Formation Flights

Here is a picture I took of the runway at night, I was on duty Tuesday night as "Assistant Runway Duty Officer" and my job was to sit at a desk in a small orange car with a radio and flashing lights and then "waveoff" any plane trying to land with it's gear up. I took the opportunity to snap some pictures and this one is really great for seeing how the runway looks at night. Even though it's at an altitude of about 6', it's pretty good for seeing how hard it is to judge where exactly the runway is from the air.

Since the last time I updated this, I've had two Formation flights. So far I think they've been the hardest flights I've had and the second most fun, next to Aerobatics.

I have a wingman and not only do we fly together but we've been studying together in order to get our teamwork on the procedures down. We make up a flight of two or a "section" with one plane acting as the "lead" and one acting as the "wingman." Lead handles the radio calls, navigation, lookout and has overall command of the flight. The wingman is only responsible for "maintaining flight integrity" or in other words staying in the proper position in relation to Lead at all times.

Both positions have their own special challenges. As Lead, it is tough to fly the proper heading and altitude (course rules) while making radio calls and keeping the best possible airwork (maintaining said course and altitude) so as to help out and keep Wing safe. Lead is also responsible for passing signals to Wing before any turn, climb, power change, maneuver or well, any change at all.

For "parade formation" or very tight formation, Wing must keep him/herself in a position about 45 degrees behind Lead on the side signalled by Lead with 20' nose to tail separation, 4' wingtip to wing tip separation and 10' below Lead. It seems pretty simple but this entails matching certain bearing lines off of Lead (for advanced readers: Ventral point over cutout, prop arc bisecting the wing midpoint and exhaust stacks buried) and holding them through constant and continuous power and stick adjustments. It is truly exhausting, I've never been as tired after a flight as after my first formation flight.

However, the biggest reason for that was that I wasn't relaxed. A lot of flying involves finding that point of Zen where it's easier to do what you're supposed to be doing by thinking (and stressing) less about it. In night flying, my landing pattern improved when I stopped worrying about hitting my checkpoints and just let myself relax and trust myself to fly like I know how to fly. In Forms, my first form flight wasn't great because (aside from being the first time I did it...) I was very stressed out and worried about not hitting my wingman ("trading paint" as they call it). I was "trying to squeeze the black out of the stick" which means I had a white knuckle grip on the black plastic handle of the stick and "overcorrection" which is to say that I was correcting way too often and way too much.

On my second Formation flight, I flew with our squadron C.O. it was one of the better flights I've had. Not only was he totally relaxed, but for some unknown reason, so was I. I had total confidence and since I'd been studying so much, I pretty much nailed it. I locked into "Parade Position" within 5 minutes and flew my checkpoints like a champ. It was just like sailing close to another boat, using small corrections to maintain position and working the relative motion to keep myself in the right spot. Not only that, but my "airwork" was excellent. Probably 95% of the time I held my airwork to within +/- 25' of where I was supposed to be and my heading was dead on. I would estimate that +/- 50 to 100 is pretty average for a pilot this far in the pipeline.

It was a huge confidence builder and my grades are pretty okay. I would estimate that I'm still within Jet range and after this last flight, skill wise, I'm pretty confident in my abilities.

I can't wait for the next flight however since the latest T-34C crash last Friday (both pilots killed crashing into a mountain in Alabama, tragic but nobody I knew and the plane was from NAS Whiting Field in Pensacola), we've been on a reduced operations tempo so it may take a while to get through this unit and into Radio Instrument Navigation (R.I.s for short).

Happy Easter!