First Formation Flight Training - APRS track

After a year of getting used to flying my RV-7, the local formation flight group invited me to begin training with them. After an inauspicious beginning (I was late to the prebrief), we departed as a flight of three with me in the #2 position.

Great flight, I learned a lot - and forgot most of it already.

Here's a picture of the APRS track of the flight. To be honest, I never saw the ground until we were on final approach. I was locked on the tie-down ring/spinner of Lead.

DakotaHawk said:

After a year of getting used to flying my RV-7, the local formation flight group invited me to begin training with them. After an inauspicious beginning (I was late to the prebrief), we departed as a flight of three with me in the #2 position.

Great flight, I learned a lot - and forgot most of it already.

Here's a picture of the APRS track of the flight. To be honest, I never saw the ground until we were on final approach. I was locked on the tie-down ring/spinner of Lead.

Click to expand...

Excellent! I just did my FFI Wingman eval the other day. Below is the track from three flights in one day: Practice, Eval, Fun decompress.

I was locked on the tie-down ring/spinner of Lead.

I wonder why you are using the Tie-down ring as the sight picture as this will put you too far aft of lead and if your on the right side of a 6/7 and you move more aft, lead could lose sight of you.

Congratulations on your formation decision, it is a fantastic way to build stick and rudder skills. I suggest you down load a copy of "The Book" from the Team RV website and the RV supplement. These will mention the proper site picture for the RV which is the outboard aileron hinge to spinner.

Good luck,
Tad Sargent "Stripes"
Flight lead Team RV

Congrats....

Formation Flying adds a whole new dimmension to the fun you can have in an RV. As "Stripes" suggests, download the RV supplements and get a T34 manual in hand.
I was not aware that any groups where still flying regularily up there. We have the NW Wing of the West Coast Ravens down here in the Portland Area headed up by Joe Blank. A few Seattle area follks join us from time to time.
We follow the FFI program. Your first flight in formation would have been as a passenger with a qualified wing man, second in your airplane with a qualified safety pilot, and then after demonstrating a handle on the basics, you get to launch out in a two ship... this progressive approach would have helped in getting that site picture and those visual keys correct for spacing.
I can not say enough about the FFI program and encourage anybody considering formation flying in an RV to follow that approach.

Stripes, I was using the visual clues that my safety pilot instructed me to use. He flies a -4 and is probably having me use cues appropriate to the -4.

JonJay, The BlackJack Squadron is still very active here in Washington State. They practice regularly and perform at various events throughout the year. My first formation flight was as a passenger (albeit more than a year ago). Last weeks flight was in the #2 position with a qualified safety pilot after a full preflight brief.

The BlackJack Squadron uses the T-34 manual and the RV Supplement. Part of my pre-flight homework was to begin studying those materials. I will ask about the sight picture to verify, perhaps the BlackJack Squadron uses different visual sight picture? I think that the sight picture of tiedown ring - spinner is almost identical to outboard aileron hinge - spinner.

Different rule/procedure set

Stripes,
My guess is that Scott is flying with some of the Blackjack pilots up that way. They use a considerably different set of procedures and sight lines (i.e Tiedown/Spinner rather than Outboard Hinge/Spinner). Different signals for cross-unders, etc.

Scott,
Congrats on your flight! Formation flying is a gas and can become addictive behavior! Your first few flights are like drinking from a fire hose...
There are other groups flying in the NW (Puget Sound area-Cascade Flight, PDX area - HomeWing) that are flying by FFI Standards rather than BlackJack Standards. As you continue to research this, you will find that most groups are flying across the country using the FFI standards. You may also want to try to fly with both groups to see which you like and what works better for you.

HomeWing and Cascade try to occasionally practice together and have held a mini-clinic at KCLS last August. We plan to do that again in 2011. The entire West Coast Ravens group (SoCal, NorCal, HomeWing, Cascade) also hold a major clinic at Madera, Calif. at the end of April. (http://www.rvformation.com/wcfc2010/index.html) Attending one of these clinics is an excellant way to improve your skills, take a check ride, and participate in large formation work. FFI trained/carded pilots were responsible for the 35 & 37 ship word record formations at OSH in 2007 & 2009.

If this interests you, PM me and I can get you additional details on how to get hooked up with more info on FFI Formation Flying.