Tim, tell us about the tail hook and how you used it at the contest. I have talked to Mike P and he said you cut the throttle, the engine died and you landed, on the first landing he thought it was a fluke so when you did it again you found out that it was the way that was working best for you?
You wish to embarrass me?
Anyway, there's really two parts to this. One is the hook, and the other is the technique:
First: this thing won't idle low enough to land reliably, at least not without giving it down elevator and crashing into the deck.
Second: right or wrong, I couldn't get myself to do the "elevator down & crash into the deck" that a lot of folks do. Maybe with practice...
Third: Several years ago, at the second-to-last Eugene Regionals, a guy from California told me that the way he does Carrier landings is to approach the deck at a constant altitude and low speed, then cut the throttle. He practices so that he knows how far the plane will travel from that throttle cut to landing. For this plane, prop, and engine, the plane takes around 8 feet to land from dead-slow and 5 feet altitude. So that's what I did -- I come in at the lowest speed where I can hold the plane at five feet ('cuz I'm a stunt guy), and when I'm about six feet short of the deck I cut the throttle completely. This has worked for me
every single time that I have landed on a carrier deck (that's a lot less impressive when you realize that adds up to two landings).
Fourth: I had that fancy "blip down" hook mechanism (pictured) which didn't work for me. I don't know if I don't have it adjusted correctly to sense "down" when I blip it, or if it's just fine and I don't do the "blip" correctly or what, but I couldn't get it to deploy.
Fifth:
Every single time I've ever landed on a carrier deck the hook has caught a line while it was up -- note that it hangs down just a bit. The first flight was practice. The second flight was the official, and when I realized that the hook didn't deploy I just figured "Oh to heck with it -- it worked the first time" and landed.
So, I don't know if the hook is more reliable than most, or if the technique is super-wonderful, or if I just got lucky. I do think that I'm going to keep using the technique because it seems to be reliable, but I'm going to try a fixed hook, like the hook pictured in Eric's 2015 Flying Lines column. After I know more I'll either change things or not.