Originally Posted by Chimbu chuckles
Rudder
only for lateral position.
Elevator
only for verticle position.
Power only for keeping station...more power on the outside of a turn, less when on the inside.
miniscule use of ailerons only to keep in same plane as lead aircraft.
Never take eyes off lead aircraft...if he CFITs
you do too.
Loads of fun
Norwester, you'd do very well to ignore most of the advice this person has to offer. Here's a few points to consider....
Rudder: Normally used to keep the aircraft in balance. In formation, nothing changes here - the rudder is still used to counter yaw. You will probably find that airflow from the lead aircraft modifies the flow over yours, so your trim settings in formation flight will be different to when flying along by yourself. Rudder is not used for lateral postion keeping, although it does have its uses in air to air refuelling, but we can get to that later.
Elevator: CC is correct in that the elevator is used for controlling vertical position (up and down). Read ahead to ailerons though, and he'll have you believe that they keep you on plane with the lead aircraft. Wrong. Elevator gets you up on plane with the lead aircraft as he rolls into a turn away from you. If you were to simply roll with the lead aircraft as it went into a turn away, you'd end up seeing a whole lot of the underside of that aircraft (try it with your hands - roll only!!). As you roll into the turn, you'll also need elevator to keep up on plane and in the correct position. Obviously, the reverse applies as you roll out of that turn.
Power: He's pretty good here. Power controls the forward/backwards bit of position keeping. Remember that as you use elevator to go up and keep position into a turn, you're now climbing, so the aircraft will slow down unless you apply a bit of power. The key here is small, smooth throttle movements, and as soon as you see you are starting to get out of position, make a correction to fix it.
Ailerons: We've seen that the elevator does up/down, and power controls fwd/back, and the rudder (like always) takes care of yaw, leaving.......
You guessed it!! Ailerons control lateral (in/out) movement. Again, small movements, and try and do it smoothly. Nothing to do with keeping on plane.
Never take your eyes off lead!!!! Truly alarming. As you gain experience with formation, you'll learn to look away, so you can improve your situational awareness of how the formation is going overall. Yes, you do rely on the lead aircraft to position the formation accurately, but having a formation member who is able to add to the level of awareness in the formation is golden, as opposed to having a wingman who does nothing but stare at your aircraft as you lead him into a potentially dangerous situation. Remember - formation is a team thing.
CC is right about formation being loads of fun. Fun, after you've put in loads of preparation, and applied a lot of concentration during the flight.
I guess I'm saying that there is waaay more to safe formation flying than you can fit into one of CC's nutshells.....
Choice bro'!