[ MSFS2020 | VATSIM ] Virtual USA Flying Club Airshow formation demo in the Blackbird FG-1D Corsair!

Virtual USA Flying Club broadcast: • Virtual USA Flying Clu...
Slant Alpha Adventures, Solo: • [ MSFS2020 | VATSIM ] ...
Slant Alpha Adventures, Formation: • [ MSFS2020 | VATSIM ] ...
For the second straight year, our friend JetPilotCinnamon made an arrangement with VATUSA and VATSIM to allow our Virtual USA Flying Club to gather on the network to perform a virtual airshow! While I missed last year's, I did watch the broadcast later on -- and marveled at how well organized and executed the event was. With JetPilotCinnamon acting as the Airboss and JefforyB acting as both host and telecast producer / director, it was an amazing show. So when the club started assembling the program for the Second Annual Virtual USA Flying Club Airshow, I knew I had to be a part of it!
While the telecast is the best way for you to enjoy this show, what appears here is my in-cockpit vantage point for my two contributions to the program. They were performed in the Blackbird Simulations (a spin-off of MilViz) FG-1D Corsair, virtually identical to the one my own grandfather flew during World War II (in fact, his uniform hat and leather flight helmet hang on the hatrack visible over my right shoulder). And, I have to thank DownwindSim for the custom livery used in this performance, which honors him. The whole of both of my performances are dedicated in his honor.
Part 1 was my solo demo, the third of seventeen performances featured in this year's airshow. Each maneuver was preceded by a reverse half-Cuban -- my favorite airshow course reversal, because it includes a harrowing moment where the plane's nose is literally pointed ninety degrees straight down toward the ground. After departing, we reversed back in and made a simple high-speed, low-altitude pass. Each pass was aimed to enter at less than 100 feet AGL and at least 300 knots. Our second pass was a double aileron roll, which I over-rotated slightly but recovered quickly. The third was arguably the most difficult -- an inverted high-speed, low pass. It took a day's practice to figure out how to adjust the alignment down the center if I got off-line with that. Pass four was a simple vertical loop, which I aimed to recover as low to the ground as possible -- but played it slightly conservatively on show day, here. The fifth pass was what I called the "washer / dryer" meaning I would spin and then tumble! We brought the plane into a vertical, sent it into a twisting vertical maneuver, then when it started to fall we recovered it in a 90-degree nose-down attitude to fly it out back on the Runway 21 side. Finally, we brought the plane in for a carrier break and landing, performed with an initial leg of fifty feet AGL and 300 knots.
Part 2 was my performance as the #4 (slot) pilot in a four-ship warbird formation, comprised of a T-6 Texan, a Harvard IIB, a P-51 Mustang, and my Corsair. Maintaining formation on VATSIM is definitely about 100 times harder than it seems it should be, particularly when four different aircraft are used. The main limiting factor is that VATSIM's "Velocity" protocol, while a massive improvement over the previous position refresh rate, is still limited to a latency of around 0.2 seconds -- which, at 150 knots, equates to 50 feet of lag in the rendered position. But we didn't do too badly. Pass one came around in a diamond formation; for pass two, we did a finger-four right (which basically meant I was the only one who had to change, from being on number three's left wing to being on his right); the third pass was a right echelon which we then broke into an in-trail (follow-the-leader) pass, then another pass in the diamond with a curving path over the crowd for a "photo pass." Finally we went back to the right echelon for a four-ship pitch to landing, although our number two ship had engine trouble and our number one wound up going around and landing behind us. -- Watch live at / slantalphaadventures

[@simairflyer]

No time to relax on that totally amazing formation flight