What an enjoyable day!  Sunshine, good friends, warm temps, 70kt headwinds, puking passengers..it doesn't get any better than this!  Seriously, thanks to everyone for making the effort today.  Great job by BB leading us to K81, especially with all the changes, and everyone flew safely and professionally.  My pax loved the extended trail during our 3-ship RTB.  Lots of squealing and moaning.  Thought I had joined the mile high club!  We might not run "phantom 2" checkins next time.  I usually forgot to check in as 2.  Perhaps phantom 2 should be silent, as well as invisible!  Still like the idea of having element numbered 3 and 4.  BB, thank Perry again for buying lunch for all of us.  Very generous, since he didn't even get to keep his own lunch in his body!

2B

Perry has a new call sign: Double Bag. This way, every time he goes to the grocery store, he will be reminded of our flight.

Happy New Year!

Boom Boom

Sputter's First Video

I don't know what you guys are talking about?  My passenger had a great time...and I think we pretty much flew the same profile (we were a formation after all).  I wholly attribute this fact to superb piloting skills.  Isn't that right 2B?

I must say though, the second sortie was a lot of work.  And the airspeed variations inside/outside the turn are much greater when giving a little extra room for the bumps.  I agree about extended trail though...great fun!

Sure wish I had that tailwind on the way back to NE...turns out it was all cross and a bit of a headwind component to boot.  :-(

Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure we all departed on runway 18 out of K81 today...at least that's what it felt like.  Isn't that right Stones?  Looked fun from my perspective. You all have a happy new years eve!

See you in 2012.

-Sputter

Carbon and I took advantage of the beautiful crisp cold weather today, and flew an Advanced 2-ship profile.  A few years ago, for Carbon, that would have meant doing a few rejoins and maybe some lazy 8 fingertip.  Carbon 2.1 is MUCH more proficient that Carbon 1.0, so we pushed it up a bit.  We started with a standard Formation Takeoff, then practiced Fingertip, Close Trail, Route, and Echelon Turns while heading to a clear area and climbing to 5000'.  Carbon flew all these manuevers with no drama.  A few turns were "Clinic Video Quality".  Speaking of video, Carb mounted a couple of new cameras to his roof.  Can't wait to see the results.  A Pitchout, Rejoin, and Extended Trail completed the refresher course.

After the warmup, we flew several Tactical Formation turns.  These manuevers involve flying 1000' Line Abreast, flying coordinated comm-out turns, and returning to the 1000' abreast position.  Carb did great for his first time.  We need to work on our roll-in rates, bank angles, and line-of-sight interpretation to get more consistent results.  For the record, Carb flew these as well as Mag has twice before.  We're still experimenting with different techniques.

Then the fun started.  We called this the "Rejoin Challenge", or "Uncooperative Leader".  The goal is for the wingman to use altitude, airspeed, power, and angular cutoff to eventually rejoin to a route position on a very unpredictable leader!  The limits tell the story:  Airspeed from 100 to 160 knots; +/- 20 degrees pitch; +/- 60 degrees bank, 0 to 2 g's; and a 2500' maneuvering floor.  Setups are from either line abreast, or beak to beak.  Lead must establish the high or low position early--this is just a fun maneuvering exercise--NOT a game of chicken!  Lead does what he can to complicate 2's rejoin within the limits, and after about 3 turn reversals, lead allows 2 to complete the rejoin.  It involves a lot of "Blind/Visual/Continue" calls, but is safe if everyone uses the radio!  Carb did awesome!  Watered his eyes a couple of times, but nothing scary.  LOADS of fun!  Carb did some free play on the way back to IXD, and hopefully got some great sunset shots.  Mission complete with a pitchout to land and taxi back to Advanced.  Thanks, Carb!  Great flying!

The eagerly anticipated and long awaited 10 Ship video from the September 4 Ship Clinic is now finished and up on Youtube.

This flight was a finale to the 4 Ship clinic as we were able to mix a bunch of different experience levels together and put up a 10 ship flight that really looked good. Position keeping was good and the whole flight went pretty much without a hitch. Amazing considering that some of the guys had just made their first 4 ship flights only 2 days earlier.

Thanks to 2B for his excellent briefing that got the whole clinic off on the right foot and to Mag for leading this amazing flight.

Carbon

One or our newest Beechnutz, Sputter, suggested a flight in that would coincide with his being in the area while helping  take a friends plane in for Maintenance in Topeka. The sortie started at New Century and went to Topeka for lunch.

The 5th ship acted as Photo Ship so we got literally hundreds of pictures of the flight. Sputter put them up here if you would like to see the entire gallery

Carbon

I mounted a camera in the windscreen of my Bonanza and recorded the entire 2011 B2OSH flight from startup in Rockford to shutdown in in the North 40. A little magic in Final Cut and I was able to condense the flight into about 4 minutes. The speed of the playback varies all over the place. At times it rolling nearly real time speed, at other points it's sped up 20,000%