A group of us met up tonight for some hardcord formation flying - a couple experienced folks, a handful of noobs, and folks scattered in between.

The dreaded "Crash on Connection to Masterserver" bug that is intermittently present in DCS World 1.2.0 got us off to a very rocky start, but we transitioned to A-10C standalone (1.1.1.1) and, luckily, our formation flight practice mission was mostly* backwards compatible.

Gordo, BeachAV8R, FearlessFrog, T}{OR, MagnumHB, Pmike, USMC_Beans, (who else am I missing?) joined up for 2-ship basic section flight - station keeping, cross unders, and some basic formation maneuvering - in completely naked Hawgs: not even a single cartridge of 30mm was aboard! T}{OR and Magnum shared their extensive experience from flying with the Dedicated Bomber Squadron, and I got to put a bit of what I've been reading into practice. Gordo had to fly my wing, but did a stellar job keeping position straight and level as well as during inside and outside turns: a feat that must be tried before truly appreciated.


Gordo gets in close...and STAYS in close!


Coupla Hawgs on Parade!


Beach leading an Echelon flight.


Magnum and Thor turning in for an expertly executed overhead break approach.


Thor touches down with plenty of room between him and his Lead (although Tower did get a bit nervous, unnecessarily!)

At one point, we had a 5-ship ~mostly~ echelon formation in close spacing streaming across the Georgian skies. I would have taken screenshots but my hands were glued to my HOTAS. Hopefully one of the others can share a few of their shots here.

Gordo and I had a firey demonstration of how two forms of matter containing volatile chemicals cannot occupy the same volume of space at the same time, but T}{OR and Magnum continued the echelon formation down to a very professional and crisp-looking overhead break and landing at Kutasi while Beach flew the camera plane in extended trail.

Clearly having done this a few times before, Magnum and T}{OR formation taxiied to parking and were patiently waiting for Beach to join them when the server (on my PC ) unexpectedly crashed in an odd way: pure blue screen, but not The Blue Screen of Death. Very anticlimatic ending to an otherwise thrilling 2.5 hour flight session.


*The AI KC-135 tanker returned to base as soon as it hit altitude instead of entering the refueling task, but everything else in the mission worked as expected.

That was a great time! Thanks to Erik for hosting..and thanks to everyone who participated and were kind enough to lend their experience to shepherd along us newbs..

My shoulders are still aching! Getting talked through the sight picture and seeing how the turns and movements worked was a great lesson.



I was up and down..in and out. A little too nervous to get too close..but I started easing my way in toward the end. There is definitely a learning curve to this..and I can see that the only way to get better is to do more of it. Fortunately, it is a lot of FUN!



Flying on Thor - trying to figure out where best to keep my canopy bow. I worked it out after soliciting some advice..



Soon Einstein & Gordo joined up on our 3 ship (Thor, Magnum, and me)..



Out over the ocean..



The mission is never complete until someone is bleeding..





Soon enough Thor and Magnum peeled off to do an overhead approach. Beautifully performed and I followed it all through my HUD...











Great stuff. Can't wait for the next session..



BeachAV8R

I'd suggest allowing flares in the load-out when doing these training sessions. It would make getting a visual ID a little bit quicker (though not realistic I'd guess..)

Many thanks for the invite EinsteinEP, it was well worth getting up at 4 AM to fly with you gents. I only hope I can join the future events. This was great fun.


Yeah, that or using anti collision lights for easier visual ID. Even training missions utilize flares for this purpose.


Great shots from both of you, I especially like the last two "camera" shots.

Here is my collection, with few interesting ones in between...


BeachAV8R and MagnumHB on my wings







Einstein and Gordo joining for the 5 ship formation



4 ship echelon with BeachAV8R on the right







A quick look at TAD and we may even pass as a single plane in Top Gun...



A look over my left shoulder



And in the left rear view mirror





A short lived 5 ship echelon with BeachAV8R in the lead

Awesome.. LOL.. That really shows how far out (or off) distance-wise I was.. Looked like I needed to close it up by about half the distance or a smidge less.

Next time I'll get in a bit tighter..

Thanks guys - that was great fun, even though I could only stay for the first hour. Next time I'll get my v1.1.1.1 bindings set-up properly, as without trim etc it was hard work (I basically just had 4 axis set-up and that's it). Took some serious throttle fiddling and concentration, but enjoyed it immensely.

Great event, and I look forward to more in the future. I must say that even the new guys got the hang of the basics pretty quickly. Here are a few raw screens despite, as someone put it last night, the Print Screen key also being the Mess Up Formation key. Too bad the track system in DCS isn't as reliable as the one in Il-2, although I may see what we ended up with anyway. I may also do a couple quick edits to go with Beach's nifty ones. There are more shots in the full album here as well.

Here's a quick little photo style edit:

Very impressive guys... Having partaken in the informal sessions I know Einstein taught me more about formation flying and station keeping in an hour than any amount of reading could accomplish. Hope to make the next one!

Thanks Eno..was thinking about hoping down to blow some stuff up last night (err..this morning)..but it had gotten WAY too late. Perhaps tonight if I don't get called out..

Heh, about 3 hours after the formation flying (with my right hand locked still in a 'claw' from gripping that poor sidewinder too hard) I was really up for blowing something up. It'll be great when we can do sectional take-off's, form up, and then get some JTAC fun going again..

Nice screenies there! Even the ones with my going down in flames...guess thats what happens when you take your eyes off your lead for all of 2 seconds..(Wingtips met and physics did the rest!). Will have to invest in TrackIR I guess!

o.O you were flying that whole time without TrackIR?!? Well done!

Actually I don't know that not having TIR wouldn't perhaps help a bit. I disable TIR using a hotkey when I'm doing A2A refueling and it helps immensely. So it would stand to reason that having a fixed sight picture in the cockpit would also make for easier station keeping too.

I'm gonna try that next time I'm in game..



Can't wait to fly with you guys again..

It just might help. I pause mine a lot when clicking around the cockpit (using mouse thumb macro).

One trick I used to do in IL2 back when I didn't have a TiR was to set my view 45° left or right (POV or numpad 7 and 9 keys) and try to position the lead plane in the center of the screen when flying a wing position.

Because of this I now know more or less inherently where my position is without relying on the cockpit bars as reference points. This is something you learn when flying formation in planes that can open their canopy in flight, hence there are no references to begin with.

Yeah no Track IR; was panning my head manually as needed. Had a Duh moment about half way through when I realised I could zoom out a little to get the HUD for a horizon (but I noticed as I kept the formation flying going I needed to refer to the HUD a lot less for horizon (was mainly cross checking airspeed whilst I was moving up to a formation...of course I could tell rough closure rate from howquickly your airplane got bigger or smaller!)

It's okay until you find you have to do anything but stay glued to the wing, or if you're taken out of position either through your actions or those of others. There's no need to pause the TIR, you get used to it.

Looking nice Gents