Principals of AI Formation Flights...

[petermcleland 96]

The system I am using to make the twelve 208 Squadron Hunters fly in formation all the way from UK to Kenya commemorating the actual flight of 50 years ago, is as follows:-

The flight route is as it was for real...Stradishall to Malta to Cyprus to Tehran to Sharjah to Aden to Nairobi, Kenya.

For the aircraft to fly each of these legs in battle formation all the way, the following is needed for each airport:-

1. A set of four invisible "Ghost" strips along the runway to enable four Hunters to take-off or land at the same time.

2. A set of twelve invisible "Ghost" strips in the nearby countryside to enable the twelve Hunters to form up into battle formation by landing there and then for all twelve, already in battle formation to take-off again simultaneously, bound for the similar set of twelve ghost strips in the countryside near to their destination.

The sets of twelve are three miles from their airport and are positioned on a bearing TO the airport which is the same as the track to the NEXT destination...So when they take-off from there they will rush over their departure airport as they commence their climb on track to the destination...The twelve ghost runways must have the same runway heading as that track to the NEXT destination and the other end of each runway must be closed for take-offs and landings.

The sections of four will be fired off from their parking on the real airport at one minute intervals between each four. Each of a four will line up and take-off from its own ghost overlay on the main runway...This will result in each four doing a realistic "Stream Take-Off" and all three fours will be airborne in quick time...They will then go to their nearby set of twelve ghosts and land and park in their "Battle Formation"...A couple of minutes after the last shuts down, they will all restart engines and taxy forwards together and then take-off together in battle formation...They will zoom over their departure airfield making a splendid noise (courtesy of "Advanced AIBlast") and climb into the distance bound for the set of 12 ghosts near to the destination...After landing and parking each four will start at one minute intervals, between fours, to take off and run in and stream land on the four overlay strips on the destination runway.

I have been busy preparing all these "Ghosts" and their Parking for the squadron and today I am just completing Tehran. Yesterday I accompanied the squadron (courtesy of "Traffic View Board") from Nicosia to Tehran...I had completed the parking at Tehran and also the four overlay "Ghosts" on runway 11 Right. However, I had not yet built the Tehran set of 12 ghosts for the battle formation...So from the Nicosia set of 12 battle formation ghosts, I flightplanned them direct to the four runway overlay ghosts...with the following interesting results:-

This is how the battle formation should look...

...and here again.

Here is the overhead view so that you can see the spacing.

The rest of the sequence can be seen here:-

http://forum.fsscreenshots.com/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=2&topic_id=7862&mode=full&page

Thanks for looking

[ManuelL 71]

Thanks for the interesting read and pictures, Peter. I am also thinking about trying to get some formations flying in my sim and found this thread recently.

http://nzff.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=5810

This is probably not so interesting for the long distance flights you are doing, but seems quite interesting for shorter flights.

[petermcleland 96]

Thanks for the interesting read and pictures, Peter. I am also thinking about trying to get some formations flying in my sim and found this thread recently.

http://nzff.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=5810

This is probably not so interesting for the long distance flights you are doing, but seems quite interesting for shorter flights.

Thanks Manuel,

I copied and pasted the article in your link and I will give it a trial when I try to make some formation aerobatics