Sim Flyboy’s YouTube channel F-15C videos are failry succinct and appear on target. I believe that we have some Eagle crew on the board. Thoughts?
Sample:
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@klarsnow’s the person to eviscerate formation. My opinion is that all looks good in a sim, that’s infinitely too close for any sort of shooting situation, which is what all of this is intended for. Typical formation would be something like 1NM LAB. Flying wingtip in combat died with the subordination of guns to AAMs as the primary offensive weapon.
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What he’s doing in that video is just a drill for rejoining in a turn. Your lead is in a constant turn and you push out to bearing line and drive in like he does in the video. Where you’d actually see it is in a TACAN/CV rendezvous, which is just joining overhead a fixed point. It could be used coming off the boat, off target, or just to meet up in your working area.
The same basic technique also applies if you’re taking off and your lead turns before you can join.
He does a decent job flying form but @near_blind is right in that most of his form videos are just the basics and are more applicable to getting to/from the battle rather than actually flying in combat.
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What he is showing is essentially a UPT exercise, its pretty much by the book, but it is as has been said not a tactical formation. It is what we call an admin formation, getting to and from the airfield and looking pretty on final. Good stuff to know, but not at all what you will be doing whilst fighting. Whilst fighting you will never be closer than a mile (hopefully) to your wingman, you have to have room to maneuver. Also think if you get bounced and one bandit is behind you, if you are in any of these formations you are essentially one target and cannot respond in any tactical manner to a missile or gun threat, with a mile of separation you can both deny him a shot and kill him very quickly.
All that being said his videos are a pretty good demo of UPT Advanced handling aerobatics and basic formation skills, handy knowledge to have, and it has application in the other stuff as a building block, but not really applicable directly to what you would do flying tactically.
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Thanks for the feedback guys. So, is this type of advanced UPT something that you would have a demonstrated proficiency in the T-38 and would just make some adjustments due to differences in aircraft performance when getting checked out in the F-15?
If even doing that, IRL you would just be expected to do this stuff. You learned it in UPT and IFF was where you demonstrate proficiency.
UPT btw is Undergraduate Pilot Training (T-6 and T-38)
IFF is Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals (T-38 only)
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IMHO it’s the building blocks for what flight sim players lack the most:
Basic flying techniques skills.
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This.
This is why I am enamored with finger formation, overhead breaks, NDB approaches, and military brevity - because I never learned the basics that fighter pilots take for granted, things that I’m pretty sure would completely change the experience, if a fighter pilot didn’t know them: as we don’t.
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My very pointed experience is the hazards of flying finger tip far exceed the benefits. There isn’t anything you can learn about patient, deliberate control movements in fingertip that you couldn’t learn in travel.
The only time I want to see another jet that close is if I’m tormenting @Fridge or if that other jet is giving me more gas.
I would say as an f-15E wso this stuff can be helpful, but you have to decide what you want to spend your time on. With an unknown amount of people I’m flying with online with various skill sets, if I’m going to be flying tactically (shooting at stuff) as the objective, I would much much rather people be in tactical formations and do everything else for fun. This has been demonstrated on multiple occasions where you are trying to get a 10+ ship attack rolling out and one element tries to fly fingertip and midairs halfway through the flight out after 45 minutes. Completely screws up the experience.
Unless a standardized set of lessons can be relied upon, for a common knowledge base, which is very difficult without a set schedule, reliable show ups and consistency,. This will always be the end result. Not saying it’s not helpful and applaud anyone for learning it, it definitely helps, but when we are pushing out air to air or air to ground and you are sitting five feet off your flight leads wing, I have no sympathy for the midair.
Or when a two ship formation flying like that gets shot down and split up by a single or pair of opfor, there are much better and easier ways to fly tactically and if it’s going to resolve to roving singletons I’d much rather your dogfight was 2 miles from me than 20 feet off my wing.
Overall I just think there is more bang for your buck to operate tactically by learning to fly in tactical formations. Not saying it’s not fun or good, it just depends on what you want to do.
Fingertip is good as a learning tool only when both people are paying attention to it.
When @near_blind forms up on me, all close and personal like, I have three things in mind: maintaining my heading and speed and watching what his is doing/how close he is getting. That is fine to learn throttle control and rejoining but is useless, tactically, outside of that. Well, useless except for looking extremely cool!
When you are that close you can not spend as much time preparing for what you are are doing. If my flight lead is focusing on something else (ie: mission goals, coordinating or talking through something with someone) I am not going to be in that position. He is busy and has no time to spare to keep an eye on me. If my flight lead is busy, I should be busy helping him out! I need to be keeping an eye on heading, speed and scanning for bandits or getting my own jet in order for the mission ahead. If I have time to spend flying close, then I have time to spend helping out.
Egressing from a mission? No problem. Wingmen can play a little grab-arse and spend the time practicing close formation as a substitute for refueling.
Tactically? No. Nothing. Everyone is too close to be fluid, flexible and on-game.
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The original video mentions nothing about combat. It’s a pitch-out and rejoin exercise, and it is a fine manipulation exercise, an exercise in precision, an exercise and instruction on what you expect to see when rejoining, and a small but fundamental building block of BFM - in the end, it’s a rejoin to a gun solution, faster/more violent.
And I’ll head off any ‘but there are so many variables in BFM’ by re-iterating that it is a small part of but a fundamental beginning on the skills required - again teaching exactly what you should expect to see, how you should react to those things etc. It sets you in the right frame on mind for BFM and a whole host of other stuff.
All IMHO.
Klarsnow is right about herding cats - I mean virtual pilots on a server - but this has nothing to do with that exercise which has a singular purpose and was never advertised as something to do in combat. Still IMHO.
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I do agree that it can be a great help, and it does build airmanship, and it definitely helps with everything else you fly with as well. I do not however in a sim world where you can crash and reset and quickly learn from your mistakes that would be deadly in real life think it is necessary to learning how to fly and employ tactically. If you want to go full on in that direction irl we never bfm down below 5000 feet during training because it’s not worth the risk, in a sim you get great training learning oh ■■■■ doing this maneuver at this altitude made me hit the ground. Reset and don’t do it again. Same things for training bubbles and various rules and things that are all part and parcel with this admin stuff. They are 100% necessary so you don’t run a jet into the ground or another key.
In a sim going out air to air in order of preference what would I want someone learning how to fly an aircraft do, whilst keeping it stuff that is relatively easy allows them to employ weapons and have fun, and can be taught easily. Teaching someone a tactical formation is always my priority, cause it immediately enhances the gameplay aspect of employing weapons and makes bfm and acm more natural. and its easier to learn!
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Yep it all depends on who you’re flying with and what you (and they) are willing to put into it - this is no air force academy, it’s a game and people just want to have fun 
Good discussion here. I found these two helpful although still having trouble refueling. The tanker seems to move up and down unnaturally, I.E. we should be flying through the same air and therefore get moved around the same airspace, albeit with some minor corrections. If I go neutral stick, the tanker seems like it is bobbing up and down. Understanding that his velocity and mass are different.
Tanker demo
https://youtu.be/onB90wl4zQc
Emergency landing
https://youtu.be/K-SRpGF6LnU
Also, ELP’s are great but Twin engine jets (at least Eagles) do not perform them IRL. It is almost exclusively a single engine jet thing.
The reason for this is that with the engines off, you only have hydraulic pressure while at least one engine is windmilling above 20% and you will only be able to maintain that above landing speeds.
No ■■■■ the checklist for double engine failure/flameout/whatever causes both engines to fail is… if you have a lot of altitude, dive get airspeed and try and get it restarted, and if unable…EJECT
He is still doing the procedure right for any single engine (F-16) aircraft though. And it will work in lotsa jets.
Just because we’re on the part of the thread where the nit picking happens. Aircraft waiting to tank marshal on the left wing of the tanker, tank, and then transition to the right wing of the tanker.
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There’s nothing to nitpick; the video description:
Just a quick and dirty Tanker Connect Demo. A more formal one in the
future with a Formation Flight of Eagles. This one is just plain dirty
and Non-Standard. Its something kinda different since there are alot of
refuel videos on youtube.]
The left to right movement is a NATO standard meant for NATO groups. In the end it’s whatever the tanker Captain wants, and if you’re a single ship it doesn’t matter a whit on which side you start and which one you end up on.
Maybe you should nitpick these guys and violate them 
Sure thing. Give the the pilots and squadron and I’ll let them know someone on the internet thinks they’re doing their jobs wrong 
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Great. It’s not enough that the CO mentioned something about couldn’t one of his sons cut the grass more often, and Melanie says that she hasn’t seen Cathy at the OWC mahjong party lately, but now forgetting to open the AR door is immortalized on the Internet! 
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