you can see of wing depth and the
underside of the wing makes up 50%
also. That way, you’ll be visually in
line with the wing chord line.
“If you raise yourself, the first thing
you will hit is the prop wash from the
aircraft ahead. You can start to feel it
on the rudder, a slight vibration. If you
go higher, you’ll be right in the prop
wash. It’s not that violent, but you lose
a lot of elevator and rudder control. ”
Zooming along line astern is an
exercise in trying to keep your prop
spinner in line with the aircraft ahead ’s
nose wheel. As a pilot seated on the left,
you should see more of that plane’s port
fuselage than the starboard fuselage. If
you get it exactly right, the person on
your right will see the opposite.
Or that’s the theory ... can’t say
I ever saw that when my hand was
on the stick!Taking the lead
After leaving astern and hanging
around in echelon left for awhile,Michelle in the CT4 gave us a three-
count to take over the lead. A simple
exercise: power on and drive past the
leader, who then slots into echelon
right. Once ahead, I had an ivory-tower
feeling of being a Flight Leader, which
effectively I was for the time being.
It was easy having no-one to hold
station on, but with the lead comes
extra responsibilities.
“You’re now clearing an air space
the size of a football ground, because
you’re not just one plane now, you’re
a whole group,” Murray had briefed.
“You need to think about carrying all
that mass around with you.”
So there I was piloting the Adelaide
Oval around the Yarra Valley and
wondering where everyone else was.
The thing about being the leader is that
your eyes are out the front looking for
other aeroplanes, watching your altitude
and speed and rolling the trimmer on
or off. You don’t look behind much and
have to trust the other aircraft are where
you’ve called them into.
Stability is the buzzword for the
leader. You need to have a railway-
line attitude to straight-and-level
to give the others half a chance to
hold their stations. If you’re snaking
all over the sky, their workload just
doubled trying to stay in formation.
“Look out the front, use the horizon
in the turn,” Murray insisted. “You
can’t be pitching up and down, and the
best way to stop that is to forget the
instruments and use the horizon.
“And in the descent, don’t pitch
the nose down. Power off and let the(^46) Reach for the sky
australianflying.com.au
AUSTRALIAN FLYING March – April 2015
1 2
3
LEFT: A pre-flight brief is
the most important part of
a formation flight. L-R: Jock,
Dave, Murray and James
prepare for a funeral fly-over.
- Echelon left.
- Line astern
- Vic formation, with aircraft
in both echelon left and right.