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There's a board in every ready room, displaying
the color-coded grades. Everyone in that highly competitive environment knows
exactly where he fits in the hierarchy of the one thing which separates every
Navy pilot from his terrestrial, mortal counterparts: Landing aboard the ship.
You could have an outstanding mission, replete with shacked targets, dead
bandits and superior airborne leadership. But if you came back and landed on the
"ace," the one-wire, it was a bad
hop.
It's not only what wire you
catch (although that is important) - it's how you get there. While it's pretty
hard to get a good grade on the one-wire, and impossible if you bolter, there
are nearly as many 4.0 two-wires as there are three-wires.
Smooth, predictable and controlled.
Or at least making it look that
way.
Because we're all about
appearances.
Actually, the reason why
we grade landings is part of a continuous process improvement plan - we work
hard to do it well when it's easy, so that we can do it at all when it's hard.
And it does get hard. Chinese algebra hard, when the deck is moving, and the
weather rolls in, and the moon is a distant memory of a time when it didn't
suck, quite so bad.
So the
grades:
OK - An "Oh-kay." A 4.0
grade, pretty much the best that you can do - above average, in other words.
There's also the OK (Oh-kay, underline) - reserved for outstanding
landings with significant complicating factors - an engine out, for example. You
don't count on OK.
Next is a
(OK), or "fair" pass. Fleet average. The parentheses are used in LSO shorthand
to indicate "a little." So a (OK) is a little OK. A 3.0
grade.
Next is a bolter, indicated by
a "B." A bolter is a 2.5 grade - better than the worst normal pass, the
"No-grade" (2.0), defined as "below average." A No-grade is ugly, but safely
ugly. Nevertheless, you don't want to make a habit of being safely ugly. You're
not getting paid for that.
Next down
the list is a "wave-off," a 1.0 grade, defined as "unsettled dynamics,
potentially unsafe." The "eat at Joe's" lights come on, you add full power, and
are asked to try again.
Harder.
Finally comes the worst
grade, the "Cut." A 0.0 grade, defined as "unsafe deviations inside the wave-off
window." The wave-off window is that moment in space and time where no matter
what the LSO tells you to do, you're going to land. Somewhere. You definitely
don't want to get many of those. They're career
enders.
Anyone who maintains a GPA
above 3.0 is professionally safe. Anyone who's GPA starts with a
2-point-anything had better start working harder.
The LSO's use shorthand to grade a
pass - something written down as: (OK) OC NEP-BC /IM (NEP-CDIC) SDAR LOBDRIW 2,
would translate into, "Fair pass: over-controlled a little not enough power on
the ball call, fly through up in the middle, a little not enough power on the
come-down in close, settle/decel at the ramp, low, flat, drift right in the
wires. Two-wire." As a pilot, you'd like to hear as few comments as possible,
since comment quantity has an inverse relationship to landing quality.
At the end of every line period
(anywhere from three weeks to three months, depending on what the carrier has
been doing), the air wing will gather in the ship's forecastle (pronounced
foc's'l) for an awards ceremony. There are songs, and skits and much buffoonery
before awarding those pilots who have passed a milestone (100, 200, 300 traps,
etc) and finally the "Top Ten" in landing grades. It's a lot of fun, especially
if you're in the Top Ten. More especially still if you're the number one guy,
the "Top Hook."
Because landing
aboard the ship at all hours, and in all conditions, is what we do. I mean,
anyone can merely fly a fighter. Right?
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