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Facing Formations
AIRMANSHIP
By Bill Kight
As
two owner groups demonstrated at Oshkosh, it
takes planning, training and discipline to pull
off group flights.
Birds of a feather
flock together. That old saying applies
to birds of aluminum as well: just ask the owner
of a "cult" airplane. Any time they meet, cult
plane pilots swap stories and hash out flying
or maintenance issues, especially when gathered
at a fly-in.
Beginning in 1990, pilots of one of the all-time
great cult airplanes
-the
Bonanza - started
flying en mass to the big Experimental Aircraft
Association (EAA) convention and airshow at Oshkosh,
Wis. Eight years later pilots of another
popular cult airplane, one who’s very name, Mooney,
sounds like a cult, emulated the Bonanzas with
their own mass fly-in to Oshkosh.
These group arrivals operate with the blessing
of the EAA and the Oshkosh Air Traffic Control
Tower and they are treated with arranged arrival
times and reserved parking areas in the airplane
campground. For the cult airplane aficionado,
it is the ultimate recipe for aviation fun
- fly
in with dozens of your favorite airplanes and
literally eat and sleep with them.
The
Bonanza fly-in started when a group of pilots
were brainstorming about how to end up together
in the airplane campground. Arriving in formation
seemed to be the way to go, so with that, nine
airplanes arrived in formation in 1990. The Bonanza
group grew quickly in subsequent years and peaked
in 1995 when 132 aircraft made the flight to
Oshkosh. Since the record flight, the group
has been limited to 100 airplanes in the interest
of safety. Their motto: “Quality before
quantity.” Around 80 airplanes usually
make the trip.
The Mooneys started their mass arrival in 1998
after seeing all the fun the Bonanzas were having.
They started ambitiously their first year with
just under 50 airplanes and have had nearly 100
(their limit) in subsequent years.
These two groups are identical in the common
pride of their airplanes, but they couldn’t be
further apart in the way they prepare for and
conduct their mass fly-ins.
The Bonanza Model
The nucleus of “Bonanzas to
Oshkosh” is a three-plane formation of a leader
and two wingmen. The three-airplane elements
then create one big in-trail formation enroute
to Oshkosh after takeoff from their staging airport
at Rockford, Illinois, 110 miles south of Oshkosh.
Each three-plane element takes off in formation,
with one element taking off right after another.
When an element leader sees the prior element
lifting off and light under their wheels, he
commences takeoff roll for his element.
Once airborne, the element leaders are responsible
for structuring the in-trail formation with elements
spaced 1,500 feet apart.
Enroute navigation to Oshkosh for the entire
formation is the responsibility of the overall
formation leader. The element leaders simply
achieve spacing and position for their element
behind the preceding one and make the few radio
communications required. The wingmen do
nothing but fly formation on their leader.
No navigation and no communication by the wingmen
is required or desired. Once at Oshkosh,
the formation recovers on the north-south airshow
runways. For landing, the three-plane elements
separate. One wingman lands on the taxiway
that is used as a runway during the show and
the leader and other wingman land in formation
on the main runway. They plan to land long,
using a flaps-up or minimum flap configuration
to ensure a fast landing speed, and then taxi
briskly to the end and exit the runway.
This year winds required the formation to land
on a single runway, runway 27. The last-minute
change required a different landing procedure:
the leader and one wingman landed in formation
and one wingman dropped back to land in trail
of the other wingman.
“We didn’t allow enough spacing for that,” says
Bob Siegfried, an element leader and one of the
participants in the original 1990 Bonanza flight
to Oshkosh, “and we ended up with a lot of maneuvering
in the last couple of miles.”
"The big decision we made this year,” he says,
“is not to try that again.”
Still, according to Siegfried, the group managed
to land 62 airplanes in 14 minutes.
To participate in their flight to Oshkosh, the
Bonanza group requires all pilots have a minimum
of three hours of formation flight practice in
the last six months. To get formation qualified,
they organize national and regional formation
flight training clinics and provide suggestions
about books and videotapes for pilots who can’t
make it to a clinic and want to train on their
own. They strongly suggest attendance at
a clinic for pilots new to formation flying.
The Mooney Model
The Mooney group expressly states that their
procedure is not a formation flight. Instead,
their concept is “loosely spaced” groups of 10
airplanes flying in trail in two lines.
Takeoff timing and speed control form the basis
of their separation, somewhat like the procedures
used by pilots in the Berlin Airlift.
For their “Mooney Caravan” to Oshkosh. the Mooneys
usually stage at Madison, Wis. This year,
construction at Madison required the group to
meet at Watertown, Wisconsin, 50 miles south
of Oshkosh.
Initial spacing within and between the groups
is achieved through timed interval takeoffs.
When an airplane rolls, another runs up to takeoff
power and releases brakes after a set number
of seconds elapses.
Enroute to Oshkosh each pilot is expected to
fly a precise speed profile but is also responsible
for maintaining separation and in-trail spacing
with an aircraft ahead. Group integrity
depends on each individual pilot’s flying precision.
Navigation for each group is the responsibility
of that group’s lead aircraft.
Landing is planned on runways 36L and 36R, where
the two lines of airplanes spilt and land individually
in trail. This year, winds dictated a south
landing operation. The Mooney group’s Letter
of Agreement with Oshkosh ATC tower for a south
operation called for them to use a single runway
as well, runway 18R. The Caravan procedures
required the two lines of airplanes merge into
one for landing. It took 40 minutes to
recover 80 airplanes. The last Mooneys
in the Caravan turned final nearly 10 miles north
of the airport.
Throughout the year leading up to the big flight,
Caravan organizers urge participating pilots
to practice flying at the airspeeds called for
in their procedures, but there is no minimum
training required to take part in the Mooney
Caravan. If you have enough money to own
a Mooney and can find the staging airport, you’re
in.
Concept Vs. Reality
The Bonanza flight usually
goes off just about as planned. Flying
as a wingman with the Bonanzas this year was
John “Bosco” Bostick, a former member of the
Air Force’s Thunderbirds flight demonstration
team. It was his first trip to Oshkosh
with the Bonanzas.
“I think our flight went very well, considering
we changed everything at the last minute and
landed on (runway) 27,” Bostick says. "The
Bonanza group is fairly disciplined and responsible
and I am willing to fly with them again.”
Not so with the Mooney group. Their flight has
been plagued since the beginning by airplanes
passing one another or not staying in trail,
almost from the point of takeoff, despite admonishments
in the exquisitely detailed Caravan briefing
materials not to overtake a preceding aircraft
and to keep the aircraft ahead in sight.
Chris May, a pilot new to Mooney ownership but
a multi-year veteran of the famous Ripon arrival
to the Oshkosh airport. thought the Caravan would
be a neat way to arrive at the show this year
while avoiding the warts of the normal arrival
procedure.
“The leaders and organizers of the Mooney Caravan
truly did an exceptional job of organization
planning and pre-flight briefing.” May says.
“But what occurred during the flight was far
from the plan.”
“While climbing out still on runway heading,
I was passed by someone going at least 20 knots
over the designated climb speed.” May says.
“To keep the plane in front of me in sight, I
had to maintain designated cruise speed plus
10 knots. Not too bad right up to the point
that I was passed by three planes going at least
30 knots over the designated speed with 200 feet
of horizontal separation.
May has flown into Oshkosh five times and Sun-n-Fun
twice. In all of those times I never felt
I was in anywhere near as much danger as I was
in the Caravan,” he says.
“The best way I know how to describe it is to
have 79 first-grade kids in a bus and pull into
an amusement park on a field trip, open the bus
door and tell everyone to walk in line to the
gates.”
The Mooney Caravan concept of “loosely spaced”
groups of airplanes also gives formation-flying
experts heartburn. Despite Caravan organizers’
insistence that their procedure is not a formation
flight, retired Marine Corps aviator Cecil Turner
says, “If an airplane is required to keep a certain
position relative to another and visually maintain
separation from that aircraft, then they are
formation flying, especially if another aircraft
is responsible for navigation of both for 50
miles.”
Turner taught formation flying in the military
and says that single ship in-trail is the hardest
way to fly formation. “You have few visual
cues for closure besides the airplane iIn the
windshield getting bigger or smaller.”
Having individual pilots flying in-trail also
greatly exacerbates the “accordion effect” when
speed changes or poor station-keeping ripples
through the formation. Anyone who has driven
in stop-and-go traffic has experienced the accordion
effect.
The Bonanza group avoids most of these pitfalls,
especially enroute, because two-thirds of their
pilots are doing nothing but keeping station
on their leader from a position that is easier
to maintain. Only one third of their pilots
have the difficult job of in-trail station keeping.
Turner says that in-trail station keeping behind
an element of three aircraft is easier because
the closure reference cue is a lot bigger.
En-route navigation for the Bonanzas is also
more straightforward. It’s done by only
one aircraft, the overall formation lead aircraft.
The Mooney Caravan depends on the navigation
skills of eight or 10 group leaders to precisely
fly the procedure ground track. This year
the Caravan actually had one group of aircraft
pass a preceding group because of the offending
group leader’s inability to fly the briefed route,
according to the leader of the group that was
passed.
Lesson to be Learned
A lesson can be learned from
analyzing the different tacks these two groups
take to achieve the same goal -
moving
a significant number of airplanes from one airport
to another.
Most safety experts agree that for skilled performance
of any flying task, regardless of how long or
how detailed the briefing, there is no substitute
for training and practice. I see this on
a regular basis in my position as a turbojet
aircraft simulator instructor. Before I
enter the simulator with students, I use a time-tested
syllabus to brief highly experienced and skilled
pilots for two hours about what they’re going
to do in the simulator in the next four hours.
Most times, not until they have some hands-on
practice and refining instruction from me, do
these professional pilots perform the briefed
maneuvers at end-level proficiency. Often,
these maneuvers are identical to ones they’ve
performed countless times in other airplanes.
The Bonanza group seems to recognize the need
for training and practice. They require
training to get qualified to participate in their
flight and once trained, they also insist that
their pilots have recent practice. And
that goes for everyone.
Despite years of experience of flying tactical
aircraft in formation, ex-Thunderbird pilot Bostick
got his three hours of practice, just as everybody
else, “I could have probably just gone with the
group and ‘winged it’ so to speak,” he says.
Instead, he joined another Bonanza owner for
some practice.
“We went out and did all the basic work and the
formation takeoffs and landings. I feel
strongly in the required training and no one,
regardless of experience or hours, should ever
attempt to fly in formation, especially takeoffs
and landings, without some formal training.”
At Bonanza gatherings through out the year, pilots
anticipating their participation in “B2OSH” will
get together and practice the requisite skills.
Despite their stringent requirements, the Bonanzas
don’t seem to lack for eager participants.
The Mooneys want to keep their flight simple
to appeal to pilots of all experience and ratings
- an
admirable goal. However, the take-all-corners
registration policy, the lack of any sort of
basic minimum training requirement and a tough-to-execute
flight profile all lead to exactly the kind of
problems they’re trying to avoid on the Ripon
arrival.
Instead of flying 15 miles on the Ripon arrival
with a few airplanes whose pilots can’t seem
to follow instructions or maintain speed and
altitude to save their lives, pilots in the Mooney
Caravan are given the Ripon experience for 50
miles by members of their own group who lack
the proficiency, training or experience to skillfully
fly the flight profile. But at least the
errant airplanes all have the same gloriously
distinct tail.
Several people, with whom I communicated about
the mass Bonanza and Mooney Oshkosh arrivals,
including the leader of this year’s Bonanza group,
noted that the Mooneys have never lost a plane.
But simply avoiding disaster is not the appropriate
yardstick with which to measure success.
Bill Kight is a Mooney owner
and simulator instructor for a large carrier.
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