Randy Haskin wrote:
Gary -
Although your take-away at the end of the article is "wear a helmet", I think the equally important take-away is formation mutual support.
Based on your description of the event and your limited ability to see and talk, the actions of your wingmen played a significant part in you getting on the ground safely.
From their initial advice to you to get out of the airplane, to handling the radios for you, and finally bringing you down on their wing to the runway to land, you all exercised key elements of mutual support that make formations phenomenally helpful for handling emergencies.
With one small exception, it looks to me as if the other aircraft in your flight performed their chase-ship duties very well. My questions about that:
- What are their (and your) levels of formation pilot training?
- How did you brief you would handle emergencies like that?
- Did the in-flight execution go as briefed?
Overall, bravo handling a tough emergency and thanks for sharing it!
There is absolutely no doubt that the fact I had two very good wingmen assisting me, was quite helpful. As the question was asked previously, I don't know just how things would've turned out had they not been there. They were definitely as much a part of the success of this flight as the helmet.
Our levels of formation pilot training vary. Our little gaggle of fun-havin' aviators at the DeWitt Spain Airport have different backgrounds and such, ranging from military training, to TRARON. We liked having a bunch of fun, but we also took our formation stuff seriously. Dang near every flight we went on was at least a two ship, most times it was more. For a while, we (I was merely the greasy mechanic) had a 3 ship T-6 formation acro act based out of our hangar and would often practice with the North American Team (now Team Aeroshell).
We didn't exactly brief that type of emergency, and I must admit that not every formation flight we had made a mention of emergencies during the brief. However, we did discuss emergencies frequently and actually had several different crop duster strips we'd use as emergency runways from time to time.
As far as the flight going as briefed, with the exception of the canopy emergency, it went just as planned.
Thanks for the "atta-boy," Randy. It means a lot coming from you.
Gary
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
Actually, its weird, because I didn't get scared until after the flight was over and was standing outside the airplane, looking at it. THAT'S when I got scared.\
