.....There are G/S and LOC needles both in the Hornet sim I was in at Miramar, several Y/T videos showing HUDs...
You folks are the resident specialists Sludge.
I have never been inside a real hornet or a real sim for a hornet, and not within a 1000nm of a real boat, so I really don't know.
That's why I had tentatively prefaced my original comments as
"I am given to understand". And I was given to understand this during my discussions on the subject with Pop many years back.
.....where there are (CATCC-Hornet) calls for needles. Calls such as "say bullseye" and the responses "a little high" (G/S) and "a little right" (LOC)...
Again a matter of my interpretation Sludge (for lack of my personal real life knowledge). I was always given to understand that call for needles was associated with 'loc' needle available.
And no one actually told me this, but I guessed it for myself. Absence of G/S needle (if it is indeed so) explains the Case III arrival pattern and associated R/T calls as enumerated in NATOPS. Remember 4000 ROD till Platform and then 2000 ROD till 1200 feet. Maintain this height till initial and then tip over. I had questioned this procedure during my initial trg around the boat many years back. My question to my instructor (FSX instructor, not real life okay,
at that time was, since we already have ILS needles available at 25nm, why don't we descent on the needles and why do we need to follow this stepped descent for Case III ops.
I was also told that 3nm initial in Case III ops at 1200 feet approximately puts one in a position where the airplane would just centre the glideslope marker. It is at this point that the pilot transitions from IFR approach to VFR (so to say). One gets another two miles to stabilize his descent and adapt his scan pattern from inside the cockpit to outside and start to look out for the boat. A 700 FPM ROD from that point will also bring you at 600 feet about .7 nm from boat (place for ball call) at which point the approach is flown visually even in a case III ops.
But, now that you mention it, even I agree that, in quite a few videos I
might have actually seen both G/S and Loc needles of actual hornet landings.
Funny, how much of knowledge exists on this forum. Glad to be a part of it.
Sooner
(couldn't resist it, JK),
Mickey