Paul, do you have all the training docs on the Draggins website as PDFs? I registered so I could see it but couldn't download them. They're great BTW.

Paul,

I noticed in all your sight pictures that there's no stack down. A-10 pilots really fly with no stack down in close formation?

They do, I never claimed the guides were perfect...ala guides not the formation "bible"

I did this a lot in WWII Online when I started flight simming with a group. Staying in position as a wingman requires patience, adaptability and discipline - many things that are lacking in online wingman flying where we are all individuals instead of a team. I would argue that it is the most important thing that a pilot can learn next to general piloting skills (take-off, fluing and landing) as it sets up the team spirit and being able to read your wingmans moves from the orientation of their aircraft and how the flight syrfaces are moving.

After a while I ended up doing the basic training for the squad and when I started off with wingman training everyone's skill levels improved. It was eye opening for people to learn that their wingmen couldn't keep up when the lead was at full throttle and how much coordination it requires to stay in close formation (when required) and fight as a pair. They had no idea that how badly they flew was magnified and mirrored in their wingman.

Definitely too close

Fingertip separation is 3' lateral wingtip clearance - ie. if you were to overshoot lead suddenly, there wouldn't be any wing to wing contact. Paulrkii's guide is a nice visual representation of what the formation should look like ... from the cockpit, you should be seeing a bit of the far vertical stabilizer just ahead of the closer one, and I forget the lineup visual to get the distance exactly right (something like wingtip light on pilot's shoulder, etc).

Stack tends to be such that you -just- barely see the upper surface of the wing, except in formation landings: There you stick lead's helmet right on the horizon, or you'll land 'a little' low ...

It is very useful in the sim. If you can't fly fingertip, you don't know how to fly your plane, among other things. Not only that, but fingertip or route rejoin exercises teach you dogfighting.

Like mentioned above by another poster, another sign than you don't know how to fly your plane is inability to stay with lead when he's at full throttle (obviously this would be fighting wing/tactical ... fingertip at full throttle is rather ill advised as the aircraft become rather pitch sensitive).

LOL..I'll trade you a night shift for a 2-year old... Sometimes I get a double whammy and get the night shift AND watching my son the next day all day.. Talk about tired..

You always give great information Ice and are a valuable source of information..

BeachAV8R

This statement puzzles me a little because the ability to stay with your lead if he is at full throttle is at least partially dependent on the performance capability of your aircraft (ie - his plane has less draggy stores or more hp/thrust). I've always read and heard that flying wing on a someone using ultra high power settings results in significantly more fuel burn for the wingman. *

* Unless you are a Canada Goose and know how to tuck just right into the proper echelon position to benefit from the lead's wingtip vortices..

???

BeachAV8R

You normally wouldn't fly this way, but sometimes it's necessary - a couple examples:

Climbout at full throttle, can be tac or fighting wing - the wingman will burn close to the same amount of fuel as the lead, and should be able to stay in position using pitch (need to speed up, gently nose down ... need to slow down, gently pitch up). All flying must be gentle. Same in case of a very high-speed intercept.

Combat in fighting wing can be the same deal, here you have to use angles to stay in as well, and it's more difficult, but not impossible ... again, fuel born can be similar depending on how both planes are flown.

I would assume that both aircraft are similarly loaded, if they're not, then the results can be predictable as you said.

I'll swap you a 13 year old

I'd say it is highly situational. In a situation where two aircraft are holding in an orbit - all things being equal the aircraft on the outside of the orbit will always be flying a longer path. Thus 100% power is never going to be enough for that outside aircraft to stay with a lead on the inside flying at 100% power.

I realize that in real life, military pilots have a ton more training and the threshold differences between the wingman and lead can and will be much tighter. Online life taught me to give the wingman more room to manouver and more power to do it with. As practice, skill and confidence increase, the team can reduce that threshold and fly and fight better.

I'm not sure why this would ever be attempted though, if you're flying an orbit you may as well either sit on the circle or across the circle ... if you're in fighting wing, you can fly inside the circle as required.

The up-side is that when I fall asleep, I am not easy to wake up. So I get a full 6-8hours sleep when I get home. And when my kids were younger, I would wake up fresh in the morning, wondering why my wife looked so beat up... much to her annoyance

When a few people said I was wrong, I just though "no, no, they just don't understand what I'm saying..." but when you and Paul and Einstein and Weasel started echoing each other, I knew I missed something. Hehehe...

Anyway, one "challenge" of flying formation is to actually find a lead who knows how to fly formation. Yes, the lead aircraft needs to know how to fly in formation as well. So many times I've flown wingtip to a guy who goes 100% throttle en-route... or banks without warning... or dives to engage targets without warning, and without giving YOU a target. Very annoying. But if you find the proper lead pilot, one who flies at 80-95% throttle, slows down even more when taking the inside of a turn or speeds up when taking the outside, gives you a heads up on an upcoming maneuver, establishes proper orbit, gives proper handover of targets, and flies a good ingress/egress to/from target, and takes you back to base in formation for a formation landing, the immersion factor goes up 100x.

^^^^

Yes, it's important for lead to fly formation smoothly. He doesn't need to warn you about anything that isn't out of the ordinary in fingertip, you're simply expected to keep up. That said, he should bank at a reasonable roll rate, always bank using the same roll rate in and out, and operate the throttle smoothly, contracts aside.

For fighting wing, you're just expected to keep up almost no matter what lead does. Tactical formations that are 6k spacing are different, beyond the scope of this post

Granted, but this is for real-life operations, for people who do this for a living. For those of us that do this on our spare time, a bit of a warning or anything to give us a heads up is welcome

I've got a better question for you - if you were in an orbit..why would you be flying at 100% power anyway? LOL...

Anyway - the whole "two aircraft are the same" is a moot point anyway. I've never flown two of the same type of aircraft that acted the same. Each has particularities to it. One might temp out a % lower or generate more torque for the same fuel flow. So you could very well have a lead flying 100% and a wingman able to do it at 98%. Or you could have a lead flying 98% power and a wing needing 100% power to keep up. The minute a plane comes off the assembly line it starts developing its own personality.

Because you may be forced by circumstances to fly at very high altitude.



And yet you're still expected to keep up with lead at 100% under certain circustances

You took the time to learn how to operate the A-10's systems ... why not take the time to learn how to fly aircraft? It's a skill that will translate directly to -all- your sims.

+1 this

I wish there was a way to change performance and reliability models for an aircraft based on a tail number, just like in real life.

For the past few months I've been pouring over formation flying documents, references, videos - I even bought a formation flying training video set - and am loving what I'm learning. The hard part is learning without a human co-pilot. The AI is only good for straight and level station-keeping practice - and it's not very good at that, since it maintains altitude, heading, and airspeed with zero error. I'm glad DethJeff was up and available for a quick round of "fly straight and don't do anything!".