How do they time fly-bys at sports events?

[AirBadger]

Was sittin' on the crapper and decided I want to know how they time the fly-bys at baseball games, football games etc so perfectly. I know fighters have a feature that tells the pilot what speed to fly at to get to a navpoint at the right time, is that all it is?

 

[BeanFighter]

Fly Navy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsojswVfqKE

 

[coho92]

its all up to timing, you'll know when how long that particular singer of the anthem will last and at which second the "ave" in brave will hit. Also helps to have ground guy "or gal" on discreet freq singing along at the pace of the song to guage the timing. That all being said that you tube clip is perfect timing.

 

[AirBadger]

Interesting.

That Youtube clip...awesome...doesn't get any better than that.

 

[CCDiscoB]

I plan the run in based on ground speed. These days they have the time down to a science, based on TV time. It gets tricky when you're seconds late or seconds early.
Speaking of which, did anyone else notice how late the fly-by was for game 3 or 4 of the World Series! Must have been the Navy.

 

[YeOldeProp]

Yeah...but really helps to have a flyer (preferably someone you know) on the ground to help coordinate the fly-by. Did one at a Lackland AFB basic training graduation where the ground guy was the general's aide or something. We briefed him on all the details...especially about how long it took to fly from the ATC-directed mandatory holding point to the parade ground (about 3 minutes).

Sure enough...he holds the button down on the mike to us most of the time...effectively going stuck mike and screwing up the timing. Then the general signals him and he starts yelling at us to be overhead in 10 seconds. We nicely tell him we're inbound and time over target was in 3 minutes..to which he starts cussing and threatening us "in the name of the general" that we were screwing up the entire program. Then...still stuck mike...he's whining to someone standing next to him about how his career just got ruined by a bunch of flyers and how the AF would be a better place if there weren't any of us in it.

So...we're laughing our butts off. It ends up that the the flyby passes at 300" or so right at the beginning of the parade and it looks great to all the moms and dads and kids at the ceremony.

Later that day, the general (who we find out is a is a buddy of our Colonel) calls and thanks the wing for the flyby. Our boss laughingly relays to him about the radio buffoonery by his aide and our thoughts on it (all aircrew humor and not printable...but predictable). The general says he'll by the guy a beer later and tell him it's from us for "doing such a fine job" and that he can drink it only if he pops the top with his a$$ because the aircrews thought he was wound up way to tight. And an AF with no crewdogs would be full of guys just like him...

Wonder how the beer tasted....

 

[mushroom]

Interesting.

That Youtube clip...awesome...doesn't get any better than that.

Sure it does.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hvDDDKnNhuE

 

[Deuce130]

deleted

 

[stonewall]

It's important to know how long it takes the singer...he/she has to tell you the exact time. The Anthem is usually about 1:50 or so, 2:20 if it's an R&B singer.

We always had a dude on the ground with a radio. Usually a good deal for them if it's a NASCAR race or a Va Tech football game. No shortage of volunteers. Anyway, they give you a hack at the start of the song and you base your timing on that. Usually take a GPS coord of the center of the stadium and it's easy to fly to it at a given time.

Of course, it's always best to be a few seconds late when your a few miles out...that way you have absolutely no choice but to push it up. ACC has a 300 kt max airspeed for flybys (think it's FAA driven), but we all know it's much more important to be on time than on speed!

 

[Scrapdog]

Was sittin' on the crapper

So in your instance, you were taking a leak then...