How We Practice Carrier Landings In The Desert

Welcome aboard. Today we are in the United States Navy T-45 Charlie Gossack over the fertile Imperial Valley in Southern California on the backside of an advanced flight training strike sortie that originated out of NAFL Centro on a rare overcast day. The T-45 Gossack is a tandem seat carrier capable jet trainer that was modified from the British Aerospace Hawk that replaced the T-2 and the T-A-4 United States Navy and Marine Corps trainers in 1991. We are leading a three ship formation also known as a light division that just departed the restricted area 25-12 on a mark 76 bombing training sortie in which all three aircraft expended eight by mark 76s and are now Winchester or out of bombs from the Inky Barley target and we are currently flying westbound towards the city of Imperial on our way back to NAFL Centro. We're fenced out our switches are safe and as we flow towards the city of Imperial we are transiting what we call an administrative cruise formation where dash two is on my left wing and dash three is on my right. As we approach the initial dash two will smartly cross under the formation and dash two and three will snuggle up into a tight echelon right formation as we approach what we call the numbers or the approach end of the runway. Okay here we go you'll see me raise my left fist above the canopy bow to my wingman on my left side that's me telling dash two that it's time to cross under the formation to the opposite side. As dash two slowly works its way over to the right hand side of the formation between dash one and dash three I'm starting an easy right hand turn in a slow descent to 2,500 feet as we align the formation with the final approach course to runway 26 at NAFL Centro which is just off the nose at about our one to two o'clock. You see me look off our right side yeah there he is dash two's crossed under and he's in a good position as we've got about under 30 degrees worth of turn or so to go lining up on the runway. All right as we look outside you can clearly see the city of Imperial right off the nose now as we slowly roll out and overfly the VFR reporting point of tanks which is a series of white water tanks just east of the Imperial Valley Airport. We're passing over the Imperial Valley Airport now trying to stay nice and high 2,500 feet as we get ready to tip over. Now that we've crossed over the airport I'm going to leave my throttle setting around 94% and slowly push over as we descend from 2,500 feet AGL to 800 feet AGL for the carrier overhead break. You can hear the jet speed up as we proceed just to the right side of runway 26 at El Centro. Okay we're leveling off we're about 350 knots look over my wingman kiss off brake to the left while it goes idle drag my velocity vector across the horizon as we brake overhead the field. There's the hangars below us continuing to turn in keeping it coming nice and level 800 feet 480 degrees with the turn rolling out slowing down staying level starting my turn there's 200 knots gear comes down flaps go full pump the throttle up bring it back looking outside keeping that turn in looking down still a red light in the gear handle it's out now one two three down a lot faster full hook is up hunters did you like it lining checks complete as we keep our turn in crossing the 90 now about 450 feet 135 right up we're going off about now as we roll into the groove 15 to 18 seconds is our target length wing solid transition and meatball line up angle of attack meatball line up angle attack meatball line up angle attack a little high working it down and touchdown before i go idle i'm going to steer back just a little to the left to get back on center line as i continue to coast down the runway keeping my speed up to allow sufficient separation between me dash two and dash three behind me as you slow down i'm going to work over to the left side of the runway in the event dash two or dash three have to go around for whatever reason we're crossing the intersection at runway three zero one two and we're approaching the floor board we're four thousand feet of runway remaining so we're going to verify that we've got less than 80 knots as we continue on the runway you can see the landing gear is pretty stiff on this airplane as the jet is a little bit bumpy starting to clean up the jet now power some things off pop off my mask sure is hot approaching the three board less than 60 knots looking good we're coming up on taxiway golf we're going to make a left hand turn cross the hold short and wait to pick up my wingman for the taxi back to the line well guys i hope you enjoyed the jam today if you did please like leave a comment subscribe let me know what you think about the gossack jams love to hear it thank you for your continued support for this channel flynavy welcome aboard gravity jams