Formation Flying
Yesterday’s trip to Montana was scrubbed. The weather at wheels up time was fine but the forecast for the return was dismal; snow, freezing rain, icing… you get the idea. As it turned out, the weather was fine all day. But the forecast was enough for most of the convoy PICs to cancel, leaving three planes to do some flying. We decided to go far enough that cross-country was involved but not so far as to be stuck should the forecast weather arrive early. The decided target: Vulcan. Again.
I brought along my friends Jamie and Aaron Seigo to act as co-pilot and navigator, which was a treat. Jamie did some pilot training in the past and thus was able to work the radios, GPS and other electronic equipment and was also able to temporarily fly the plane when needed. And both were useful for navigating and looking up info as needed. And of course, they were both good company, which is especially important when sitting together in a small space for a couple of hours. More so when the small space is basically inside a small tin can strapped to a single controlled combustion device (aka Piper Warrior PA-28-161)
The flight to Vulcan had the GPS showing a ground speed of 125 knots thanks to a nice 13kt wind out of the north. We were the last to arrive and I decided on a touch & go first followed by a full stop to join the other two aircraft. Apparantly no one heard me call for a touch and go as there were inquiries as to why I felt the first landing was botched. In any case, both approaches were done with only 10° of flap and carrying a little power and resulted in the two best landings I’ve executed in the Warrior; a good way to instill confidence in two new passengers.
After some lunch in ‘downtown’ Vulcan, it was decided that Drumheller would be next on the visit list. The three planes all started up, did the run-up and departed back to back to back with the idea that we would try to fly within close proximity so as to get some air to air photos and video footage (I bought a buddy’s digital video camera). I again departed last and the C-182 in the group needed to drop flaps and reduced MP to allow myself and the other Warrior to catch up. Formation flying is forbidden by the club but it wasn’t much of a formation anyway. It was more like flying in proximity air space. Close, but not close enough to be dangerous or considered ‘formation’ for that matter. But ‘formation flying’ sounds cooler. The resulting pictures were great; I’ll post a link once I get Gallery set up for public consumption. Drumheller presented us with a slight crosswind and although my third landing of the day wasn’t as perfect as the first two, it was still pretty good. I made the classic mistake of changing the plan on final approach (decided to land long to reduce the taxi time) and I think that blew it for me.
After some time at the Drumheller ‘terminal’, which included story time with Jamie, we headed back to Springbank direct, which gave us a great view of Calgary International Airport (CYYC) from the air, and finished up with another reasonably good, if not slightly long, landing at Springbank. All in all, it was a pretty good day given that we didn’t get to flying to Montana.
And yes, I have the landing light on. I was trying to make XHO more visible when trying to catch up to the others. Then I forgot about it and left it on. Maybe it’s a safety thing.
Update: You can read Aaron’s account of the trip on his blog. And it looks like the Montana convoy is rescheduled for March 18th.
Sun, 19 Feb 2006 20:16 Posted in Flying
