This presentation has
been organized to follow the time-line of a typical formation flight –
preflight, taxi, departure, join up, 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.
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.
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.
