Piece of cake (not)

[ozzy72]

Well we finally got it together with the formation flying thing, after a quick break for Will to have a shower and mop around his joystick we leapt back into the skys over Canada, unfortunately the shot I took of our incredible formation take-off didn't come out
So I'm lead ship....



A bit of extended line


And a cool formation landing

I'm exhausted, that was probably 2 hours of the toughest flying I've ever done. My hat is off to Will and Roger, truely talanted aviators, and a great laugh to fly with

Ozzy

[Woodlouse2002]

I wish to join you sometime in the near future.

[Jaffa]

And I...err

We should organize a whole squad!(could do a BBMF)

[chomp_rock]

I wish to join you sometime in the near future.

Same Here (I'm Meta_Knight_V6 on the zone)

[ozzy72]

Will is working on a Hurricane for the BBMF, we'll let you know how it goes.
Anyone wanting to learn formation flying should first drink a silly amount of alcohol! This ain't easy, we've been doing 2+ hours a night for 3 days and we're still shaky

Ozzy

[swanny338]

i will do 4 plus a night if needed

[ozzy72]

Swanny 2 hours is about the max, maybe 3 you can do this sort of flying. Your eyes ache and you are soaked in sweat by the end of a session. Unlike real formation flying there is no depth on FS so you have to concentrate 10 times as hard, and you have to fly instruments and visual simultaneously whilst keeping rock steady on speed altitude and bearing, and juggling the throttle to hold formation. Tough isn't the word.
But having said that, its worth it when it all comes together

[Smoke2much]

Will is working on a hurricane for FS2k2.  I'm at the "You double click on the G-Max icon, right?" stage at the moment.

I'd like to back up what Ozzy has said about endurance.  This is really hard work.  In the tests on 2k2 you have to keep within +/- 10 degrees, and +/- 100feet altitude and we all know how tricky the tests are bugs or not.

With formation flying you have to take into account what the other guy's are doing.  When I was lead ship I was attempting to fly at 200kts, 2900feet and heading 060.  I was able to trim to keep the VSI reasonably steady at +/- 40 feet per minute which in that model is reasonably good.  If the other pilot is trimmed to the same standard and he is at +40 feet per minute and I am at -40 feet per minute you suddenly have a differential of 80 feet per minute and look very wobbly.

It's the same with speed and heading.  To really make this work I think we all need three monitors to gain peripheral vision and voice comms so that the leader can keep the others constantly updated on heading, speed and altitude.  It may also be worth flying slower than 200kts.

Will

[Whitey]

Me and Woody tried that in B-52s once...LOL...what a joke!

[Scottler]

For the official launch of my VA, we tried to do 3 737-500s in a missing man over NYC...


Yeah, good luck.  lol

I agree...it's a lot harder than anyone would ever imagine, especially considering its just a game!

[Woodlouse2002]

Me and Woody tried that in B-52s once...LOL...what a joke!

lol. We never got near each other in those!

But always after the dogfights we did some formation flying. I don't remember it being that hard once we'd decided and speed and altitude.

But then, maybe i'm just a natural. :-/

[HawkerTempest5]

Are we good or are we good!  ;D
I'm just going to back up what Will and Mark have said here. This is hard work. But to say we only started three days ago, I would say we are making great progress. Come show day we should be right on.
Flying Legends, here we come!

But always after the dogfights we did some formation flying. I don't remember it being that hard once we'd decided and speed and altitude.  

Not sure how different FS2K2 flight models are from CFS2, but I found formations much easier in CFS2. Woody and a couple of other guys and I have flown good formations in CFS2 during the old SimV dog fights.

[chomp_rock]

Me and three other FS pros tried some formation flying in the T-6 Aeroshell and barely pulled a missing man off it is harder than in real life because of the latency :-/

[Daz]

oi! that was hard that flight scott and a few of the times we were very close and even wing touching lol was fun even at 500 feet. lost the screenshots when my comp crashed half way through