Missing Man Formation Honor Flights

[Geico266]

Lost a good friend, EAA member,and a home builder a week ago to tragic accident aviation accident. He was 86 and a vet. I am planning to do a solo fly over during the full military honor grave side service.

This got me to thinking about forming an honor guard flight for honoring other vets in the area to do fly overs or missing man formations. Anyone interested in forming such a group in the Omaha / Lincoln area?

Any other RVers doing this? Suggestions? Protocol?

[Mike S]

Larry, great idea.

This could be something that develops into a regional collection of Honor Flights.

One thing you might run into is the folks who do these should maybe be formation carded.

I was asked to participate in a missing man a month or so ago, but the lead turned me down due to no formation training.

I suspect the various groups already doing formation work (Ravens and Aerodynamix come to mind) could set up a Missing Man sub group, and do the needed training for that ----------- might get other folks hooked on the formation thing too

[Mike S]

Thread moved to "Formation Flying" forum.

[noelf]

Yes, we are a mix of several models of RV's, YAK's, and CJ's. You can check out one of our web sites wolfpackpowerflightteam.com

[VETE76]

been doing it here for a few years and what a feeling!

[Mark Burns]

Originally Posted by Mike S

Larry, great idea.

I suspect the various groups already doing formation work (Ravens and Aerodynamix come to mind) could set up a Missing Man sub group, and do the needed training for that ----------- might get other folks hooked on the formation thing too

Mike,
The sub group you envision is already in place. It's called being cleared for 4-ship solo. But even then the flight lead could say no if they don't know you from Adam. A Missing Man is not a training flight That being said you do learn from every flight.

I started flying formation with a couple of RV pilots at my home airport. They had been doing it so I joined in thinking they knew what they were doing and could show me how. Looking back on this makes me shake my head.

Later I ran into a "carded" formation pilot at a fly-in and started training with him. It was Gerald "Bulldog" Loyd.
Now after a few years and half a dozen clinics, formation flying is more fun than ever!!

I'd like to say it's really hard and only certain people can do it but that's not the case. It just takes training and lots of practice! (=more fun!)

The hand signals are really cool. Just the other day I was practicing formation with a friend and we changed frequencies to 123.45
There were a couple of guys on that freq really chatting so I looked over to my wingman and with one hand signaled "four" then "seven".

He gave me the "OK" nod. I kicked him out to route formation with a rudder wiggle and we switched to 123.47. How cool is that? Photo below from that flight.
Paige Hoffart on my wing.

Mark
FFI Flight Lead

[walkman]

I've been working on exactly that in N GA/Western Carolinas area.

Wouldn't strictly be limited to vets, anyone with a strong aviation background would be fine.

[flightlogic]

Just gotta know.... How do you do a seven and hotas too?

[n5lp]

I have done a few of these at various levels of competence. I have no formal formation training but I have picked things up over the years. Some of the fly-overs have been very professional with experienced people and great briefings. These were with ex-military people and those with formation training.

There was a horrible one at my home field. There wasn't experience but we did brief and the flying was appropriate to the experience level as in we didn't try anything tricky. What we missed was that a Bonanza pilot, when we got the word that it was time to start up, did an extended warm up at that time. I guess he thought that warming up earlier would hurt his engine and that he needed 180 degrees on the ground before he took off.

We were way late and it was embarrassing. Experience is good for both safety and for presentation.

[Mark Burns]

Originally Posted by flightlogic

Just gotta know.... How do you do a seven and hotas too?

Nick,
When flying lead you can take your hand off the throttle for extended periods. (HOTAS = hands on throttle and stick)

I held up four fingers first, then two fingers sideways as shown below from the FFI formation manual. You add "5" to number of fingers held sideways.

The wingman sees 4 then 7.