A good landing is one of the most rewarding parts of a flight. "F18 Carrrier Landing II" from RORTOS is all about landings, but provides little instruction on how to accomplish them. This basic tutorial will explain how to land the default F18 aircraft.

For this article we are assuming you've made the follow choices when starting:

Fast Landings
Flight mode: normal
Plane controls: simple

Your mobile device is used for steering, replacing the control stick found in a jet fighter. Turn it like a wheel left/right to move in those directions. Tilt it up to go up, tilt it down to go down. Throttle is controlled with your left thumb on the slider shown at the lower left of the screen.

OK, with the basics out of the way let's get to doing a landing. Each mission starts about five miles from your landing point, which is either a carrier or your base. The landing is done the same either way, the only difference being the carrier presents a much smaller target and thus you have to be more accurate.

First off, I suggest cutting power to roughly half; in simple mode this will slow down the plane. You'll want to get it in the 200 to 250 knt range for landing. Much below 200 knt and you risk a stall and loss of control.

Here's the view:

F18 Carrier Landing II HUD

Look at the upper left corner. The instrument there in your HUD (heads up display) shows your compass heading, distance to landing point and most important the "localizer" portion of the instrument landing system or ILS. This will aid you in lining up with the runway.

Look at the line in the middle of the compass, with the arrow at the top and with the center section split to the right. What that means is that you need to steer right of the target in order to be lined up properly with the runway.

Your target is the segmented circle with the number 5.1 next to it; the 5.1 is the distance. As shown in this image, we're steering to the right of the target. As we continue in this direction, the split line in the center of the compass will more towards the center and eventually will all line up. Just before that happens, turn the plane towards the target and fly straight towards it. Make small adjustments to your heading as necessary to keep the arrow pointed straight ahead and the center of the line perfectly lined up.

Here's the view you should see when lined up correctly:

F18 Carrier Landing II HUD

It's not quite perfect but very close. Note that the localizer line is almost perfectly straight. We're pointing slightly to the right of the target; ideally the little airplane symbol in the center of the screen would be right in the middle of the segmented circle. Continuing flying like this as straight toward the target as possible.

At some point you'll be given clearance to landing. Shortly after that is a good time to put your landing gear down. The landing gear control is at the bottom right; just touch it until the switch moves and you see the green lights.

As you get within visual range of the target the segmented circle goes away so as not to block your view, and you should see something like this:

F18 Carrier Landing II short final

As you can see from the localizer needle, and the visual of the carrier for that matter, I'm not perfectly lined up here but it was close enough I was able to pull off the landing.

Navy planes are not gracefully eased down as civilian planes are, rather you want to pretty much fly it right into the runway, especially so on a carrier landing. So keep the speed up somewhere in the 200 knot range and keep the power on. Fly the plane right into the landing zone and cut power the instant you touch touch.

If you've done things right, you'll grab one of the arrestor cables and be rewarded with a successful landing and a nice score. Now, go back and practice some more. Have fun!