"Looks like we're going swimming..."

[TurtleHawk 6]

Sometimes when RTB'ing at the end of a mission, there carrier doesn't show up.

 

Doesn't happen all the time, but enough to really notice. Seems to happen most if I skip a waypoint, or alt-n, to skip ahead.

 

Anyone know what causes this?

 

It's a scary feeling to get to WP 9 or 10, and there's no place to land.

[MigBuster 2,861]

The carrier sometimes sails off by itself - if you have a jet with Radar you can find it. I often use alt+n when im back over the sea myself and that puts you close anyway.

[Roberto Skylord 1]

Sometimes when RTB'ing at the end of a mission, there carrier doesn't show up.

 

Doesn't happen all the time, but enough to really notice. Seems to happen most if I skip a waypoint, or alt-n, to skip ahead.

 

Anyone know what causes this?

 

It's a scary feeling to get to WP 9 or 10, and there's no place to land.

 

Why this happen I don't know. But in general happens exactly on the situations tha you mentioned.

Well, the carrier is moving and if you skip the three lasts WPs, he doesn't show-up. The first time it happen with me, was in WOV and I need to eject cause fuel starvation. I was running with low fuel and set a direct course to the carrier. Even appearing in the radar, the carrier was invisible.

 

When it happen a second time, the carrier don't show up, I flew directly to the closest friendly airbase instead starting a search for him.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

You know, the ship wakes could be ramped up a bit...alot more than a bit...to make following them easy if that is desired. You often read pilot accounts of finding ships or fleets of ships by first spotting the wakes at 50 miles or so. In the book Lost Moon (or at least in the movie??), Lovell talked about following the glowing algae in the carrier's wake to find it at night. Shucks, I have aircraft contrails that can be set to about 20 minutes duration and can be seen from 500km distance.

 

20 minute B-47 contrails on the horizon, about 300km long, measured by B-47 at 540KTAS.

 

[Bulldog 0]

I have had the same problem, it seems when I do longer carrier missions I lose the carrier. What I ended up doing is after the mission objective is completed I keep hitting W until I get waypoint 8, and take the most direct route to the carrier. I haven't had problems finding the carrier since that.

[Thanos1 0]

Once you get to the waypoint, just ask the tower for the bearing to the airstrip. She'll tell you it's 5 miles out, 11 o'clock or something like that.