Having pontificated recently on the fine Red Arrows formation package now available for download, I was pleased to receive a number of comments. Most indicated an interest in simulated formation flying on the PC, and several recommended alternative software platforms that may be superior to MSFS for this specialized purpose.

No doubt other, possibly better vehicles exist, but MSFS is still the gold standard for realistic flight simulation combined with widespread availability of add-on enhancements. Thus, I would like to continue to explore the concept of simulated formation flying on this platform.

Let's imagine, for a moment, that I am far more skilled than I am at the process of creating software and add-ons. I'm sitting at the keyboard contemplating building a formation flight package. The package would provide a training environment as well as challenges for the more experienced formation aviator. What would it look like?

Well, since I actually learned the art of formation flying in the Air Force, many years ago, my inclination would be to structure both the "syllabus" and the look of the thing to resemble what I experienced, and what Air Force trainees still experience today. The imaginary package would be built upon the outstanding T-38 recently introduced here at FlightSim.Com, since the bulk of our formation training was conducted in that aircraft. The "syllabus" would begin with the two-ship element in fingertip formation, and work through that to trail, echelon, and eventually four ship formations.

Exactly how all this would be done, from a software engineering point of view, is not at all clear to me at this point. I imagine that "flights", or, as they used to be called, "situations", would have to be created, involving pre-recorded lead aircraft flown by the AI feature. The paths these lead aircraft would have to fly would be different than anything the AI aircraft now do in FS, and specifically tailored to the syllabus. I hope all of that can someday be done.

For now though, let's imagine that it has been done, just to see what the readme file might look like! One note - these illustrations were created using the chase plane view, not by actually flying anything other than the lead plane. However, all of the illustrations accurately depict the correct positions flown by students at the completion of Air Force Pilot Training. (Naval aviators do just as well, only with different airplanes!)

Formation flying involves a leader and a wingman. Just two airplanes. All of the larger formations that you see, especially the European military teams, are combinations of more than one "element", the element being a leader and a wingman. With that in mind, we start at the beginning, with a two-ship element of T-38's on the runway, about to take off.

Perhaps nowhere in the world of aviation is the saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" more applicable than when learning formation flying. Formating is station keeping, plain and simple. And, as I indicated in a previous missive, it is the wingmen who are doing the station keeping, hence doing the formating. The leader is flying with great smoothness and precision, of course, and with PhD level situational awareness, but he is just flying, not keeping station.

Now the first requirement of station keeping is to know just what station we intend to keep! The basic two-ship element in "fingertip" formation is shown here. The wingman flies slightly behind and below the lead airplane. The reasons for this are many, some related to safety (reducing the chances for a mid-air collision) and some have to do with the origins of all formation flight - air combat. In a combat environment, the two airplanes are much farther apart - thousands of feet in some cases. In "parade" formations, the spacing is more or less what you see here. Airshow team formations are, of course, much closer than this, often with actual wingtip overlap and 3 feet wingtip to canopy separation.

Now in the Northrop T-38 trainer, it so happens that the correct position is achieved when the wingtip of the lead airplane is right on the star in the USAF logo on the side of the engine intake. The juxtaposition of these two elements creates a line along which the correct position lies. Where along this line you go depends on how good you are - the better you are the closer you can get. In the real world, there is another reference, which has eluded me through the mists of time, which is used simultaneously to lock in the correct spacing. No doubt, some more recent UPT (Undergraduate Pilot Training) grad will provide us with this reference! No matter. For our purposes, wingtip in the star and as close as you can get!

When flying formation, you can either take off in formation, like the Thunderbirds do, or you can take off with minimum interval and join up in the air. We'll start with the formation takeoff, although this would not be a student's first crack at the stick in the real world.

The leader in a formation takeoff lines up in the middle of either the left or right side of the runway, depending upon the direction of the departure turn. You would normally want a student on the outside of the first turn, for a variety of reasons. Here we see our leader lined up and ready in the middle of the left side of the runway. We line up in the middle of the right side. Using hand signals, lead tells us to run up our engines to a high power setting with brakes parked. Lead then signals, usually with an exaggerated forward nod of the head, for brake release.

A key element of formation flying is that lead must always give away a little bit of power to the wingman. That is, the wingman must always have a little excess thrust with which to play "catch up" if necessary. Since most formation flying, at least in the military, is done in identical airplanes, the leader must create this "edge" for the wingman by operating at a slightly reduced power setting. So, instead of going to full power for takeoff, lead uses maybe 95%. This way, wing has around a 5% edge to use if he falls behind.

Once brakes are released, you, the wingman, work the throttle to maintain the correct position (wingtip and star). Since you are on the other side of the runway from the leader, you are protected in the event lead aborts - you just keep going.

When lead rotates, you rotate also - to match his pitch angle. When you see his gear start up, raise yours. By the way, in case you were wondering how all of the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels can retract the gear at the exact same instant, they are listening to lead talk his way through the entire performance on the radio: "Gear, ready..NOW" In other than airshow formation flying, this sort of chatter is frowned upon, and so a litany of hand signals has been developed over the decades. We can dispense with other than a mere mention of this, since, of course, it is not modeled at all in MSFS!

Now all of a sudden, things have gotten a lot harder, since we have just transitioned from two dimensions into three! We not only have fore and aft, and right and left to worry about, but now there is up and down! But nothing has changed, really. The intent is to match your airplane's attitude to lead's. Fore and aft movement is still largely controlled by thrust. Closer and farther is more or less controlled by roll, and up or down by pitch. Often, though, several axes come into play at once, calling for combinations of pitch and power adjustments.

During straight and level (zero banked) flight, your focus remains on keeping the wingtip in the star. It matters not whether lead is climbing or descending. In fact, lead could do a complete loop and your basic station keeping chore would remain the same - pitch to keep your fuselage at the same attitude as lead, roll to remain at the correct distance, and power to keep the wingtip in the star, fore and aft.

There are two ways to perform a turn in formation flight. In fingertip formation, the turn (which can be made in either direction) is made by maintaining the basic wingtip and star position. This will result in a climb or descent depending upon whether the turn is made into or away from the wingman.

If lead starts a turn away from you, which you can detect by noticing his wings bank and the wingtip go above the star, you do several things at once: increase back pressure to move vertically to get the wingtip back to the star, add power since you have just started a climb and will be falling behind the correct line, and roll to remain at the correct distance. The picture will look like you see above - you will be above the leader but still on the correct line at the correct distance.

A turn into the wingman puts the wingman on the inside and he ends up below the leader. Again, use pitch power and roll to match bank angle, remain at the correct distance, and keep on the wingtip star line. This is often an uncomfortable position for the new formation student, as he can get the illusion that he is falling out of the sky! But with practice, you get the hang of it. As we discussed with level flight, the leader can go through a complete roll and your station keeping chore basically remains the same. In the "Red Arrows" simulation, all turns are fingertip turns, and the entire formation pivots around the lead airplane.

The second type of turn is made from a different formation than the fingertip formation. This is called echelon formation and looks like the image to left.

In echelon, which can be flown with any number of airplanes, even just two, all airplanes are on the same side of the leader. All turns are made away from the wingmen - NEVER into them! The echelon turn is made on the same plane as the leader, which means that you forget about the wingtip and star for the moment and concentrate on keeping the lead airplane in a constant position relative to the horizon, and maintaining the same bank angle as lead. Like this:
 

You must add power, since you are on the outside of a turn. Power still controls fore and aft, and pitch (pull) now controls your distance from the leader. If you are at the same bank angle as lead, a pull will bring you straight toward him. If you have more bank than he does, a pull will bring you in and down - less bank in and up. You need to be ready to pull the extra power off quickly when lead rolls out!

As you watch the diamond formations of the 'Birds or the Blues, what you are watching is very tight fingertip formation being flown, with one addition - the fourth pilot has taken up what is called the "slot" position, directly behind and below the leader, which brings us to the third type of formation, the "trail" formation. Trail, as the name implies, means following lead directly behind and a bit below, as shown in the picture to the left.

Again, your job is to maintain position - to keep the same sight picture. Power again controls fore and aft, which is now also distance from lead. Pitch controls up and down, and you match bank angles, which means that roll controls left and right. This is what air refueling is all about - very close trail in dissimilar airplanes.

There is a fourth kind of formation, used, in exaggerated form, in combat. This is called line abreast, and when flown close, like the demonstration teams do, it is exceptionally difficult. In line abreast you fly right alongside the leader. In the T-38, at least, this was difficult due to the dearth of positional cues. Generally turns are not performed in parade distance line abreast. In combat this formation is called combat spread, and may involve distances of a thousand yards or more.

Landing on the wing is simply(!) a matter of putting it all together! Really, it is a continuation of the straight flight, matching speed with lead, and configuring when he does. Lead, of course, must line up with one or the other halves of the runway, just like on takeoff.

Having said all of this, I must point out that doing this on a PC is a good deal more difficult than it is in an airplane! The reasons for this are many, including the often jerky manner in which AI airplanes fly. But the major reason is that you have no cues other than visual, and limited visual cues at that. As you can see from the pictures, you spend your entire time as a wingman with your neck turned one way or another. This is, of course, easy to do in an airplane, albeit a bit painful over time. But in the PC sim, you will have to do one of several things to keep lead in sight. Either choose a view such as Virtual Cockpit that can be "panned" over to the lead airplane, or fly much farther behind lead so that you can see him in 2D view. Some combat simulators had a feature that "padlocked" your view toward a target airplane, but this introduced many more problems than it solved. Only trail formation can be flown without having to make some accommodation to the views.

If you want to pursue this, I recommend several video tapes, especially for those without military training. In this way, you can see what the formations look like from the air. The first is "Threshold, the Blue Angels Experience". In spite of my background as an Air Force flyer (heavies, it must be said, not fighters!), I think this is the best movie ever made about the military demonstration teams. The second is actually a two tape set, called "Formation Flying - How To Master The art". This was, and probably still is, available from EAA, and it is a complete course on tape, with classroom lectures and air to air video. An outstanding package, without question. And who knows, if someone ever does put together a decent formation package for FS2002, it may be a valuable adjunct to flight training in the teaching of formation flying skills in real airplanes!

Tony Vallillo
avallillo@earthlink.net