homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Jane's F-15 & F/A-18 Call CLARA -- why?

OK, here's something minor that's been kinda bugging me for a while. With the pop-up IFLOLS -- which I don't particularly like, but I know why it's there -- why would we ever want to call Clara? We're always going to see the Ball, so the Clara option is really redundant. I've been flying JF/A-18 for two or three months now and have not seen a single circumstance under which I would have to call Clara. (I also flew Fleet Defender many years ago, and never needed to call Clara in that either.) So, has anyone ever needed to call Clara, and why?

A few bad approaches of mine have resulted in the ball not showing up at all.

I agree with original poster. If you have a good approach and can see the ball, there's really no need to call Clara. If you're so far off you can't see the ball, you may need to wave off and go around. Follow the ILS needles and the AOA indexer and there should be no issues. I'm not a fan of the IFLOLS either, as it seems to bring me in high pretty often and I have to wave off if I follow it exclusively.

I tend to put the path indicator on the wire area and control my descent rate and kind of visually fly it in. Since I have experience in PF which is always landing visually, I have a pretty high degree of success with this method.

I don't think I explained myself very well in my original post.

My understanding of calling Ball or Clara is to indicate whether or not you can see the IFLOLS -- whether the visibility is good enough for you to visually acquire it at the required range (3/4 mile). In real life, in clear weather you should always be able to call Ball; in heavy rain or dense fog the visibility can be so poor that you might not be able to see anything at 3/4 mile, so you would call Clara. Because we have the pop-up IFLOLS floating right in front of our UFC (this is what I don't like) then even if we did have very poor visibility conditions in the game (and I have yet to see anything like that) we will always be able to "see" the IFLOLS because it's floating there in front of us "in" the cockpit! So we should always call Ball.

My understanding also is that calling Ball is not related to the position of the meatball (the yellow/red lights in the IFLOLS), even if you are so far above or below the glideslope that you can not yet see those lights. It is specifically whether or not you have sighted the IFLOLS. So under what circumstance would anyone actually need to call Clara in our beloved sim?

Calling "Clara" is superfluous. I have seen no use for it, but it does add to the atmosphere if you use it.

From the NATOPS LSO Manual;

At the normal �Ball� call position (i.e., rolling wings level in the groove for Case I/II, or at approach minimums
for Case III), when the pilot has usable IFLOLS or MOVLAS, lineup, and angle of attack reference, the
following shall be transmitted (if not EMCON or ZIP LIP): Modex number, type aircraft, �Ball�, fuel state to
the nearest hundreds pounds, �Auto�/�Coupled� (if applicable). If the pilot does not have glideslope reference
(e.g., no ball, sun glare, or poor visibility), then the call �Clara� shall replace the ball call. If the pilot does not
have usable lineup information (e.g., wet landing area, sun glare, or poor visibility), then the call �Clara lineup�
shall be transmitted.

So, yeah, in the sim with the magical pop-up IFLOLS, it's never obscured by glare or weather. However, if your approach is way out of whack (way too high or low) you won't see the meatball, and the LSO wants to know about that, too.

I would like to add that I landed most of those bad approaches anyway. :p

Don't forget to install your imagination when playing video games.

Tolwyn: Imagination is not a problem here. I really like JF/A-18. I particularly like the terrain in the NCape theatre; it's very visually appealing, and doesn't feature the repetition apparent in the terrain used in sims like Falcon 4 or TAW. These require a lot more applicatoin of the imagination to filter out.

For me, small improvements would up the enjoyment factor of JFA-18 greatly. One would be the IFLOLS pop-up. If possible I would like to see a future TSH upgrade replace it with a much smaller version, preferably placed to the left of the HUD and under the AOA indexer. Or would it be possible to include a small "magnifier" to allow the IFLOLS on the carrier itself to be viewed? How difficult would either of these be to implement?

A good idea, but perhaps quite difficult or impossible.

When JF-18 was being developed, the word was that the original plan was to create an IFLOLS system that would work as it does in real life. I don't think the team was able to pull this off, so the came up with the pop-up idea. The "Clara" call may have been implemented before the concpet of the pop-up IFLOLS representation was developed.

I might be misremembering, but doesn't the Popup IFLOLS only pop up in response the the combined "CALL THE BALL, POP UP IFLOLS" command? These commands could be separated and you could just not pop up the IFLOLS and have a good excuse to call CLARA. In fact I think one of the XP issues encountered without compatibility mode was inability to 'stack commands' with one key combination, so for the CTL-B combo, you would call the ball but not get an IFLOLS.

Recluse: This was something I was quite annoyed by, so I removed the IFLOLS pop-up from Ctrl-B and assigned it to the numpad * key, so I can call up the IFLOLS at 2nm and start using the meatball for glideslope guidance, then use Ctrl-B just to call the ball in response to approach control. I know the IFLOLS is also assigned to Shift-F2 on the default keyboard mapping, but I removed that also -- it's too awkward to use.

Joe: That makes good sense, and sounds like a good explanation. Maybe we just need HUGE monitors with MEGA resolutions so we can actually make out the IFLOLS on the CV! LOL

I'm trying to remember how it was done in Fleet Defender, but it must be 15 or more years since I last tried a trap in that sim. Anyone remember that one?

Recluse nailed it. If you want a genuine reason to call clara in the sim in a "realistic" scenario set the WX to the deck and don't toggle your FLOLS on. You could also just not toggle it on in good WX and blame it on a "glare". The problem with that is there isn't an LSO to talk you down as in real life and the auto landing mode seems to cause an overshooting bolter every time.

Either way, I don't see what the big deal is about Clara, you don't "have to" call anything in the sim if you don't want to. You're not going to go to a virtual FNAEB for failure to call the ball, or clara, or fuel state, or anything else. If you want that situation, make it. If not, then suck it up and deal with always having the ball inconveniently placed in an unrealistic position. Like everyone else, I'd love to at least see it moved over by the HUD/AOA Indexer in a smaller size, but it appears to be something very difficult or impossible to do.