Aircraft Types

Formation flying is usually conducted with aircraft of the same type. The Roulettes, for example, are all Pilatus PC-21s. The reason for this is that the performance of each aircraft is identical, therefore the following aircraft don't need to worry too much about speeds and attitudes; if the lead aircraft is flying, and you are flying the same speed an attitude, then your plane must be flying too.

Outside the military and large flying clubs with lots of the same type of aircraft, larger formations have to be made up of dissimilar aircraft. Australia is too small to form an Air Armada of the same aircraft type, so by necessity, lots of different types had to be used. Some types have such different performance that they can't be flown in the same formation. For this reason, the Air Armada was made up of two "Balbos" (the term for a very large formation). The table below shows the speed requirements (in knots) for the two Balbos.

The aircraft that took part were of the following types:

Slow Balbo (Alpha, Bravo)

• PAC CT-4B

• NZAI CT-4A

• AESL Airtourer T6/24

• Piper Warrior

• Piper Cherokee

• Piper Archer

• Cessna 170

• Victa Airtourer

• ACA Super Decathlon

• Cessna 172

• Cessna 182

• Sling 2 LSA

• Blackshape Prime

Fast Balbo (Romeo, Sierra and Tango)

• Beechcraft Baron

• Piper Twin Comanche

• Beechcraft A36 Bonanza

• Piper Cherokee Lance

• Vans RV-6

• Vans RV-7

• Vans RV-8

• Yakovlev Yak 52

• Nanchang CJ-6A

• Socata Trinidad