[HOW-TO] F/A-18E Landing Guide

Raynen - and all - has anyone had any random engines out?
Assistance CRASH AND DAMAGE OFF, plenty of fuel, not thrashing it. Engine just flames out and can’t be re-lit? APU won’t switch on for more than a couple of seconds so can’t spool the fans beyond RPM 25 or so. FF is at zero.
This happens approx 50 mins in to a Sortie.

Check your fuel, there appears to be an issue right now where the left and right main(wing) tanks aren’t feeding fuel into the system. So your Engine Fuel Display will still indicate about 3300 Lbs of fuel onboard, but the engines aren’t getting any fuel.

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Interesting.

I did think it was Fuel Starvation.
When I’d got it straight and level on the one engine I re-fuelled ALL tanks up to max to check - the OUT engine and the APU failed to light. I’m thinking that AFTER the fuel fail it fails to register that you’ve topped off the tank anyway and stays starved.

So re-fuelling in flight (once the engines gone) won’t convince the starved engine that fuel’s available.

You should be able to restart everything in flight, given you have enough altitude. Just keep in mind if you lose them both you want to start the right engine first, because once the left engine is running the APU will also turn itself off within 60 seconds.

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Ummm, that’s what didn’t work today. It was the LEFT that failed. I was flying on the RIGHT engine only.

Initially, I tried starting the APU to crank the LEFT but when I flipped the APU switch to ON it would snap to OFF after about four seconds. I tried this half a dozen times.

Then I suspected Fuel Starvation so cheated and topped off ALL tanks - the flight immersion abandoned and now just continuing the flight to see what was going on.
With ALL tanks Full the APU still wouldn’t start for more than a few seconds and I was therefore unable to start the LEFT engine.

After the hasty landing at EGHF I parked up and shut down and started again from C + D, Re-fuelled again, on the ground, and Hey Presto - APU started. But it wouldn’t crank either engine beyond RPM 25. It was dark and I was sitting there in the cockpit thinking - "the only reason for this now is the Igniters aren’t working. But what it could only have been was that the aircraft was unaware it had fuel.

Even though ALL fuel tanks were at 100%.

I’d surmise by saying the Fuel System on this bird - at present - is edgy.
Plan your flights for fuel and don’t rely on re-fuelling in flight because that might bite you on the behind with an Engine OUT - Un-recoverable.

You seem knowledgeable about this aircraft and it’s systems. Are you a RL driver or from DCS? Also I’m curious what what controllers you are using. I have the Honeycomb Alpha and Bravo for GA and Commercial but I’m looking to get a HOTAS now.

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Raynen has definitely been appointed Chief Training Pilot for the F/A-18.

For myself - I’m flying with the Thrustmaster HOTAS X - and it works perfectly for this airframe.

Nothing to do with my Fuel Issue posted above.

Not a RL Hornet driver no, just been a big fan of the jet since I was a kid. A lot of the non-combat systems are fairly easy to find information on. As far as controllers, using a trusty HOTAS Warthog, still as reliable as when I bought it 10 years ago.

I’ll see what I can do to replicate this, might be a few days before I can look into it though.

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Do you think anybody would be interested in the NATOPS Flight Manual, Performance Data, and Pocket Checklist? Just a little light reading.

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Probably not just yet.
I think we need to wait a while until some Modders get to work.
At the moment - best to treat it as a Prototype and regard yourself as firmly in the realms of Test Pilot - they are, after all the guys who end up authoring the NATOPS Manuals.

While I’m sure they would, I would caution against sharing/linking such documents here. As even though they may be publicly available to some areas, they do have quite strict export rules.

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Yep, absolutely. This is a current airframe in service.

I share Raynen’s caution about doing this.

Sim Skunk Works - who make excellent aircraft for P3D - AV-8B, F104, etc - do pride themselves on providing NATOPS - but the contents are “cleaned” first - if you get my drift.

This NATOPS is from Commander Naval Air Systems Command. The 934 page Flight Manual.

Good idea. Even though it is unclassified. Better safe than unsafe.

I do wish that they would include at least some sort of a downloadable manual or in game information when they release complex aircraft instead of just having us trip over everything trying to teach ourselves the systems.

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Hi all, just a reminder it’s best not to post any material that isn’t public domain or copyright.

Thank you!

I do hope you can replicate this fuel issue - I didn’t know about the (main) Wing Tank levels thing - so I’ll have to get in the air tomorrow and check that that wasn’t a component in my Failures today.
But certainly - an In-Air Refuel (al tanks to 100%) still left the APU and Left One Starved.
So we have an issue of some kind - we just need to define it properly - then we can start shooting Zen-Desk, VOTES - if needed, etc.

I had an issues somewhat related to your engine/fuel problem. I was flying with afterburners on for a while. All of a sudden they disengaged and wouldn’t immediately turn back on. I figured the engines were hot. After 30/45 mins they still wouldn’t engage. Was it a glitch or…

Well almost, angle between the horizon and the longitudinal axis, not the chord line.

Those are two unrelated things, you can fly a certain glide path with a certain AOA. And this is in fact exactly what is done in real life. You can fly a X degree glide path with angle of attack Y. Thats the tricky part, matching the glide path with correct AOA. The same way you try to match approach speed with glide path on a “normal” aircraft.

The problem in general / commercial aviation is that most aircraft don’t have an AOA indicator, thats why we fly a certain approach speed depending on the gross weight. What you are basically trying to achieve is flying the approach with a constant AOA (without AOA indicator) no matter the aircraft weight. During level flight you can directly relate speed to AOA for a given weight and configuration.

In other words, its not all that different if you think about it. The difference being that the F/A-18 has a AOA indicator, most other aircraft do have a AOA probe but the AOA is not displayed in the cockpit, instead AOA is only used for stall warning activation and low speed cues. AOA is translated into speed, the F/A-18 uses AOA directly.

One way of looking at it: the Powered Approach mode is like flying a conventional aircraft on autopilot in FLC / IAS mode with approach speed set while using thrust / power to control descent path.

I think @Raynen can best judge if my take on it is correct.

Actually, I believe I had the more precise definition of pitch angle. First, because of the curvature of the Earth, at high flight levels the visual horizon falls below your horizontal reference plane. Second, longitudinal axis is the roll axis and is very often closely aligned with the nose and tail (or center of mass) while wings are usually mounted with a slightly positive chord. But to give an extreme example, the F-8 Crusader had a variable angle of attack wing to allow for high speed flight and increased the AOA for more lift on landing and take off. The chord line and the longitudinal axis are two very different values. I don’t think we could argue that the wing set the pitch angle not the fuselage.

Thank you for clearing up my confusion on the AOA hold on PA mode. Your explanation makes more sense than the articles I was reading earlier.

Sorry for the text wall. A few glasses of wine and I get talkative.