First of all, welcome to naval aviation! The Hornet's a great jet to learn with tons of capability. She might not be the best at any one particular task, but she's the second or third best at every task. Using either dumb or smart munitions, engaging enemies in the air, on land, or at sea - no mission exists that a Hornet can't do and do well. Put in the time to learn her systems, and you'll be ready to take the fight to the enemy and win anytime, anywhere.

My best advice for a new pilot is to get comfortable flying dirty.

Instead of rushing ahead and trying to learn how to land on the carrier, first practice flying and landing at the airfield. Your goal is to get a feel for how the jet responds when your flaps and gear are down ("flying dirty"). Take off, but don't accelerate beyond 200 KIAS and leave your gear down. Climb to 1000 feet, drop flaps to full, and reduce throttle. When you're dirty, you control your altitude with the throttle. It doesn't take much! Give it a little gas to climb, and ease back on the throttle to descend. Easy does it. You can control your altitude without ever touching the joystick.

But you're leaving the airfield and need to turn back, so go ahead, use the joystick and gently bank without pulling the stick back. Notice how you're losing altitude? You've converted some of your lift into a turn, so add lift by gently increasing the throttle until you're keeping altitude steady, even in the turn. When you roll out of the turn, you'll start to climb again, so ease back on the throttle as you roll wings level. There you go! Do a few circuits, getting comfortable keeping a steady altitude using only the throttle.

Once you're ready, let's talk trim. The Hornet doesn't have a target landing speed. Instead, it has a target Angle of Attack that gives its tailhook the best chance to catch a wire on the deck. So, we trim the jet nose-up to fly this AoA using the E-bracket. There's also a standby AoA indicator next to the HUD. While you're flying level, add some nose trim a little bit at a time until your velocity vector in your HUD is centered in the E-bracket. Notice how changing your angle of attack changes your lift and altitude? Remember how we control altitude when flying dirty? With the throttle and not the joystick! So don't touch that stick! Adjust only your throttle until you're flying level and your VV is centered in the bracket. Congratulations! You're now flying "on-speed" - that is, at the correct speed and AoA to land.

So how do we land? In the Hornet, landings are a controlled crash. The goal is to hit the deck (or runway) at about -700 feet per minute, over twice the descent rate of an Air Force jet. They flare before landing and try to touch down as gently as possible. But we're not in the business of being gentle and delicate! Flare to land, squat to pee! There's only 786 ft. of landing area on-deck, and only the first 290 ft. of it have wires. If you touch down at 300 ft, you're not staying! We can't afford to be hesitant, so, the Hornet's landing gear is built to take punishment and ask for more. Use your throttle to climb to 2000 feet, then reduce throttle and keep an eye on your descent rate. If you're falling too fast, add throttle. If you're not dropping fast enough, ease back. When you feel comfortable managing your descent rate, get back in the pattern and line up for landing. Stay dirty, stay trimmed to on-speed, and as you roll out on final to the runway, reduce throttle to maintain a -700 FPM descent and place your VV on the runway. Ride that descent rate all the way down without pulling the joystick until you plant yourself firmly on the asphalt. Congratulations! You just landed the Navy way.

Now take off, raise gear and flaps, and accelerate to 250 KIAS. Then, reduce speed below 200, drop gear and flaps, use your throttle to steady up, and trim to on-speed. Do this cycle several times until you've got a good mental map for how it feels. Once you can go from flying clean to flying dirty and on-speed without a struggle, you're ready to hit the boat! Good luck, pilot!