Flying a 5-Ship FLY - BY using IFly and ADSB - Memorial Day 2019
-Big thanks to IFly for enabling the KEYSTONE FLIGHT to put on a great 5-ship low-level formation fly-by and missing-man pull-up on Memorial Day here in Central PA!
-We used IFly to plan the mission a couple of weeks before hand - everything was done on IFly.
-On the day of the event, we used IFly and STRATUX to form the 5-ship formation, fly to our initial point, orbit on a racetrack, and depart to hit a "00" time over target as the Memorial Day Event was starting with the National Anthem.
-We used IFly to arrive exactly on-time, in formation, at the exact 500 AGL altitude, on the right heading to track directly over the cemetery and then we had our most powerful aircraft do a "missing man" pull-up as the formation was overhead. It was a thrilling event for the very small town of York Springs, PA to commemorate Memorial Day, 2019. All the pilots were Veterans or had Fathers who were Veterans, so this was a very special event for us.
-Thanks IFly for taking a lot of the planning, navigation, timing and altitude guess-work out of the equation so that we could simply fly our planes and stay in formation.
Mike N714AJ
The Planning...
The formation take off at N94, Carlisle, PA...
The Objective Area - the Sunnyside Cemetery which holds Veterans from as far back as the American Civil War...including those killed in action at Gettysburg, not far from here...
The formation on the run-in...the Yellow Cessna is about to perform a missing man pull up...
The recovery...landing as a 5 ship at Gettysburg Airport to debrief and AAR the event over lunch...
Three of the five aircraft on the ramp at Gettysburg, PA - Memorial Day 2019...
Formation lead...the IFly helped me with all flight lead decisions...having "tenths of a mile" on the DTG was extremely helpful during micro-navigation to the objective area. This would have been 10 x harder without IFly...
My wingman, the # 2 ship - a Cessna 172 flown by a pilot who's Dad flew B-17's in WW II.
Lead aircraft - kept it at 85 KIAS and adjusted to make the ground speed such we hit a 10:00:00 time over target exactly on time, on speed, on heading, on altitude with a 5-ship of slightly dissimilar aircraft and pilot experience -- thanks IFly!
The pilots and crew of the KEYSTONE FLIGHT Memorial Day 2019 Formation relaxing at Gettysburg for lunch.
Thanks for all the help with mission planning, navigation and execution, IFly and STRATUX! A great combo!
Mike N714AJ