Get it right, and holding station is a
lot easier.
Equally critical is the ability to
recognise a developing situation and
respond in an eye’s blink. You don’t
have time to go through the process
of thinking “I might be getting a bit
low, maybe. Yes, I’m getting low. Time
to do something.” All too late. The
correction has to be on the first inkling
that the big picture is changing.
“It’s all about the picture out the
window,” Murray said one day. “Look
at the other plane, see where it is in
the windscreen and see how big it is.
That’s where you want it. Fly to keep
the picture out the window the same.”
Lilydale instructor Dave Woodland
joined our happy group and sat beside
me for a couple of flights where we
further developed formation skills,
such as changing from echelon right
to echelon left in the middle of a
turn, handling changes with a three-
ship formation, with Leigh Gordon-
Brown in Victa JVV making up the
team, and tail chasing.
After each sortie would come the
brief. This is a review of what we
could have done better, and what we
did right. Over the balance of my
training, I would come to commit
the following heinous sins:- Overtook the leader on final
approach - Ended up directly underneath
the leader on climb out - Kept my eyes on the lead for too
long on final and was surprised
by the threshold - As Number Three, beat Number
Two into formation on climb-out
From each of these came a lesson
that shaped me as a formation pilot,
and strangely enough I am pleased that
I made these mistakes in a training
environment where I could be coached
in the right way to correct them.
Going forward
Although you may have the stamp in
your logbook, you never stop practising
formation flying. Eventually, your skills
will be honed so much that holding
station is easier the closer you are to the
target aeroplane, and the hardest part
of the flight is co-ordinating allthe pilots and planes to be available
at the same time.
I mentioned to Murray that I
thought I formation flying would be
one of those things that you learnt more
about after the endorsement than you
would during the actual training.
“Yep,” he said. “The trick is to
find someone else to fly around
with. Someone you can trust and
will keep trusting. You just have to
keep doing it.”
So why do it at all? It has all sorts of
practical uses such as fly-overs, air-to-air photo shoots and, mostly, because
it’s just brilliant fun!
But for the last word, I shall recount
the philosphy of Murray Gerraty.
“I dream of just turning up to
an airfield, having a coffee and
finding another formation pilot,”
he mused, “then going off on a
formation flight, say a city orbit or
a 500-foot leg down the bay and
feeling all the people watching and
saying ‘I’d love to do that!’
“This is how I like to promote
aviation.”australianflying.com.au 49
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