I have moved the discussion of who can and can’t see the youtube and vimeo videos to the IT/Website section. If anybody else cannot see the two videos in the first post of this thread, please post it there, with details of your browser etc. Thank you.
If you’re serious, then it would be best to go on a formation flying course. Ultimate High offer this as do others.
That said, I’ve done it a few times – as long as you’re sensible, it’s perfectly safe. I’ll be steering clear of the barrel rolls though…
Are you even allowed to do formation flight without training? You are not in Sweden, but I don’t know if this is a national thing or EASA reg.
I’d like to know how they define “formation”.
I have never seen a definition – other than the radio terminology of “G-XXXX formation” where G-XXXX can do the radio for a whole formation of aircraft.
The top-notch magazine cover photos (I know there are people here who used to do that work 
) are done in very close formation… sometimes with a 5m spacing, or sometimes even less. You can’t get them from 100m away with a 500mm lens… I guess in Sweden you do those without announcing it.
But the sort of videos posted earlier are not from 5m. I guess the closest spacing was 100m; even with 1080P HD with video you are not expecting 20MP DSLR image quality and you won’t get it on a video done with high-end consumer gear (say a €1000 HD video camera).
So there should not be a safety issue with hitting each other because you are too close and somebody screws up for a brief moment.
The safety issue must be to do with losing visual contact and then colliding. I wonder what procedures people use for that. A while ago I did a sort of formation flight to get photos of a Jetprop and it was organised by one climbing to 5500ft (or whatever) and the other then departing and climbing to 5000ft, and doing holding patterns along the same bearing until visual contact was established, which turned out to be amazingly difficult even though we were above cloud and in perfect blue sky conditions.
The safety issue must be to do with losing visual contact and then colliding.
This is basically the reason Flarm was developed. Gliders fly together, could be 20 or more in one thermal, and they fly close, we call it a gaggle (not sure if this is a English term or German ?) But it is literally impossible to know where all others are at any given moment.
When towing, they also want to release as close as possible to the others, and gliders from the surroundings also converge to those places. Towing without flarm is not very pleasant when that happens even with only 3-4 gliders in the air.
In a real formation I thought much of the idea was to do it more systematically and controlled, so there would be no need for other things than visual reference. You always fly relative to a leader. It has much more in common to being towed in a glider than flying in a gaggle.
Get some formation training then enjoy it!
And an air-to-air at Compton Abbas in September:
Are you even allowed to do formation flight without training? You are not in Sweden, but I don’t know if this is a national thing or EASA reg.
In the UK, aircraft must not fly in formation unless the commanders have agreed to do so. As far as I’m aware, there’s no requirement (nor is there) a formation rating as such.
Get some formation training then enjoy it!
Those are close formations though.
Also sometimes one cannot get a tightly spaced departure, so you lose visual contact initially.
In the UK, aircraft must not fly in formation unless the commanders have agreed to do so
Sure… you can’t just fly up close to somebody else and start taking pics of them 
Although a couple of Yaks did that to me once, near Southend (not taking pics, just flying close).
I’d like to know how they define “formation”.
“Formation” is defined as “Flight with two or more aircraft with a largest distance of 1 500 m and which is led by one of the aircraft commanders.”
The actual requirement for training is “Flying in formation with distance less than 100 meters may not be carried out without suitable training. The training shall be documented and entered into the pilot’s logbook.”
(my translation)
This is from the part of the national Swedish regs that correspond to (and will eventually be replaced by) part-NCO/NCC.
I’m not aware of anything in the UK regulations about any formal training for formation flying.
There’s procedure you need to know with regard to radio and transponders though – it’s all in CAP 413.
edit oops – completely missed NicR’s post somehow
