
Max Contingency wrote: Notice how the pilots never try and match the pitch and roll movements of the decks.
Hey Savoia, is that an old Garmin 295 handheld GPS on the top left dash of the Lynx(I think) in the first video. Always wondered what fancy gizmos the Navy had on board their helicopters for navigation.
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Malabo, you're probably right. I'm not up-to-speed on GPS types. I am however interested in the aparatus atop the Lynx's instrument panel (the one with the balck and yellow device to the left).
So .. what is the correct procedure for a deck-landing with a vessel underway? I was told:
a) Never approach direct from astern but to the port of the helideck where one can maintain a clear view of the landing area.
b) Once established to port of helideck begin to contour (mimic) the vessel's movements (ie. pitch and roll) while awaiting a 'flat spot' in the vessel's undulations.
c) When 'flat spot' arrives manoeuvre aircraft overhead helideck.
d) From a position directly above the designated landing area on the helideck commence measured inputs to effect a vertical descent while maintaining situational awareness of the vessel's movements (specifically the deck-closure-rate and watching out for deck 'bucking').
e) Implement a firm (ie. positive - no faffing around trying to kiss the deck with the undercarriage) but safe touchdown.
Malabo, you're probably right. I'm not up-to-speed on GPS types. I am however interested in the aparatus atop the Lynx's instrument panel (the one with the balck and yellow device to the left).
Probably not as much heave there as you think, ship's roll is going to make the horizon move up and down like that.
a) Never approach direct from astern but to the port of the helideck where one can maintain a clear view of the landing area.
b) Once established to port of helideck begin to contour (mimic) the vessel's movements (ie. pitch and roll) while awaiting a 'flat spot' in the vessel's undulations.
c) When 'flat spot' arrives manoeuvre aircraft overhead helideck.
d) From a position directly above the designated landing area on the helideck commence measured inputs to effect a vertical descent while maintaining situational awareness of the vessel's movements (specifically the deck-closure-rate and watching out for deck 'bucking').
e) Implement a firm (ie. positive - no faffing around trying to kiss the deck with the undercarriage) but safe touchdown.
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Depends. Upon what you're flying, what you're landing upon, and as often as not what colors they are flying. We generally went starboard to port on small decks, but sometimes port to starboard, depending upon wind and sea combination. We were underpowered and had decks the size of matchbooks, so unless you had a lot of clear wind across the deck, if a donk quit, you were going to the deck or you were going swimming.
Established to port with little wind in a hover? For us, that would have been dangerous luxury. Looking back, however, we did quite a few dumb things, and many of them were actual written procedures.
You'd try to get the ship to give you that 330 relative wind, but sometimes they couldn't do it, or couldn't do it and stay within pitch & roll limits, or couldn't do it without running aground or whatever, so sometimes you'd get a starboard wind, or a following sea, or some other dodgy combination of things. And of course since about 9 times of 10 you had no alternate, you figured out how to get aboard.
Once you'd decided the ship was about as OK as it was likely to get during this bag of fuel, you'd set up a nice closure rate, hitting a transition point about 200' above deck height, 60 KIAS more or less, 1200-1500' back, the speed and distance depending somewhat upon windspeed.
On short final, the center of your field of view was the big white landing spot, and you didn't want to be forward of the lateral line unless you were interested in putting blades into the superstructure. You sort of aim for the median of what the landing spot is doing, basically disregarding pitch & roll (it's basically noise if it's within limits) but paying heed to heave and yaw (of the ship), because heave will smack you in the undercarriage, or drop away from you, and if you chase it then it will really smack you in the undercarriage. Yaw, of course, cleverly tries to move the landing spot out from under you like a linen yanked from a laden table. There's a rather fine line between a firm landing in a seaway and rattling the crewman's fillings.
It's more easily shown than described. Night wasn't much different, except closure rate was more fidgety, and it was easy to fixate on the moving deck, which as it began to dawn on one that was what one was doing became definitely an unpleasant experience.
If you had a Talon or Harpoon (same thing, different name), and the ship was so equipped, if you hit the grid, you were apples, if you didn't, you'd have to wait at negative pitch until some slightly mad teenagers came out under the disk and tied you down.
RAST is something else entirely. So was getting aboard on instruments. You haven't lived until you've shot an ELVA for real and crawled up the ship's wake figuring there was likely a ship at the end of it.
Of course, I'm inclined to believe a friend of mine (who is in a position to know) who says you haven't lived until you've improvised an instrument approach to Matthewtown, Great Inagua direction-finding on a FM-equipped taxicab parked at the runway threshold in hard IFR (he tipped the guy all the money the entire crew had).
For us, the only mandatory command from the deck was "wave-off", everything else advisory.
Every organization I've run across (and that's a few) does it differently. We used enough people to cast a Cecil B. DeMille epic (overkill in my view), but the Royal Navy corvette I once landed on for a meeting (with a gigantic grid on a balmy day, bless 'em) we had to shut down and wander up to the bridge to find anyone at all (we had spoken with them over the radio, so they knew we were indeed coming, and when). Upon entering the pilothouse the Captain smiled winningly and said: "Ah! So you're here, then! Tea or coffee?"
Established to port with little wind in a hover? For us, that would have been dangerous luxury. Looking back, however, we did quite a few dumb things, and many of them were actual written procedures.
You'd try to get the ship to give you that 330 relative wind, but sometimes they couldn't do it, or couldn't do it and stay within pitch & roll limits, or couldn't do it without running aground or whatever, so sometimes you'd get a starboard wind, or a following sea, or some other dodgy combination of things. And of course since about 9 times of 10 you had no alternate, you figured out how to get aboard.
Once you'd decided the ship was about as OK as it was likely to get during this bag of fuel, you'd set up a nice closure rate, hitting a transition point about 200' above deck height, 60 KIAS more or less, 1200-1500' back, the speed and distance depending somewhat upon windspeed.
On short final, the center of your field of view was the big white landing spot, and you didn't want to be forward of the lateral line unless you were interested in putting blades into the superstructure. You sort of aim for the median of what the landing spot is doing, basically disregarding pitch & roll (it's basically noise if it's within limits) but paying heed to heave and yaw (of the ship), because heave will smack you in the undercarriage, or drop away from you, and if you chase it then it will really smack you in the undercarriage. Yaw, of course, cleverly tries to move the landing spot out from under you like a linen yanked from a laden table. There's a rather fine line between a firm landing in a seaway and rattling the crewman's fillings.
It's more easily shown than described. Night wasn't much different, except closure rate was more fidgety, and it was easy to fixate on the moving deck, which as it began to dawn on one that was what one was doing became definitely an unpleasant experience.
If you had a Talon or Harpoon (same thing, different name), and the ship was so equipped, if you hit the grid, you were apples, if you didn't, you'd have to wait at negative pitch until some slightly mad teenagers came out under the disk and tied you down.
RAST is something else entirely. So was getting aboard on instruments. You haven't lived until you've shot an ELVA for real and crawled up the ship's wake figuring there was likely a ship at the end of it.
Of course, I'm inclined to believe a friend of mine (who is in a position to know) who says you haven't lived until you've improvised an instrument approach to Matthewtown, Great Inagua direction-finding on a FM-equipped taxicab parked at the runway threshold in hard IFR (he tipped the guy all the money the entire crew had).
For us, the only mandatory command from the deck was "wave-off", everything else advisory.
Every organization I've run across (and that's a few) does it differently. We used enough people to cast a Cecil B. DeMille epic (overkill in my view), but the Royal Navy corvette I once landed on for a meeting (with a gigantic grid on a balmy day, bless 'em) we had to shut down and wander up to the bridge to find anyone at all (we had spoken with them over the radio, so they knew we were indeed coming, and when). Upon entering the pilothouse the Captain smiled winningly and said: "Ah! So you're here, then! Tea or coffee?"
Last edited by Um... lifting...; 20th Jul 2011 at 15:28.
As I mentioned before, some advice here may be less than helpful to the OP. If (when landing) you start to chase the pitch and roll of a small ship (or a large one, come to that) you are in for a world of hurt. Watch the Lynx video that you posted, especially the in-cockpit camera. The pilot is essentially holding a hover with reference to the horizon, and half an eye on the ship: when the heave is approaching the helicopter he climbs slightly, otherwise he is waiting for a lull in proceedings until the pitch and roll make it safe to land. Chasing the deck will end in tears when landing.
The winching, however, is a different kettle of canaries as the USCG machine appears to be following the deck to effect a winch transfer: keeping a steady cable is more important in that evolution, but I defer to the current winching experts (Crab, where are you?) for that.
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John's correct here, and an internet forum (even one as illustrious as PPRuNe) is no place to learn how to land on a moving deck.
Winching is indeed different than landing on, whether the purpose of the winching is personnel transfer or to bring up a fuel hose to allow one to defer a landing until conditions improve or the ship can find a lee. And winching an inanimate object is different than winching a living hunk of protoplasm.
It's part art and part science.
Working in offshore for one example, limits are defined, and a good bit more limiting than those in the services, and that is as it should be. One also has an alternate in offshore, not necessarily so on maritime operations, especially in somebody else's or international waters. It doesn't make one type of operation better than the other, but it does shape operating philosophies. Having done both, I can tell you there are many differences.
There is someone out there who does what you wish to do, with a similar scope of operations. Just because a uniformed aviator from some service brought a helicopter aboard at night and out of limits (and many have) doesn't necessarily give anyone carte blanche to repeat the performance, but for that pilot it likely was the best idea that was available at the time out of a limited selection of options.
Winching is indeed different than landing on, whether the purpose of the winching is personnel transfer or to bring up a fuel hose to allow one to defer a landing until conditions improve or the ship can find a lee. And winching an inanimate object is different than winching a living hunk of protoplasm.
It's part art and part science.
Working in offshore for one example, limits are defined, and a good bit more limiting than those in the services, and that is as it should be. One also has an alternate in offshore, not necessarily so on maritime operations, especially in somebody else's or international waters. It doesn't make one type of operation better than the other, but it does shape operating philosophies. Having done both, I can tell you there are many differences.
There is someone out there who does what you wish to do, with a similar scope of operations. Just because a uniformed aviator from some service brought a helicopter aboard at night and out of limits (and many have) doesn't necessarily give anyone carte blanche to repeat the performance, but for that pilot it likely was the best idea that was available at the time out of a limited selection of options.
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Defined limits, training, testing, procedures and experience, not an Internet advisory service.*
View the West-star thread, for an example of how stuff goes astray *when you don't have or don't follow procedures don't follow the RFM, don't understand process and seemingly don't have the skill.
View the West-star thread, for an example of how stuff goes astray *when you don't have or don't follow procedures don't follow the RFM, don't understand process and seemingly don't have the skill.
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Jeacott/Um .. Fair comments which make sense.
Guess then that 'deck contouring' is for winching-ops as you've mentioned.
From what I understand, for small frigate ops, this Lynx arrival (below) is pretty much text book (well, Danish Navy text book at least!).
Jeacott/Um .. Fair comments which make sense.
Guess then that 'deck contouring' is for winching-ops as you've mentioned.
From what I understand, for small frigate ops, this Lynx arrival (below) is pretty much text book (well, Danish Navy text book at least!).
I could bore you with swinging lanterns about landing on the UK's various coastal lightships, but I wont...
Needless to say, there are no rules just currency
Needless to say, there are no rules just currency
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Griff, it does throw up an observation (for me at least) in that the oleo-struts fitted to the Lynx landing gear would appear to absorb some of the inertia on touchdown whereas with something like the Bölkow I'm guessing you have less licence to 'dump' the craft onto the deck?
Griff, it does throw up an observation (for me at least) in that the oleo-struts fitted to the Lynx landing gear would appear to absorb some of the inertia on touchdown whereas with something like the Bölkow I'm guessing you have less licence to 'dump' the craft onto the deck?