Drone display 'teams'

Pilots of the display teams tend to be an elite population. Precise control. Near perfect timing. Well practiced control. A flare for the spotlight. All but the last characteristic seems to be best handled by machines. And with GPS, laser gyros, localized vectors, digitalized flight controls and whatnot, the time is ripe for a digital flight team. The potential is there to automate a display that is more or less customized to the crowd’s interests and the layout of the display field. And if a single drone reports an issue another can literally join in to take its place on-the-fly. No human emotions to cloud judgement. No unexpected horseplay. And at the end of the day nobody fights about who buys the beer for the whole team.

The drones wouldn’t even necessarily require full sized jets. 1:2 scale representations wouldn’t really hurt the naked eye, but they certainly help the pocketbook. And without human pilots the endurance and thrust to weight ratios will be brilliant. So what if BAC no longer has a flightworthy Lightning, the 1:2 scale version performs vertical takeoffs as it races to intercept those pesky Bear bombers. Here comes the F-111 and it’s trade mark flaming fuel dump. And let’s see which Cold War era jet wins the race today… /cue horse race music. It looks like Starfighter is a nose favor over the Eagle, and shucks the Foxbat seems to have lost an engine this time around. (Obviously for @American air show. Of course the winner changes for the local favorite.) The air show can be kind of a walking with dinosaurs event.

it’s time for someone to develop this.