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This
presentation has been organized to follow the time-line of a typical
formation flight – preflight, taxi, departure, joinup, cruise, and
landing. It is aimed at the
knowledgeable private pilot who is competent in a typical single-engine,
light plane, and who has always wanted to try formation, but has never had
the opportunity. The objective of the
briefing is to cover some of the basics of what makes a formation flight work
smoothly.
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By no means
is this presentation comprehensive!
It is not reasonable (nor possible) to learn formation flight on the
ground! Rather, the intent is to focus
on areas that may give the novice
formation pilot the most trouble, and on the fundamental dynamics of
formation flight. Important topics
such as power management, formation configuration changes, basic hand
signals, practice formation exercises, and much more generally are left to
the more appropriate realm of ground and air instruction with a competent
formation instructor.
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I have tried to
stick to the formation flight procedures that have been developed by the
military over the course of millions of hours of flight time. Most of these time proven procedures
are directly applicable to civilian formation flight. There are a few aspects of “traditional”
military formation flight, however, that I believe require some modifications
to better match the operational world of the civilian pilot. For example, radio procedures in the
military typically call for extreme discipline. The flight leader talks (occasionally);
while the rest of the flight watches for his hand signals, monitors the
air-to-air frequency, and generally observes radio silence. But the civilian pilot often has neither
the experience nor the station holding skills to rely on hand signals. Thus, for the safety of the flight, more
radio communications usually are required in civilian flights. I will try to note those instances where I
believe that military procedures might not be the “full story” for the
civilian formation pilot.
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