Page 20 - Nov2019
P. 20
Naval Flight Operations
An Evaluation And Critique
For more than 80 years Edmonton’s Blatchford Field was
the centre of a bustling aviation community that spurred By Ray Hill
the growth of the city, the region and the North. Hundreds Throughout the history of flight, naval aviation has always
of men and women let their dreams take flight from this been far more challenging than land operations. The naval
historic airfield, flying everything from biplanes to bush flight spectrum, taking account of the need of any marine
planes, bombers to jets. arm, has operated a broad spectrum from landplanes,
seaplanes, shipborne catapult launches (e.g. from cruisers
The Alberta Aviation Museum is committed to keeping that and CAM merchantmen), rotary wings, from almost
aviation heritage alive by sharing their stories, offering
anything that floats (civil as well). Finally of course there
educational programs and producing online content.
are the aircraft carriers. I will ignore the nasty flying things
that come out of submarines these days.
The X-Plane platform offers some access to this type of
flying, although in my opinion, they could offer customers
far more, even as a $20 cost option. Out of the box we get
the Nimitz and the Perry, plus an oil rig, and sometimes
even a sloop enjoying a life of leisure. In their own right
they are all reasonable enough; the Perry and oil rig are
equipped for rotary operations, maybe even VTOL (I
remember a P1127 practising landings on our old cruiser
HMS Tiger). Nimitz of course is well equipped for CATOBAR
operation, but the downside is that there is no option to set
up a non catapult launch for something like a Harrier/AV8
Osprey or F35, unless you land it on the deck first and then
save it as as a .sit file.
Operational testing done in X-Plane 11.30.
With MRL's Queen Elizabeth loaded up, I thought I'd send
my 'spy plane' out for a clandestine visit. On the way back, I
used the XCARR (Nimitz) approach scenario.
