Formation flight

[shonist]

Hello,

 

Sorry for the noobish question but,

 

it is possible to fly in formation without voice comm?? i mean, im usually wait in the taxiway to someone to pop up and take off with me and try to follow him like in formation. but i find myself most of the time flying around moving up and down like really clunky and noob pilot.

 

i find very difficult to follow other's ppl steps.

 

besides that,

 

can you link me some good info about formation flying?? im afraid to find something wrong no google and learn wrong techniques and everything. i have no clue how to do it and im always going foward and backwards with the throttle to keep it up with others.

 

ty in advance!

[razo+r]

of course it is possible to fly without voice comm, you can use the chat instead. Flying with voice comm is very recommended though.

[NeilWillis]

The nature of formation flying is that the following aircraft will always be making corrections to maintain position.

 

Ideally, the lead will keep as steady and predictable as possible until you have had plenty of practice.

 

And yes, you can fly formations without comms, but honestly, your best bet is to partner up with someone, and practice together a lot. Joining a virtual squadron would be a great way to get into formation flying and lots of other aspects of operating a modern (or not so modern) combat aircraft. Being able to talk about what you are doing will mean you can get advanced warning of when a turn is about to happen, or to confirm speed and a hundred and one other important factors when flying with another aircraft.

 

Above all though, practice is the key.

[jaguara5]

You can practice formation flying also offline. Create a mission with a AI mirage 2000, set up his flightplan , and fly next to him.

At some waypoints you can through the Mission Editor select the AI aircraft to fly an orbit, so you can practice formation flying not only in straight flight but also during turns.

On a side note, there was in youtube an excellent video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpVU1_7df5s, sadly not anymore available), captured during a real HAF Mirage 2000 briefing, where the flight leader explained the basics of formation flying, before a training flight : very small inputs on the stick and the throttle, he emphasized that the throttle movement should be at 1% rpm.

Also the correct position for a close formation flight with a Mirage 2000 is the following : the No2 (wingman) has to align in his sight, the navigation light with the duct over the wing from his flight leader

 

 

.

[sea2sky]

make sure your stick curves are set 'soft' enough to minimize error oscillations ;)

[shonist]

Thanks a lot, i will try with offline practice at first. sounds safe for others...

 

talking about curves, i own a Saitek Cyborg FLY 5 stick. So im not with HOTAS or rudder peddals... i cant find good curves for it, tried many but no one confortable and possibly wrong to even bother to practice them. please someone give me some "rules" to folow while configuring them.

 

Other thing, I natively speak Spanish (as you can see because my bad english), and im not too confident to talk in servers teamspeak, so im mostly alone in the -dcs- World.

You know, when is 15ppl on the same channel and you dont want to disrupt the whole chat trying to spell sentences right. lol.

 

Altho it seems like there is no spanish-talking community like the english like here... to talk about this stuff.

[probad]

the only thing that gets people angry is asking for things to get handed to you on a platter. as long as you show some initiative people wont care if your grammar is wonk and can understand you fine as long as you pop a few critical words out.

 

curves dont necessarily help, just putting in practice helps, your muscle memory will adjust to any curve setting. if you do heavy curves you might find your airplane not responsive enough for high instantaneous rates. just set yourself to what works for combat and then the rest comes down to you putting in time.

 

aerial refueling is a good way to really gauge your ability to put your aircraft where you want it to be and keep it there because there is a tangible reference to assess yourself by.

Edited May 25, 2017 by probad

[FragBum]

Thanks a lot, i will try with offline practice at first. sounds safe for others...

 

talking about curves, i own a Saitek Cyborg FLY 5 stick. So im not with HOTAS or rudder peddals... i cant find good curves for it, tried many but no one confortable and possibly wrong to even bother to practice them. please someone give me some "rules" to folow while configuring them.

 

Other thing, I natively speak Spanish (as you can see because my bad english), and im not too confident to talk in servers teamspeak, so im mostly alone in the -dcs- World.

You know, when is 15ppl on the same channel and you dont want to disrupt the whole chat trying to spell sentences right. lol.

 

Altho it seems like there is no spanish-talking community like the english like here... to talk about this stuff.

 

 

I think probad is correct, however when you are starting the cyclic umm stick for you jet jockeys ;) will likely feel way to sensitive. For stick X and Y however dialling down the sensitivity can help reduce the natural tendency to over correct. start at a saturation of between 30 and 40 this reduces the amount of control input verses the stick movement.

 

I wouldn't use curves as it creates a nonlinear input verses output, that doesn't really make sense to me.

 

Over time you will get better and you can reduce the saturation until your comfortable with only a small amount or even none.

 

YMMV :thumbup:

[Nealius]

Formation flying should be done without comms, or so I've been told by actual pilots. If you can't practice online it's good to practice with AI tankers or the F-15C. Those maneuver fairly gently and are easy to follow.