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What Activities for a Formation Group?

Saville

Well Known Member
Hello,

I'm thinking of starting a thread for my area (Northeast) asking RV'ers if they would be interested in starting a Formation Group.

I have about 25 hours of form time, taught to me by Air Force and Marine pilots. We used the T-34 manual.

Obviously the first task of such a group would be to gather (with all sorts of organizational work to be done), and obtain the FAST certifications.

But then what?

Once that's complete, what to formation groups then do? What activities would they take part in?

What is the ongoing formation activities?

How do formation groups "advertise" for flyovers?

What kind of flyovers do you do (besides the obvious missing man and sports activities)?

In general, once the FAST certification is obtained, what do formation groups THEN do?

Thanks for any input.
 
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FFI is the most common RV standard for formation. I would use FFI as your group standard. I'm carded in both FFI and FAST, but only FAST for participating with the Red Star guys, since that is what they use.

FFI will not certify your group, AFAIK. The pilots are individually carded.

Our group is more social, but we fly/practice every weekend. We don't solicit airshow work, but do perform honorary flyovers and missing man type stuff. It's just a lot of fun, so that is our focus, and training up new guys that are interested.

My main advice is to cultivate an iron-clad culture of safety. Go to one of the clinics to see how to do it properly (safety, discipline, operating procedures). Do it that way EVERY TIME. We vet every pilot who joins us regardless of what they say they know. Carded guys get a two-ship checkout flight. Non-carded get a safety pilot until cleared for solo. Sometimes that takes five minutes, sometimes five months.

The guys that do airshow work can comment on the additional ratings and such needed for that.

Again, my advice is to attend one of the FFI clinics first, or at least one of the established groups for a primer.

Lots of fun!
 
Mike speaks with wisdom. Check out FFI.AERO for more info. FFI was started by an RV’r for RV’rs, although it has expanded into other general aviation types.
 
Thanks for the link to FFI.

Seems like those clinics are thousands of miles away. Unsure if I can get a bunch of people to travel for that.

Even if I went and got certified I would not consider myself ready to then be a teacher for locals.

There are FAST check pilots in the Northeast. I may have to stick with FAST.

Thanks
 
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Good advice given here.

I personally think you have the cart before the horse. The card is a long ways away, and should not be priority #1. In fact it is only needed in Waivered airspace anyways.

I have been flying formation with a group of great guys for the past 2 years, and now help lead that group. We have done several events, missing man, etc.

Of the approx 10 regular guys we have moved from red scary to green, 2 have wing cards, and 1 has a lead card. I love the group, and events but it does not come easy either and constant briefing/debriefing and honest open discussion is required by all to remain safe. As the saying goes S^!T will happen, flights never go exactly as planned. You want to make sure everybody knows what to do, where the outs are, etc.

Just my experience, but I have personally found X military formation pilots can be one of the harder ones to learn to fly, and most importantly take debriefing advice.

For any new pilots that fly formation with us, we require a 4 hour ground school, intro flight as passenger, than 2 ship with safety pilot first. We also have had to be careful who we take as passengers, so as not to promote other pilots to feel they know how to fly formation based on a 30 minute flight as a passenger.

I am somewhere around 75 hours of RV formation time, with up to 13 airplanes, but still feel I have a ways to go for a card.

ffi.aero is the standard you want to follow regardless. It will allow you to fly with other RV's and be on the same page.
 
Thanks for the link to FFI.

Seems like those clinics are thousands of miles away. Unsure if I can get a bunch of people to travel for that.

Even if I went and got certified I would not consider myself ready to then be a teacher for locals.

There are FAST check pilots in the Northeast. I may have to stick with FAST.

Thanks
Come down to sunny Venice, FL! I'll expect your call in February....

The Redstar FAST guys run good clinics too. You might have better luck with them in your area.
 
Gregg,

There are a few of us at Nashua who are also interested in formation training. Perhaps we can get together at your 'drome and/or ours to see how we might make that happen?

Dave
 
There are a fe of us in teh CT/MA area that have been flying together for years though we don't practice s much as we would like. We are made up of a former F-14 guy, a former B=1 guy and a couple with no military experience. A former member of the Blackjack squadron just moved into the area, we hope he will join us.

As to what we do? We do a demo at Simsbury every year and we do flyovers (missing man) for veterans services, would like to do more of that. Had one rained out this past Friday. :-( We have drawn a heart above events for the American Heart Association.

Getting FI to the Northeast to help us get "carded" has been impossible despite many promises. A couple of us have been to weekend clinics, been told we could pass a check ride but can never get anyone to actually give us a check. Disappointed in FFI to say the least.

We are always looking for new members, chatted with Dave a couple weeks ago, when my schedule settles down (just finishing building a home) we plan to get together and start training.

Where are you based?

Scott A. Jordan
N733JJ
 
Make it FFI

Gregg, I also encourage you to stick with FFI as the gold standard for RV formation flying and encourage you to attend one of the FFI formation clinics. The RV is made for cross county flying so don't be put off by the distance required to get there. You will learn more at a clinic than you ever can by doing it on your own. You will probably not get "carded" at your first clinic but it has been mentioned before that a FFI card is only necessary to fly in waivered (air show) airspace. I used to host a clinic in North Carolina along with my friends in Team RV & Team Aerodynamix and we did this partly as a means of recruiting new team pilots. Once you form a group and do a few missing man formations word will get out and you will have plenty of opportunities to fly.

The FFI card is all you will need to fly formation in waivered airspace until you introduce aerobatics into the routine then you will need a FAA Statement of Aerobatic Competency (SAC) card. Formation aerobatics is the ultimate thrill and until you have done a 8-ship or 12-ship formation loop at night you have not truly arrived!

Even if your only objective is to gather with a bunch of like-minded friends to formate on weekends the standards and safety protocols that you will learn as a FFI trained pilot will pay off. Good luck in your endeavor.
 
Gregg,

There are a few more flyers in the Boston area that are interested in learning more about formation flying. Any training opportunities on the horizon?
 
Gregg,

There are a few more flyers in the Boston area that are interested in learning more about formation flying. Any training opportunities on the horizon?

Ok it's time to get going on this.

Can I first get a list of people in the Boston area interested? I need a rough idea of numbers.

Do we have a flight? 2 flights of 4?

There's an instructor and Flight Examiner - ex-Air Force - who taught me formation and I'd like to see if I can get him to be something of a squadron commander. Not in the sense of planning and organization but for sign offs.
 
Hi Gregg,

Brian J (Nothernliving) and I are both interested in getting trained and practicing formation flying. I'm based at KPYM, Brian at ORH. We should also check with Dave Setser, who expressed an interest. There are a few others that I fly with that may also be interested. I'll send you a PM and we can discuss offline.

-Mike
 
What Ron said ...

Gregg, I also encourage you to stick with FFI as the gold standard for RV formation flying and encourage you to attend one of the FFI formation clinics. The RV is made for cross county flying so don't be put off by the distance required to get there. You will learn more at a clinic than you ever can by doing it on your own. You will probably not get "carded" at your first clinic but it has been mentioned before that a FFI card is only necessary to fly in waivered (air show) airspace. I used to host a clinic in North Carolina along with my friends in Team RV & Team Aerodynamix and we did this partly as a means of recruiting new team pilots. Once you form a group and do a few missing man formations word will get out and you will have plenty of opportunities to fly.

The FFI card is all you will need to fly formation in waivered airspace until you introduce aerobatics into the routine then you will need a FAA Statement of Aerobatic Competency (SAC) card. Formation aerobatics is the ultimate thrill and until you have done a 8-ship or 12-ship formation loop at night you have not truly arrived!

Even if your only objective is to gather with a bunch of like-minded friends to formate on weekends the standards and safety protocols that you will learn as a FFI trained pilot will pay off. Good luck in your endeavor.

What he said, plus ....

ENJOY
One thing that we noticed at those clinics that Ron mentions is that oftentimes people would come to the clinic so focussed on getting "carded" that they lost sight of the real skillsets needed for safe flying. Then they got frustrated and did not enjoy the clinic.

IT MIGHT TAKE TIME
I went to multiple clinics before getting "carded" (by no less than Stu McCurdy "hisself" (the founder of FFI)). Flew one time with friends all the way to Texas for a clinic once time. The point here is to make sure that you go to a clinic to ENJOY what you are learning and then come back home and PRACTICE.

Later, I often had the task at clinics of taking the first flights (as coach/passenger/safety pilot) with people initially tagged as "Scary Reds". It is amazing the progress that gets made by those that come not to just learn but to enjoy. It was also interesting to see that some with a LOT of prior skills, failed to "blend in" with the FFI approach.


PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE
My next hangar over friend and I would ALWAYS fly in formation (2-ship) no matter where we were going. Then weekly we would saddle up and just go out and practice (one takes the lead going out and the other takes the lead half way through and brings it in.). That helped far more than we realized at the time.

I hope this helps. If you are way past this, my apologies.

It looks like you are rounding up a group to get started and that is GREAT!!
once the group exists, you may find that there in fact are people in the area that have gone the FFI route and are willing to help.

Good luck!!
 
Following up on my earlier post - I'm interested.

ds

Hi Dave,

Great! Good to have a CFII with us.

Please PM me your email and phone number. I'm collecting names and contact info of people who are interested in forming the team.
 
Contact info

As a matter of fact, anyone in the New England area interested in forming a team, please email or PM the following info to me:

Name
email address
phone number
aircraft model
Home Base

I'm amassing the info and when I get most of the contacts I'll send the list back out to everyone.

I'm sure we will take advantage of clinics and courses and whatnot. But first things first and the first thing is to see who we have.
 
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