Very close off the side

On Wednesday, November 19, I joined Christian Goetze, a long-time pilot, aboard his 1991 Grumman Tiger, for a two-airplane formation flight from San Carlos, Calif., to Columbia, Calif. Goetze and the pilot of the second plane, Wolfgang Polak, are experienced formation pilots, and though our flight involved just the two aircraft, the exercises they were practicing are the basis of the activity, regardless of how many planes there are. Here, Polak's 1977 Grumman Tiger flies just off the wing of Goetze's plane. At times, the two pilots kept no more than three feet of horizontal separation between their wing tips.