Formation fun

With my Alaska trip written up I've come up with several ideas to keep this blog going. Some will be trip reports, some surrounding technical aspects of flying that have interested me enough to further my education on.

...but sometimes, you just have to go out and have fun. I've flown the San Francisco "Bay tour" many times. One day last year, several folks were visiting and a pilot friend and I decided to take them on a bay tour. Why not make it a flight of two? Here's a little clip one of the passengers took near Sausalito.


The sun had just set. Next time, we need to get up there before sunset to get the #2 airplane basking in that "golden hour" light outside the bridge. That was also the flight where I got the image that's presently at the top of this blog -- the sun was just above the horizon then, just past abeam SFO.

Formation flying is a fun challenge. Like many things in aviation, preparation is the key. We had a lengthy preflight brief going over our plan and several what-if-type scenarios. Flying the #2 airplane, I didn't enjoy much of a bay tour at all - my eyes were glued to the lead, who scanned for traffic, talked with ATC (we were treated as a single airplane), and the like. I'm by no means a formation expert but had some good training on it, along with aerobatic flying, shortly after receiving my private pilot license many years ago.