It has long occurred to me that flying in formation would be easy to execute in a fixed wing aircraft, but hard to master it completely. Taking distance lag into account, i often marvel at the skill required to execute it flawlessly when our forum members did it almost flawlessly during an airshow. Keep being awesome, guys!
After watching Black Hawk Down, I questioned how helo formation fliyng would differ form doing it in fixed winged aircraft.
So i set off with 2 Apache attack helicopters in VNAF's Las Vegas map.
After we too off, I soon took postion on my leader's 8 o'clock.
Then, I overtook, flew above, and re positioned on his 5 o'clock.
What took me by surprise is how easy to do all of this while staying with your leader. Sure, we're no speedsters, even compared to the A-10 (and that speaks volumes!), but I found that you wouldn't have to worry much.
As we approached the shooting range, my boss quickly gave the procedures for today. We'd practice some strafing runs over some infantry and trucks before heading out to deal with some enemy armor. Getting ready for the 1st run, I placed mydelf behind my boss's 6 o'clock, again with ease.
With that done, something quickly popped up into my head. Hey boss, didn't you promise there'd be some GAU-8 action for toda- Hey! There he is!
What? Okay, okay. I'll admit that using the a Hog to deal with infantry, especially this early on would be considered as "overkill" by many,
but still...
You can't deny the awesomeness on the Hogs, though...