I'll be honest with you Blazer, I pretty much gave up trying to hover the Harrier from normal flight to land VTOL after PR screwed with the flight dynamics. I can do Vertical take offs fine but landing it is, like most people, disastrous.
So to get around my landing problems I used my lessons in BMS to help me land on the carrier in the conventional way.
Tonight I have recorded a session (about 27 minutes) where I have managed to take off and land the Harrier vertically based on the way you land vertically, and tried to analyze what is going on here.
I think I have it pretty well worked out for me but if anyone else has more to add, feel free.
The dynamics that PR changed really stuffed most of the pilots up when it came to using the Harrier Jump jet, you used to be able to reverse throttle or hold down S and it would hover no problem at all.
Someone has changed those settings to simulate the need for AOA (Angle of Attack) which is a pretty fancy name for pointing the nose up at a certain angle when landing.
Well Blazer you nailed it when you mentioned holding down the S key and not taking your finger off. That is exactly correct! The biggest mistake pilots are making in PR is that they are not going nose up BEFORE they hit the hover button, and probably not slowing the Harrier down enough either. I'm rendering the video at the moment but I'll write down the basics for what I think it is:
Vertical Take Off
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Hold down the 'S' key and get the Harrier to 100ft/m (clear from the carrier)
Angle the nose of the Harrier to 5 deg AOA
Go to full throttle, keeping the nose at AOA the whole time
If you find yourself going too vertical, you can back off the throttle a bit until the nose drops again and then keep the throttle ON
Vertical Landing
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Plan your approach at least 1 to 2 NM out from your landing zone (carrier)
Get your approach speed down to below 500 KTS (knots) which is about 40-43% of throttle
Make sure your altitude is 100 ft/m depending on how good you are
Angle the nose of the Harrier to 5 deg AOA, and keep it there if you can
Hold the 'S' key down and keep it there until you achieve hover
You may over-shoot but that is a trial and error thing to get it right
Do not panic if the Harrier's nose begins to climb, so long as the air speed is dropping, the nose will come back down
Presto! You should be at hover at roughly 100ft/m above the deck of the carrier
If you don't know how to land a Harrier from this point you shouldn't be flying one!!
Note: If your approach air speed is nearer 400KTS you may find the Harrier doing weird shit like nose diving or going vertical, try to keep it closer to 500KTS
Credits to: Blazer, Static and SemlerPDX.