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A little formation flying over Texas


gsxrpilot

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Doc flying lead in his 231. I'm flying #2 in my 252. And Bucko is #3 in his E with his passenger running the camera.  It's just a short clip of a Echelon turn followed by a Break.

I posted this in the thread on wingtips, but thought it'd catch more eyeballs here ;)

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Formation flying is so beautiful.  I'm extremely grateful for the Mooney Caravan members who volunteer their time to train this discipline.  I know several of them hang out here a fair bit, so hopefully a few will see this.

Things get a bit wonky around 0:40.  It's good to see even that even a guy who flies 100 hours of formation a year can get out of position and need to correct.  It makes us mere mortals feel a little better about only being in position in passing.

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16 minutes ago, skydvrboy said:

Formation flying is so beautiful.  I'm extremely grateful for the Mooney Caravan members who volunteer their time to train this discipline.  I know several of them hang out here a fair bit, so hopefully a few will see this.

Things get a bit wonky around 0:40.  It's good to see even that even a guy who flies 100 hours of formation a year can get out of position and need to correct.  It makes us mere mortals feel a little better about only being in position in passing.

Yep, glad you caught that. It's a good example that even while there was a slight deviation in lateral positioning, since the vertical positioning was correct it was a non issue. This is also why the debrief after the flight is as important as the brief before the flight.

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Nice Formation video.  Looks like west of SA near Uvalde?

I was going to pm you but, here is an off topic question for you.  On the way to see JD the other day in Smithville to have him service my turbo my transponder took a dump.  I know you are an Avidyne 540 user and was wondering if you use the remote mount transponder or the panel mount.  Do you know if there are any real differences?  Likes dislikes?  I was thinking of upgrading to the 540 (just not yet) with the remote mount transponder.  But, now this happen I am thinking of doing the panel mount now and the 540 later????

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2 hours ago, wcb said:

Nice Formation video.  Looks like west of SA near Uvalde?

I was going to pm you but, here is an off topic question for you.  On the way to see JD the other day in Smithville to have him service my turbo my transponder took a dump.  I know you are an Avidyne 540 user and was wondering if you use the remote mount transponder or the panel mount.  Do you know if there are any real differences?  Likes dislikes?  I was thinking of upgrading to the 540 (just not yet) with the remote mount transponder.  But, now this happen I am thinking of doing the panel mount now and the 540 later????

We were actually over Canyon Lake and out towards Fredericksburg, but it all looks the same here in Texas.

I do use the AXP322 Remote transponder. I've been very happy with it. I've been less happy with the matching ADSB IN product, the SkyTrax100. But the alternative is to mount something in the panel. And I like a clean minimalist panel and so really like having the transponder in the tail. Anyway, it works great with the IFD540. If I was going to stick a transponder in the panel, I'd probably go with the Lynx or even the Garmin 345. Both will display the ADSB data (Traffic/Weather) on the IFD540. 

*Major thread creep* I think someone was on here from Avidyne recently. I need to track them down and see about getting some support to get my ADSB IN working. To be sure, the traffic displays fine, I've just not been able to get weather data.

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8 hours ago, Skates97 said:

I have to get in some formation time! I watched the ground school video and have gone through the manual a few times but so far when they have done it out this way I have not been able to coordinate my schedule to make it work.

Go to Yuma in February.  Very convenient for us in SoCal, and an exceptional formation school/event.

Gunfighters Yuma Clinic 2019.pdf

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3 hours ago, Dan at FUL said:

Go to Yuma in February.  Very convenient for us in SoCal, and an exceptional formation school/event.

Gunfighters Yuma Clinic 2019.pdf

I know, but the first week of the month is next to impossible to take off as I have to get the books closed out on the dealerships... If it was anytime except the 1st to about the 6th or so of the month. 

There's also the Best Coast Gunfighters that I'm on their email list and Google group. They've had two get togethers this past year but both of them fell where I already had trips planned. 

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23 hours ago, gsxrpilot said:

*Major thread creep* I think someone was on here from Avidyne recently. I need to track them down and see about getting some support to get my ADSB IN working. To be sure, the traffic displays fine, I've just not been able to get weather data.

I think there just generally are problems in this area.   When my installation was done they'd switched to the FreeFlight Ranger for ADS-B-in with the IFD540, and initially it wouldn't fully send data to the IFD540.   The installer even had lunch with an Avidyne rep and still couldn't subsequently get sufficient support to sort it out, so my understanding is they de-wired the recommended installation connections and wired it up as though it were a legacy GNS530.   That gave me functionality, but it still glitches warning messages fairly frequently.   The actual functionality seems to be okay, shows traffic, wx, etc., but I get frequent warnings that the traffic input has faulted, etc...

Some on-line searches indicate that this sort of thing has been going on for years.   The fact that my installer gave up on getting support from either Avidyne or FreeFlight and punted wasn't encouraging. 

Other than the frequent and annoying warning messages, the whole thing is working perfectly.     I'm not sure where to go from here.

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1 minute ago, EricJ said:

Other than the frequent and annoying warning messages, the whole thing is working perfectly.     I'm not sure where to go from here.

Do you get METAR's and other textual weather displayed on the IFD540? I never have.

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-3 got pretty spit out after overcorrecting for unrecognized closure...... not easy being at the tail end of the whip!  Little deviations from lead become minor deviations for -2... -3 can either try to fly off -1 and make -2 look like the problem... or fly off -2 and.. grab the tiger’s tail!

 

now that I’m so close- I’m going to try to make it down.  Would love to fly some formation with y’all!  Looking good!

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  • 2 weeks later...

In the more thread creep and sure I could look it up, but why when I could ask.   I have spent many hours drafting on bicycles.   There are some bad places you don't want to be because you get in a shadow and other wind stuff.   Are there places where there is bad turbulence, and other bad wind stuff when flying formation?

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11 minutes ago, Yetti said:

Are there places where there is bad turbulence, and other bad wind stuff when flying formation?

Yes, everywhere! :D

  Usually if you are in a 3 ship or four ship then its not bad at all if you are "in position" or moving from one position to another within the element.  The fun stuff comes when there are multiple elements in trail (Mooney Caravan). if the winds are calm then you will feel the wake turbulence all flight long.

 

Ron

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30 minutes ago, Yetti said:

In the more thread creep and sure I could look it up, but why when I could ask.   I have spent many hours drafting on bicycles.   There are some bad places you don't want to be because you get in a shadow and other wind stuff.   Are there places where there is bad turbulence, and other bad wind stuff when flying formation?

Yeah, I've only experienced the "wake" when in trail. In other words when your directly behind the plane in front and playing a "follow the leader" type formation. The mitigation here is to "stack down" so that you're below and behind the plane ahead of you. This is also a safety factor if the plane in front looses an engine. If you get a little too high in the formation, you'll feel an uncommanded yawing motion back and forth. That's your vertical stab sticking just up into the wake of the plane in front.

48045764_10102343816006541_7614252162767388672_o.thumb.jpg.5fca7c8c2e4bb834f14eb54a7fccd969.jpg

@Yetti come fly with us some time. The first option is to ride along right seat with one of us. If you like it, then one of us will ride right seat with you until you get comfortable with it, and we're comfortable you're not gonna hit one of us ;)

We usually launch out of HYI but that's not far for you in a Mooney.

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34 minutes ago, gsxrpilot said:

 

@Yetti come fly with us some time. The first option is to ride along right seat with one of us. If you like it, then one of us will ride right seat with you until you get comfortable with it, and we're comfortable you're not gonna hit one of us ;)

We usually launch out of HYI but that's not far for you in a Mooney.

Thanks for sharing.   Yep we still need to fly together.   I can play camera operator.   The funniest thing I ever saw was out riding my bike.   A Mooney flying formation next to a T32 in the pattern.   The Mooney looked really small.    I didn't know it at the time, but I knew both of the pilots.  I got to sit in the T32.  They are really big planes.

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  • 1 year later...
It's good to see even that even a guy who flies 100 hours of formation a year can get out of position and need to correct.  It makes us mere mortals feel a little better about only being in position in passing.


EVERYONE is out of position all of the time...except Lead, of course. Lead is ALWAYS in position.

Minimizing the time one is out of place, reducing the size of one’s “wobble box,” seeing your skills improve...these are just some of the reasons why those who form fly love it.
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