Dale wrote:

While there was no reason for the guy to be snippy with you there are a
lot of folks who slide up and fly formation with the bombers without
talking to us before which raises a couple of issues. It is a violation
to fly formation with paying passengers, it is a violation to conduct a
formation flight without a pre-formation brief, and it's not comfortable
or safe to have every tom, dick and harry that thinks he's a formation
pilot coming up on your wing.

Well, the "formation" word was never in the conversation. In fact, my
intentions was to sit in my Bonanza while on the ramp shoot a picture of
the B-17 in the run-up area. The rant this guy went off on was
impressive.

Having done some minor bit of formation work, I will certainly agree with
you that an unplanned formation is way comfortable (heck, I find a
PLANNED formation a little unconfortable). However, I am unaware of any
FARs covering your other statements. Can you refer me to the appropriate
ones?

All the paintjobs on the B-17, B-24 or B-25 depict actual airplanes that
flew during WWII. I didn't see anything lurid about the current scheme
as "Witchcraft" for the B-24.

I agree. And the "All American" was fine. But "Dragon and His Tail" is
nothing if not lurid. There are lots of paintjobs from WWII that would
be much easier to explain to my 5 year old than that one.


--
Frank Stutzman
Bonanza N494B "Hula Girl"
Hood River, OR