NASA working on wake cruising

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09-18-2020, 07:53 PM

#11

rickair7777

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Peabody17

The C-17 has digital SKE that you couple to the A/P and A/T, so you can fly formation “hands-off”. I’m sure it won’t take much for the civilians to figure it out too...

It can be done, just not cheap. Mil is more risk tolerant, by orders of magnitude, so probably can't just install mil hardware, it would need to be clean-sheet.

09-18-2020, 09:36 PM

#12

Excargodog

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Joined APC: Jan 2018

Posts: 11,498

So, unbriefed formation flight with someone you’ve never met?

How could that possibly go wrong?

I’d rather go MARSA with the Italian Air Force.

https://youtu.be/MG1f3ukUxYI

09-18-2020, 10:10 PM

#13

hydrostream

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Posts: 459

The only way this will work is with circular runways.

09-19-2020, 06:38 PM

#14

TransWorld

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Joined APC: Aug 2016

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Quote:

Originally Posted by hydrostream

The only way this will work is with circular runways.

I’ve seen them. I am impressed with less than 22 seconds to change tires and fuel. Now, if they can figure out how to get 150 PAX and bags off and another 150 back on in under a minute, we could join back in without losing more than a couple of laps.

09-19-2020, 08:57 PM

#15

AirBear

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Peabody17

The C-17 has digital SKE that you couple to the A/P and A/T, so you can fly formation “hands-off”. I’m sure it won’t take much for the civilians to figure it out too...

Flying SKE formation was like a freaking 2 hour long hand flown ILS. It's nice the C-17's can couple it, we didn't have that option in C-130E models.