In article nospam-8F2145.22212702082004@shawnews, tony roberts wrote:
This reminds me of the old discussion on formation flight.
Why do we want to fly close enough to someone who is not trained in
formation flight so that we can wave to him?
We just saw him 20 minutes ago, and we'll see him again in 10 minutes
when we land.

We don't need to bloody wave to him from 20ft wingtip to wingtip!

I am seriously starting to doubt whether it's me that is missing
something, or everyone else!

Yes - you are missing something, quite a lot in fact if you think we fly
formation just to wave at our friends. There are many reasons to fly
formation in civil aircraft - the most common is to get in-flight
photographs of another aircraft, but quite often it's done because when
done well, it is very rewarding. The only 'waving' we do at the other
pilot is hand signals.

One of my most rewarding cross country flights was Houston to Oshkosh
and back again - almost 25 hours of formation flying with a C170 and a
C140.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"