• Roger Ball

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Today's personal computer flight simulators are just a hair's breadth from reality, and a freeware aircraft carrier add-on brought back the sights and sounds (if not the smells of JP-5, oily steam, or sweat) from forty years ago.

With a couple of mouse clicks I positioned a carrier, flight deck spotted for recovery, ten miles ahead of me. Into the break at 300 knots, the sight picture brought back a wave of memories.

The time the Air Boss called, "Keep it flying," as a stiletto Vigilante staggered into to the air, slowly rolled upside down, and disappeared in a noiseless splash.

Or the night, downwind after a bolter, when I heard a whine under my ejection seat and knew it was a hydraulic pump cavitating.Who knows how I knew that, but a calm pilot and the emergency hydraulic system got us back on deck where they threw chocks under the tires with us still in the arresting gear, and then towed us out of the wires, straight-wing, to the consternation of Flight Deck Control with a crowded flight deck.

Today, at the 90 rolling into the groove, I thought, yeah I've seen this picture before. Wide open ocean, tiny huge ship churning away from us. Five thousand hot, horny, hard working souls trying to make it through another deployment.

After almost 45 years and 10,000+ hours of flying (I learned in college, before joining the Navy) I figured, yeah, I can do this. Carrier ops can't be that hard. Especially when the pink bag 'o flesh called 'me' isn't at risk.

Think again, Non-Flying Officer, (as Aviation Week, who should know better, ignominiously once called Naval Flight Officers).  Hours and years don't a Naval Aviator make.

First pass was, "I know there's a ship out there somewhere. Oh, there it is. Okay, let's take 'er around and try that again."

Next pass was, "No, no, no. Two thousand feet abeam will never work." The Air Boss would have had a conniption if he saw what I did to get back into a reasonable semblance of a 180.

But the picture was, oh, so familiar. "Been there, done this" kept coming to mind.

"Prowler, ball, two point six," I tell the LSO so he knows we're an EA-6B, not a similar looking Intruder, and so he knows our fuel state.


What are those red lights on the lens? Shit, I'm low, real low. Power, power, POWER. Wave off. Boards in, watch the AoA.

Over the ship at PriFly eye-level, I unaccountably hear a flight deck announcement, and am reminded that this is an almost, but not quite perfect, $30 simulator, not a $30 million sim, nor a time machine.

Yellow shirts move around the flight deck, cranials and mouse ears in place. Low slung tugs, in modern white paint, move among the parked F/A-18s and E-2Ds, none of my era's yellow gear pushing A-3s, A-6s, and F-4s, reminding me this is the CV-68 Nimitz — CVA-64 USS Constellation, or Connie, has has been retired for years. My kids think it's funny that the San Diego Air and Space Museum has an A-6 with my name on the canopy rail. 

Next pass starts out badly, but miraculously turns into a trap. LSOs little black book would probably read something like BRFAPPS3: brilliant recovery from a piss poor start,  3 wire.

I wasn't so lucky on the next few. including one pass where I got a heart stopping look up at the flight deck after pulling off too much power.

But I did manage one final OK3, at least from my perspective. Paddles probably would have though otherwise. And it wasn't dark, and the deck wasn't pitching, and I wasn't worried about dying, or worse yet, embarrassing myself.

On deck, thumb the boards in, hook up, flaps up, taxi clear, yellow shirt gesturing frantically. Taxi toward the deck edge, cockpit hanging out over the water before a turn so the main mounts almost rub the steel curb that (usually) keeps us out of the catwalk. Looking down nothing but water going by, another flash of recognition. Watch the power as we come around so we don't blow a plane captain in the water or suck someone down an intake. Shut her down, canopies open. Air Boss is   calling for the re-spot in preparation for the next launch.

Another day, another dollar. Only nine months to go my memory recalls.

"Honey, dinner's ready," my wife purrs, "You want beer or wine?" The fantasy evaporates, replaced by a dream come true.

Maybe I'd better try some FCLPs tomorrow, before I go back out to the ship?


UPDATE: I was being facetious when I suggested some Field carrier Landing Practice. Turns out there is an add-on (free) FLOLS trailer that you can place anywhere. So I plunked one down at NOLF Coupeville and went around the pattern a few times. It helped! Just back from a session on the Eisenhower, amidst a bunch of CARQUAL T-45s, and did better.