Forms are finished

Over this last week, my form partner and I finished our formation flights. We kind of did it in an unorthodox manner though. I had my form solo on Tuesday while he had his form his solo on Thursday. We then had to get ready to start cruise forms for Friday. Cruise forms is different from what we had been doing. We were flying in parade, this is a much more labor intensive position for the wingman. Cruise position is much more stressless for the wingman as you are further away from the lead aircraft. During turns, instead of constantly adjusting your power, you set your power and maneuver the aircraft behind lead in a more dynamic sense. It is pretty fun. 

So, anyway, we had our first cruise form on Friday. That was a mess. Cruise form 1 is different in that you only do pattern work and it is different from what we will ever do again. It was very busy in the aircraft. You are trying to maintain parade position while taking off, landing, turn around the patter, putting your gear up and down, switching the side you are flying on, off of lead. It got busy, but is was fun because it was so challenging. 

When we landed we found out that we were flying on Sunday. Bummer, but not too bad because that gives us several days to get ready for the next and final chapter in this portion, instruments, aka RIs. Our flights on Sunday were rather interesting because there was a really solid cloud layer and we had to fly an instrument departure through the clouds in formation. Another situation that gets super busy. It was great for us to see though, because now we got a real world application of all the stuff we were learning. 

Anyway, fun is over for now, now on to some work in RIs. 

Chris