Well there you are, as with everything in aviation, many different answers.
But, Backpacker, you seem to have moved the goalposts a bit, originally you asked
the other pilot is not suffiently experienced enough to make such a long flight on his own,
Assume two basic PPLs 100 to 200 hours each, no IMC/IR and decent VFR forecasted.
and now you are saying,
More specifically, I'm thinking about the scenario where we would have three or four aerobatics pilots who all want to participate in an aeros contest a significant (two hours or more) distance away from our home base (Rotterdam), but the aeros plane itself can only take two people and virtually no baggage, and has a very limited (barely sufficient) avionics stack for long-distance touring. The other plane then would be an IFR Warrior or Diamond or something taking the other two pilots, the bags and such.
So which is it?
I would also caution against just listening to the answer you most like the sound of,
Fuji, thanks. That's the sort of response I was looking for.
please remember the people on here who have advised against it.
Anyway, whatever you do, be safe and perhaps get some proper training first so that you have the airmanship skills and the knowledge to answer these questions.
Can anyone give me pointers on how to do this safely, how tiring it really is, and how to handle ATC (incl. transponder) in a formation? Terminology? Other tips? Any legislation specifically covering this sort of thing?
Sorry, I don't mean to sound like an old fart, I'm a pretty adventurous PPL, tried it once, wouldn't do it again without significant professional tuition.
FTR, when I say leave 10 mis between take offs, what I really meant was long enough for it to be two seperate flights without bumping in to each other. 10 minutes is a very long time when you are sitting there waiting to go.