The one time I was involved in a fly-by, we had a pre-show brief with the producers on Fri evening, where they said "This singer tends to go thru the Anthem in x min and y sec." So we used that as a reference to plan our hold point and push time, and had a guy on the ground with a PRC-143 to give us a "go" and a "30 sec" call. Of course, we had some section buffoonery at push time, followed by a frenzied call "Slow down, she's taking too long", followed by an even more frenzied "Oh jeez hurry up she's going way too fast!", resulting in us zorching over show center exactly on "brave!" (as in "home of the..") but also going 4.5 bills at MRT, setting off every car alarm in the parking lot. NASCAR fans love loud machines, though, so all was forgiven.....
Below is how it all should look from the lead when it all comes together!
If you're close, the singer will make it happen by changing tempo.
My first flyby I was leading. We had a somewhat close INS point from the internet, but we tried to sweeten it on the way to the IP with -2's DMT (my jet didn't have one). Through some switchpiggery, the point got moved farther away instead of closer. When I entered it in my system, I was 8 miles away at the IP in low holding (beneath about a 4000' OVC deck, vis about 4.5 NM).
We didn't have any kind of pre-brief with the NASCAR guys, but they gave us an approximate time for the flyby. We had a guy on top of the press box with a PRC-113 to call us in.
This was at Martinsville Speedway, the smallest track on the circuit (.536 miles) and it's in a small valley. Our guy on the ground called us in (music starting) and we pushed. About 10 seconds later he called and said "Wait, they're not singing yet", so I started a left hand orbit. About 90 degrees through the turn he came back and said that they were singing now, so I reversed and came back in.
At about 4 miles I was scanning for the news helicpoter, banner plane, and the track, but all I could see was rolling hills packed with parked cars. No track. I told our ground guy that I was NO JOY, and he said "You're looking good, keep it coming". So I did. And flew over my designation diamond exactly on time, which would have been nice, but the track was about a mile and a half off to my right.
I saw it and said "Hang on......coming right". My 2-3G right hand turn was amplified down the whip to 3 and 4 to about 5-6Gs and the formation suffered. We flew across the track 38 seconds late from the opposite direction of what we briefed.
I have never been so embarrassed in my whole life.
The "Goods":
We did eventually make it.
The fans
loved it. They couldn't tell one way or the other, and that's the ones sober enough to comment later.
The camera crew did a good job of making it look good on TV.
We had a
BLAST at the race.
The "Others":
I disgraced the Attack community by being late and out of formation.
The Commandant was there watching.
LL:
A good map study is better than an INS point any day.
Pay attention to the basics (funnelling features, better brief of what I wanted to hear)
Don't make a bad pass worse with a big city move in close. I should have extended and been even later to avoid the shitty formation and dangerous maneuver over the crowd.
Intentional or not (we'll probably never know), it was colossally stupid. On that, I think we can all agree.