Why I Love Formation Flying So Much

[Colonel]

You probably think formation flying is a useless stunt, and 99% of the time you'd be right.

But formation flying requires insane precision (at least by the wings). Builds character.

Here's the question. Are you a passenger in your airplane, or are you the pilot in control?

Most people struggle to stay anywhere near the centerline when they are landing, and they
think that +/- 100 feet of altitude control on their IFR flight test makes them a super-stud.

Uh huh.

When you have enough control over your aircraft to make it do what you want it to do, with
a positioning error of +/- one inch in three dimensions, you are truly a master of your craft.

Now, that probably doesn't matter to you. You're happy to be hamburger in the cockpit,
really just another passenger that can't find another job that pays better.

And that's ok, I guess, until it isn't.



On right wing, flying a line-abreast loop at low altitude is an 18 year old who had a really shitty flight instructor.

I miss the old guys, who could actually fly.





They're all dead/gone/retired now, but that guy could fly pretty good formation with the runway.

[Colonel]

Got a 20th century joke for ya. Pilot humor.

BA 747 pilot is told by tower after landing,

"Sir, you were a little left of the localizer on your last approach"

Pilot replies,

"Yes, and my co-pilot was just a little right of the localizer"

[Slick Goodlin]

I think something that people who haven’t done it don’t realize is that formation flying is a ton of work. It’s like the last little bit of an ILS where tiny attitude changes have big effects, and speed is important on top of all that. Then stretch it out to however long you want to hold formation for. Aggressive join-ups are a trip, too. Last one I did had the girl in my passenger seat scream as I zipped right in alongside her boyfriend’s plane, lol.

Also loose formation is much harder than tight though with lesser consequences if you pooch it.

[Slick Goodlin]

When you have enough control over your aircraft to make it do what you want it to do, with
a positioning error of +/- one inch in three dimensions, you are truly a master of your craft.

Now, that probably doesn't matter to you. You're happy to be hamburger in the cockpit,
really just another passenger that can't find another job that pays better.

I happily aspire to be both.

[John Swallow]

Andrew:

Your father would have recognized this position...

J

[Colonel]

Slick: it pleases me that you have been working at flying close formation.

Close formation / fingertip / welded wing / parade (whatever you want to
call it) is a fascinating world to delve into. There is actually quite a lot to
just flying wing (forget about the completely different job of lead).

You might start out on right wing 45 degree, at varying distance. Sight
picture! You might be stepped or not. You might not change altitude in
turns (weird, but true - navy). Once you get comfortable on right echelon,
be sure and spend time on left until you have no preference and either is
ok. Learn to do formation takeoffs and landings in right and left echelon.

Then, learn to fly line abreast. Harder to do well because of the sight
picture of the lead - try to get rid of the bank.

Then there is slot, or box. Behind the lead and almost always stepped
down. Ok in a monoplane, absolute hell in a biplane. Most pilots would
consider it downright reckless to fly wing on a lead aircraft that you don't
see, because he is blocked by the top wing of the biplane. Stressful and
miserable.

Then there are different airplanes. Is the aircraft light and draggy with
lots of thrust? It's going to be easy to fly wing in. If it's heavy and slippery
and has no power, it's going to drive you nuts at first. Try hard not to be
a throttle jockey. And pull your toes off the rudder pedals. Try to relax,
even if that seems impossible at first.

Then there are different types. You must learn the overlap of the aircraft
and fly within them. The lead must not exceed the available thrust or
drag or alpha of the wing. Turning into the formation, you can kill the
wing. Turning away from the formation, you can leave the wing behind.

Then there is formation aerobatics, which is the combination of solo
aerobatics and formation into something else entirely. The sight pictures
are WILD and the skill and knowledge that you will develop will separate
you from 99.999% of the pilot population. Try negative G formation
sometime, but don't die. Do it with nose to tail space at first.


Above is just close formation. It also pleases me that you have taught
yourself joinups, which actually have absolutely nothing to do with formation
(they are actually ACM) but are required if you don't do formation takeoffs
or get separated and need to rejoin. Joinups display a mastery of the
knowledge of physics and stick and rudder skill, and as you might imagine,
I am terribly fond of them. When you see a good joinup, you are seeing
a master at work. Rob Holland does rapid joinups inverted, and with all
due respect, is a better pilot than any Canadian I am aware of, living or
dead.


I would like to mention something that John will be familiar with. As
you hinted, you can space out the formation - which feels good at first -
but beware of the dangers of high rates of closure developing.

Cross-country, you will not want to fly close formation unless your lead
is a sadist (I would make my son fly close formation for an entire cross
country. Built character).

Flying spaced out a bit, can make a lot more sense. You can relax a
bit - always keeping an eye on the lead - but when it comes to maneuvering
the formation, spaced out, it gets interesting.

See, when you turn a spaced-out formation, you do NOT want to keep
the sight picture. That would require MUCH too much speed reduction
of the wing on the inside, and the wing on the outside would have to
exceed Vne.

So, when a spaced-out formation turns to make a 90 degree heading
change - let's say you're wing on the inside - you don't touch the throttle.
You end up on the other side of the lead, on the outside, after passing
below the lead.

If you are on the outside, you are going to turn and end up on the inside
side of the lead, without touching the throttle, after flying over the lead.



This formation is sometimes referred to as "battle" depending upon your
particular culture, and is a neat thing to learn to do, because you are flying
relaxed formation cross-country, spaced out, without having to hammer
the throttle. Reduces fuel consumption by the wing.

Anyways. I have probably talked too much about this. I will mention that
skill and knowledge developed from this arcane pursuit will easily transfer
to your other activities as a pilot. ILS is now easy, your landings are more
precise and consistent. That matters to me. I know, a 20th century pilot.
Some day I will die, and go back there.

[mcrit]

So....parade formation was not my friend going through training. I liked it, but I tended to get a death grip on the controls and PIO myself off the wing. Tactical formation, that I was pretty good at...usually...which makes my next little story all the more ironic.

It was time for my second formation solo flight; nobody was more surprised that they were turning me loose than I was. The poor fellow that drew the short straw as my lead that day was an exchange officer who had formerly been lead on an allied force's demo team. He conducted the sortie like a show; canopies closed/opened on his signal, engines started on his signal, taxi on his signal etc... So, we do the wing take off (wing take offs / landings didn't bother me to much because we were generally slow enough that my death-grip twitches on the stick didn't translate to big movements of the aircraft) and head out to the practice area doing a variety of echelon left/right, line astern flat turns and such. I'm sweating bullets just trying to stay on the wing and not die. So the close formation ends I get sent out to double attack; that's where you fly parallel to lead, about 1 turn radius away. I'm thinking to myself, "Cool, got through the hard part, the rest should be easy". So we start some basic, no radio, manouvers. These are all done by wing rocks and rudder waggles. If lead wants the formation to turn towards him, he rocks his wings, then you turn 90 degrees towards him while he continues straight, as you pass behind him he turns to parallel your path. The net result is the whole formation has changed heading 90 degrees while maintaining relative position. If lead wants the formation to turn towards you, he turns 90 degrees towards you and as he passes behind you you turn to parallel his flight path. Easy-peasey. So we'd done a few of these turns and I stole a quick glance inside to check engine gauges and so on. Just had my eyes inside for 0.25s. Look back at lead and he's rocking his wings. Instant reaction on my part; roll up to 80 degrees bank, bring on the g, and make the 90 degree turn. I roll out, look over to my right to find lead as I pass behind him. Can't quite find him...strange...he should be right where he was every other time we'd done this........OH SHIT THAT WASN'T A WING ROCK...just as "Hammer 2 roll out now!" comes over the radio and I see lead go by me 200 feet to the left with ~550kts of closure. So, next call was "Remainder of exercise will be with comms, join up at XXX". I make it through the rest of the flight, despite the certain knowledge that I am going to be killed outright shortly after landing. We head back, land, shut down and, contrary to all sense of self preservation, I start walking over to lead's aircraft. As I get closer he says. "So, do we need to talk about that abortion in the practice area?" My reply is a polite and contrite "No sir". Lead continues, "Good. Ok, you were loose when we came back over the base for the break. It didn't look cool. The whole point of formation is to look cool, you didn't look cool" Then he turned and walked away.

https://youtu.be/HVK2YtNofeI

[Slick Goodlin]

“The whole point of formation is to look cool"

I’m stealing that for every time I explain formation flying from here on out.

[Colonel]

Good times.

Remember to dial in nose-down trim as wing, to get rid of the PIO in pitch.
The more bumps, the more nose-down trim. At least 5 lbs, I prefer 10 lbs
or even 20. At the end of the flight, if your right arm isn't two inches longer
than your left arm, you need more nose-down trim :^)

Formation flying is wonderful training. Like learning to fly tailwheel or
aerobatics or glider or float flying, it makes you a better pilot - improves
your skill and knowledge. That's important to some pilots.

The actual utility of formation is to move the most number of airplanes
from point A to point B in the minimum amount of time. You may recall
that at Oshkosh, they don't allow the stupid fucking private pilots to yammer
over the radio. No time for that. They even have frightening "caravans"
where amateurs fly huge groups of Bonanzas and Mooneys into OSH at
the same time. Free advice: stay as far away from Amateur Time™ as
you can.

Here's an example. You want to get 16 RV's to an airport, but you don't
have all day to do it. Form up four flights of four aircraft. Only the lead
of each flight talks to tower. Echelon overhead approach, a break and
four aircraft are landed in a very short time, and no fucking stupid private
pilots yammering on about "conflicting traffic, please advise" to the Tower.

Most people don't need to move a large group of aircraft in a short interval
of time, so they don't know anything about this.