This week I completed the formation and search and rescue portions of the syllabus which means exactly FIVE EVENTS (all night vision goggle flights) stand between me and Wings of Gold!
It’s pretty hard to explain the formation maneuvers without some type of visual aid. Well, after scouring the internet for an exhaustive five minutes I stumbled upon the above video which shows the last two minutes of a typical formation flight as viewed from the “wing” aircraft. The last thirty seconds of the clip shows the “section break” at South Whiting Field (in this maneuver, the “lead” aircraft turns away from “wing” to gain separation so they can both land). Honestly, this particular video is not all that great, but hopefully it gives you some idea of how we fly “forms.”
You will notice the student pilot of this helicopter (front right seat) is looking directly at the “lead” aircraft. Staying in position in formation requires the pilot to observe and correct any relative motion between his aircraft and the “lead” aircraft. I had a hard time staying in position at first because I think it’s a little unnatural to operate so close to another aircraft in flight. Just like any other learned skill, it got easier the more I practiced it. On a side note, the instructor pilot is at the controls in this video…which may or may not explain why “wing” is able to maintain position so well!
Unfortunately I don’t have any video or pictures of any of the actual maneuvers (aside from the one above) we perform on these flights. I’ll just say the maneuvers are similar to those done back in Primary, except they have been adopted for helicopters. For example, helicopters perform “overruns” instead of “underruns” (these maneuvers allow “wing” to gain safe separation from “lead” if required) because helicopters have additional spinning parts that airplanes don’t have (main and tail rotors)! One additional maneuver unique to helicopters is the “section high speed approach.” I wish I had video of this because it involves two helicopters coming in to land while maintaining a relatively high approach speed all the way down to fifty feet and then executing a steep approach to landing while maintaining formation. I’m pretty sure the words don’t do the maneuver any justice, so let me just say it was one of the coolest things I’ve done lately.
Thursday’s events involved flying one of our low-level navigation routes (the Purple Route) in formation. Part of the route follows the Blackwater River and I can only imagine the folks floating down the river in their canoes staring up at me wonder why those orange and white helicopters feel the need to chase each other around the sky a mere two hundred feet above them. Short answer: because we can…and it looks cool! Plus it’s good training (bonus).
Earlier in the week I also finished the Search & Rescue (SAR) portion of the syllabus which consisted of one simulator event and flight. SAR is actually a challenging mission to fly because the pilot must divide his attention between searching for the downed pilot and actually flying the proper search pattern at low altitude. After a bit of searching I found the simulated crashed airplane north of Choctaw and then went on to rescue the pilot (who somehow ended up in East Bay). After that, the instructor and I looked for alligators (no luck) and flew down the coast to check out a shipwreck off NAS Pensacola. Flying along at 200 feet I did see a few small sharks and stingrays in the Gulf and opened my window to wave at the folks hanging out on the beach Tuesday morning. On the way home I couldn’t help but notice someone had painted “Fly Navy” in giant block letters on top of one of the buildings in downtown Pensacola. Whoever that was…thanks for the motivation!
