Tag Archives: GA

Formation Flying (Part 2)

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I finally found time to finish the part 2 video on the Formation Flight Training.

Actually, I was on a Newark to Hong Kong flight that was 15.5 hours and I had already finished my email + dinner + a movie and still wasn’t sleepy… So I finished this video …

Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed taking the actual flight training:
Cheers,
== T.J.==

Formation Flying (Part 1)

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With only a week before my Singapore adventures begin, I had to squeeze in one last US flight adventure. So this weekend, a fellow Cirrus pilot (David) and I did Cirrus formation flight training @ McCollum field with a couple of former US Air Force pilots(Rich & Stan), who are pictured below during our pre-flight briefing:

During the briefing, David and I learned about formation protocols, hand signals, and the various maneuvers we were about to do.
After a minor maintenance delay, it was time to depart. But the weather was not ideal.
It was dreary and windy with an overcast layer @ ~ 3000 FT and too much crosswind for a true formation takeoff . Instead, we did an interval takeoff with 10 second spacing.

By staying below the clouds at least we didn’t have the sun in our eyes! (How’s that 4 looking on the bright side of things) 😉

Rich sat right seat in my plane, while Stan sat right seat in David’s plane. We took turns in the lead position and proceeded to do all of the maneuvers we learned on the ground, such as root, fingertip, and echelon turns.
Here is a picture of David & Stan just approaching on my left wing:

You can see some of the flight in the clip below:

After the basic maneuvers, then the real fun began! We did high speed formation approaches back at McCollum field, followed by very steep (greater than 60 degree bank) power off touch and goes!
Clearly the R9 was not accustomed to such aggressive flight attitudes and we even heard the avionics warnings, such as “excessive sink” and “excessive bank”!

I am still working on part 2 of the video, which shows the approach and landings.

Check back on my Youtube channel in a couple of days to see it.

Overall, it was an incredible experience that I highly recommend to any pilot!

This type of training does wonders for improving the precision of your stick and rudder skills!

Despite the dreary weather, you can see everyone had huge smiles after the flight:

Off To Training In Atlanta

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It’s that time of year again.  Like most pilots, my insurance company “requires” (or should I say “financially encourages”) me to take annual recurrent training.  The first few years of plane ownership, I would simply follow the basic FAA Wings program and do some 1-1 training with a local flight instructor.  This was enough to satisfy the insurance company and the FAA.  However, I rarely found it to be very significant.
Last year, I found a much better approach.  The Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association (COPA) sponsors a 2 day program called the Cirrus Pilot Proficiency Program (CPPP).  I attended one in Lakeland, FL last year and found it to be very worthwhile.  The program entails about 10 hours of ground school and 6 hours of flight school.  This weekend there is a CPPP in Atlanta.
So this morning I flew from Tampa to Cobb County McCollum Airport on the north side of Atlanta. The flight was uneventful until I got close to Atlanta Hartsfield’s Class B airspace.  Then it got interesting!
The ATL Approach controller was busy orchestrating ~ 8 different aircraft and seemed a bit grumpy.  Every plane on the frequency seemed to be in the wrong position.  For about 10 minutes, there was not a single break on the radio with every transmission being rapid-fire instructions for heading and altitude changes.  When he finally got around to me, he seemed in a hurry to get rid of me.  He gave me a heading change, an altitude change, the Turbo 2 Arrival Procedure and a frequency change!  I repeated the whole thing back and was happy to change frequencies.  Thankfully, the next controller and frequency seemed to be much calmer.
I then tried to pull up the Turbo 2 procedure chart only to realize that it didn’t exist!  However, there was a TRBOW 8 procedure.   I confirmed with the controller, who laughed and told me (in his southern drawl) “there’s only one Turbo procedure ’round here and it’s Turbo 8”  As you can probably tell, not only was this frequency calmer, the controller was much friendlier.  In fact, when he gave frequency changes, it was often accompanied with “Good Day Y’All”
After he vectored me to a straight in RNAV GPS 27 approach, I flew a rather good approach but the landing wasn’t great.  It was smooth but a little left of centerline.  Luckily, the long, wide runway was quite forgiving.  The line crew @ Preferred Jet Center towed me into a parking space next to 4 other Cirrus planes.  Made for a cool picture today:

By the time “school” starts tomorrow, there should be 2 dozen more Cirrus planes on the ramp.  Hopefully, I can get an even cooler picture and some videos sometime this weekend.
Cheers,
== T.J.==