Ah f3f ?

[Duckie]

Does anyone know if AH's F3F can catch a wire if you have all the right stuff except the cockpit guage?

Cazzies' new digs for it have been calling me for awhile now and I sure would like to give her a work out on my Langley off Pensacola!

Duckie

 

[Mick]

Does anyone know if AH's F3F can catch a wire if you have all the right stuff except the cockpit gauge?

Cazzies' new digs for it have been calling me for awhile now and I sure would like to give her a work out on my Langley off Pensacola!

Duckie

Not sure what you mean by the cockpit gauge...

Any plane can catch a wire with Arrestor Cables as long as you have a cable catch zone set up for the carrier. There are no mods needed to the plane, just the ship.

The Carrier Operations Package doesn't do anything on the ship, but each plane has to have the package installed. I don't use it on the carriers because of the need to set up each plane. I use the catapult function for catapult launched floatplanes on the gunnery ships and for hang glider cliff launches.

There's also a program called 3wire, but I'm not familiar with it or how it works. I know it uses cable catch zones, so I guess it's more like ArrCab than the CV Ops package.

Anyway, whatever program you use, the AH F3F will trap just like any other plane.

When I set up the Langley in all those different locations I included a set of ArrCab cable catch zones in the documentation.

 

[bpfowler]

news to moi!
thought I had to have the RCB stuff on the plane to trap.

-just set arrcab trap zone
-extend virtual tailhook
-and trap?


thanks mick, correct me if i am wrong.

brady

 

[TARPSBird]

BP, you're basically right. You have to have Rich Hogen's "Arrestor Cables" (ArrCab) installed and running in the background when you're flying around the carrier.
Here is a worksheet I made up to help with making cable catch zones for each carrier. This is for ArrCab. Write down the values as you slew your plane on deck (see ArrCab instructions) and then add the whole entry to the ArrestorCables.dat file. I believe "3-Wire" uses almost identical entries.

 

[brad kaste]

Gentlemen,
Here's my ignorance speaking: If aircraft with carrier hooks can carrier land in CFS2,......with no modifications,....how come FS9 never had that built into the game itself? Even though there isn't any default carriers,....I'd think MS would have had that part of the installation package. What am I missing here?

 

[Mick]

news to moi!
thought I had to have the RCB stuff on the plane to trap.

-just set arrcab trap zone
-extend virtual tailhook
-and trap?

thanks mick, correct me if i am wrong.

brady

The RCB Carrier Ops package requires that all the gauges be installed on the plane. Nothing is added to the ship.

ArrCab (and I think 3wire) requires that a cable catch zone be designated for the ship. Nothing is added to the plane.

 

[Mick]

Gentlemen,
Here's my ignorance speaking: If aircraft with carrier hooks can carrier land in CFS2,......with no modifications,....how come FS9 never had that built into the game itself? Even though there isn't any default carriers,....I'd think MS would have had that part of the installation package. What am I missing here?

I think you answered your own question. Why would they go to the trouble of building carrier arrestment into a sim that has no carriers?

Or to be more correct, FS9 has one stock carrier, CV-63 Kitty Hawk off San Fransisco, but FS9 has no stock carrier planes to trap aboard her. In the documentation, MS suggests shooting carrier approaches with the stock Cessna 172, which is slow enough to come aboard and stop without any kind of arrestment.

Anyway, there's nothing in FS9 that requires a carrier arrestment capability, so no reason for them to build it into the sim.

I'm sure MS was very aware that aftermarket developers could and would model carrier arrestment, just as they would model carrier planes and more carriers, and that's what happened.

 

[Duckie]

Hey Guys, thanks for the interst. I guess maybe I wasn't very clear.

I have installing arrestor zones and catapult zones down pat. In one iteration of the system I believe a guage was required to be installed in the aircraft that had to be activated in order to recognize the zones.

In another iteration I remember reading that an arrestor hook equiped aircarft could catch a wire if the zones were setup with nothing else required of the aircraft.

I guess maybe my question should be, is the F3F model equiped with a working hook?

Thanks,
Duckie

 

[OBIO]

The surest way to tell if any given plane has a tail hook configuration, whether or not the plane has a modeled on tail hook, is to open the aircraft.cfg file and look for the Tail Hook section. This is the section from the AH F3F:

[TailHook]
tailhook_length=3.41 ;(feet)
tailhook_position = -18.9, 0.0, -1.0 ;(feet) longitudinal, lateral, vertical positions from datum
cable_force_adjust = 1.0

Yes, the F3F has the required config info for a tail hook. Beyond that, I have no idea what is needed in order to make everything jive for doing carrier landings and wire grabs.

OBIO

 

[delta_lima]

RCBCO is the way to go. Documentation is excellent (though hidden in the gauges folder, if memory serves). Sound and physical arrest effect - can't be beat, at least as FS9 goes.

The only pain is the location of the cat and trap gauges in the panel.cfg of the plane in question. I find it takes some trial and error to locate them so they "fit" aeasthetically into the panel, but it works awesome once in place.

The other beauty of RCBCO is you can designate trap fields anywhere - aboard carriers, or on airfields to simulate FCLP (does that mean you're simulating simulated carrier traps? )

Anyway, great program.

dl

 

[Mick]

Hey Guys, thanks for the interst. I guess maybe I wasn't very clear.

I have installing arrestor zones and catapult zones down pat. In one iteration of the system I believe a guage was required to be installed in the aircraft that had to be activated in order to recognize the zones.

In another iteration I remember reading that an arrestor hook equiped aircarft could catch a wire if the zones were setup with nothing else required of the aircraft.

I guess maybe my question should be, is the F3F model equiped with a working hook?

Thanks,
Duckie

As mentioned above, ArrCab (and 3wire, as far as I know) requires nothing to be added to the plane. I don't know how to say it more clearly. ArrCab (and probably 3wire) require nothing at all to be added to the plane. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

The RCB Carrier Ops Package has a couple of things (maybe more than a couple) that must be added to the plane, and the package's extensive documentation explains it in detail.

You can set up ArrAcb (and probably 3-wire) so that the plane will only catch a wire if the hook is down, or you can set it up to ignore the hook. It's in the settings and it's explained in the documentation. I believe the default configuration is to ignore the presence or absence of a hook, or whether it's up or down.

If you want to have to lower the hook, it doesn't matter whether or not there is a visible hook in the 3D model. All that matters is whether there's a virtual hook in the aircraft.cfg file.

I don't recall for certain, but I'm pretty sure that the AH F3F has a visible hook in the 3D model, and I'm sure (because I just peeked) that it has a virtual hook in the cfg file.

You can add a virtual hook to any plane that doesn't have one by copying the [Tailhook] section from the aircraft.cfg file from a plane that has one.

 

[brad kaste]

Mick,......you're correct. The AH F3F does have a 'visual' hook that deploys.

 

[Tom Clayton]

You can also "fake" a cat launch with any plane by getting it into the launch configuration and then slewing up about six inches, then coming out of slew. The only thing you need to make sure of is that you have absolutely zero speed when you enter slew. If so, you'll come out of slew at "cruise speed" - otherwise you come out with the same speed you went in with and just drop back to the ground.