Tonight, DethJeff and I spent 45 minutes up in the air in our two Hogs and finally landed, after a tiring but exhilirating mission. The strange thing was, not only did we not fire a single round for the entire mission: we didn't even bring any ammo with us!

I've been on a formation flying bend the past month or so, and DethJeff helped me out by alternating as my lead and wingman while I practiced a key formation flying skill: station keeping. We took turns flying each other's wing in straight and level flight and basic turns and then descended to Kobuleti for a section landing - not bad considering we were both noobs at it.


Jeff on my wing as we take on the challenge of station-keeping in straight and level flight. Not as easy as it sounds!


A shot of Jeff off my right wing.


Mission over, we hop out of the jets and over to the O-club for some margaritas

Wow thats cool!
Might have to join you guys up there sometime. I have never flown formation or online ever......

The funny thing is that the formation flying you did, while looking good, is apparently useless in real life, aside from airshows. Spacing in RL is 3000-6000 feet which would mean the other guy was more likely a speck on the horizon... Also try keeping formation while "working," damn hard!

It's all good fun though. I once spent 2 hours online just doing touch-and-gos and interacting with a live-person ATC. While it is annoying to be given the go-around, it was immersive since the guy coming in just had a bad touch-and-go and apparently his left main gear would not retract and extend fully and so had to return straight away... nice.

The value in stuff you think is "useless", Ice, like formation flight and ATC interaction, is the skills learned and applied later.

We want to be able to fly in together, and stay together through out the mission.

WC

For combat runs there is a good separation, but many times pilots do tandem takeoffs and landings, need to be together for air refueling, and fly wing to watch "check rides" for training (instructor flies off the wing of the trainee). It's definately not useless...plus you never know when you'll be voluntold to do a flyover for a football game or race.

Formation flying is a mandatory part of military aviation training. Not sure where you get 3000-6000 feet separation and useless from.

Some applications for close formation; if one airplane looses radio/navigational issues and has to descent through weather. Another, doing BDA by flying around each other. Refueling is a formation. It's not useless.

Actually fingertip and route formations are very useful in a number of situations. It is also called 'parade formation' for obvious reasons. It is not being flown correctly in the above screenshots (too far aft of the line).

Formations at 3000-6000' could be anything from fighting wing (inside 3000) to some form of tactical at 6000', and tactical tends to be advanced when in use ... most people don't know what to do with it other than making it look nice (and most people don't seem able to fly their position anyway)

Lol, yes in real life "spitting distance" formation flying can be useful, but since when did you have to give finger/hand signals in DCS A10C? And you can "stay together" via the use of the data link in the TGP.

While it is fun to practice this type of formation flying, outside of refueling, there is no real "need" for this. Do you need tandem takeoffs and formation landing? No. Looks good and exciting to do though. Do you need wingtip formation en-route? Not really, and if you ever need to go heads down while in close formation... well, try it to see how "scary" it can be. Do you need this formation during combat? Hell no. If you are in close formation and AAA comes up, it'll probably get the wingman if it's aimed at the lead. Plus the wingman is pretty much useless as "cover" in a shooter-cover attack if he's this close anyway.

Funny how people seemed to jump on my "useless" comment... I'm just saying there is no practical use of this aside from "looking cool." You don't even have to do this type of formation when refuelling, unless you're the one taking fuel. But is it fun to do? Hell yeah, especially on those 50nm ingress-to-IP. Formation landings is one of my favorite, and had good laughs once when my lead landed and braked immediately while I aerobraked and crashed into him.