Scudrunners

Can’t get much further away from folks than that.

The weather cleared up nicely yesterday afternoon so we did a formation flight. Social distanced on the ground with a 6 foot circle for the brief and 10 foot wing tip to wing tip clearance in flight. Yah can’t be too safe

10 foot wing tip to wing tip

That's a good, safe distance. Here's an 18 year old flying wing on me:




99.9% of pilots think that increasing the distance between airplanes increases safety, but ....



That's actually not the case. Space between airplanes allows frightening
closure rates to develop, as we have seen time and time over and over
and over again throughout the history of aviation.

That's how people get killed.

Nobody remembers Jimmy Franklin and Bobby Younkin. I don't think we
can blame their deaths on the Rona.

Not sure what the video has to do with wingtip spacing. A race takeoff is supposed to be managed by the marshals, which obviously didn’t happen here. Every formation takeoff I have ever flown has the second and if required third or more elements spaced at 500 ft intervals with each rolling only when the element ahead has lifted off

With respect to wingtip distance there is a trade off between between distance and time to hitting the other guy. Being very close reduces the reaction time, being too far away increases the possibility of a miss match in flight paths between the wingman and lead. This can be especially dangerous when lead turns into the wingman.

Personally I find about 10 feet wingtip separation is a nice compromise. There is lots of time to recognize and correct an unfavourable geometry with lead but the flight paths are similar enough that holding the formation is easy.