UK Formation Flying

Here's a couple of videos from a recent formation flying day in the UK run from North Weald airfield. 8 aircraft in total, 2 trips flown, morning trip was in small formations before flying a 6 ship in the afternoon - splitting into 2 x 3 ship formations for some fun.

https://youtu.be/ZfI4_Rqmxx4

https://youtu.be/OgE5M86rZMU

What an excellent way to spend a Sunday!

Aeroplanes are very cool (with acknowledgement to Elliot)

Pete

Very nice indeed. I miss that countryside

Pete, in the first video, I have a question: When you go into "Spear" formation, when the rear Vic forms line astern behind the lead Vic, it looks like #6 pulls in *in front of* #5. #5 calls "5 clear" before #6 moves in, so I expect this is what was briefed.

This seems non-standard based on what i've learned, where usually you keep position numbers in numerical order from front to back when able. Is there a reason you do it this way?

Well, there was a small c*ck-up on take-off... Lined up on the runway in pairs ... 5 on left and 6 on right. These 2 were supposed to swap sides while joining up but didn't. So 5 ended up on the left side and 6 on the right. We flew as expected for that formation position rather than for that number. We forgot to emphasize the swap over at the brief, the tower frequency was rather busy so difficult to discuss until it was too late.

Pete