The Airmen: Formation Seminar

Greenwood, MS (GWO)

May 1 – 6, 2001

The Bobcat (along with Sarah and Kirschen) made the long trek south to Greenwood, Mississippi: the home of the Airmen for a four day formation seminar. Here are some images of the event and you can click on any picture to show a larger version.

Gregg “Wizz” Wilson’s GWO formation site

Rob Logan’s picture site

3 miles out	1 mile out	At the threshold of Rwy 18

We were in very good company in Greenwood, with a group of Bonanzas also participating in the event. The aircraft in the background belong to the Memphis Group - they take old run out heavies and strip them for spares. In fact on Wednesday we saw a Fedex 727-100 come in on its last flight.

Amongst the Bonanzas on arrival. The Polar Air Cargo 747-200 in the background was formerly of the Flying Tigers, as it had a -FT callsign.	Sarah preflights the Bobcat on the second day.

One of the exercises was to walk through the formation flight and go through procedures on the ground. Better to bump into each other on the ground rather than in the air, I suppose...

Pre-walkthrough briefing	Sort of an echelon!	More groups walking around

In formation with Dave Nicholas' Tiger	Meeeeowwww!!! Grummans peel out!! (OK I'll get a zoom digicam next time)	Checkpoint Gator The swamp 10 nm north of GWO was the northern inbound hold point. Rumour has that it contains alligators. None of us flew low enough to check that out...

Kirschen wound up in the back seat of a bright yellow T-6 Texan leading a flight of another T-6 and two Nanchangs (aka Chinese Yaks).

T-6s and T-28	Getting ready to start!	Passing the Bobcat (still under wraps!)
GWO Control Tower	Liftoff! With the T-6 wingman in tow!	Over the boneyard Here we go, climbing over the boneyard and waiting for #3 and #4 to join up.
The #3 aircraft joins up	Manouevering over Greenwood	Back over Rwy 18! Eagle eyes amongst y'all will notice the G-meter reading a maximum of almost +3 G's and a minimum of 0 G's

The formation had to go up again in the afternoon, so this time Sarah wound up in the back seat of the lead T-6!

Sarah in the back seat!	Smile!!!
Waiting to start engines...	Taxiing out

Yaks, yaks and Bonanzas... There were a couple of Chinese Yaks (Nanchangs) and a Yak-52 amongst the Grummans and Bonanzas, flown in by our safety pilots.	MacDacBoeing T-45s Two T-45s (BAe Hawks by another name) arrived on a cross country. The pilots remarked that all they did was formation flying as well...	The Boneyard At the approach end of Rwy 36 was a forlorn group of ex-Garuda Airbuses. There were also a number of ex-Continental DC-10s with no landing gear - all propped up on wooden pallets. What an ignominous end! That next soft drink you have... the can may have been one of these aircraft...