The video of frigate birds is charming but says nothing. Anyone who can
read anything from that must be an astrologer. (I'm an Aquarian and
Aquarians don't believe in astrology!). Mebbe two lions ambling side by
side across the bushveldt are practicing drafting! You can bet they're
sniffing the breeze for a few foolish upwind hunters! But, but, but, the
wings of frigate birds are indeed interesting, because the highly tapered
tip planform is contrary to established aerodynamic theory. We dunno why!
I have a Ph. D. student at USC working on this.
It seems wise not to use the word draft incorrectly, it has a
well-defined meaning among professionals.
There is no issue of whether there is a physical principle underlying
formation flight - this has been established since Wieselsberger (1914).
I'm told that Doktor W. went on to help the design of the Albatros D.III, a
favorite gun platform of Von Richthofen!
Benefits of formation flight are supported by a large body of research. In
fact, the field is overripe in research to the level of decay. There is a
huge amount of professional stuff in the aerodynamic and ornithological
literature. There's a nice recent Ph. D. thesis by Rachel King that I had
something to do with (On the Use of Wing Adaptation Formation Flight for
Improved Aerodynamic Efficiency, NCSU, 2005). It contains a 69 entry
bibliography, all legit., I think!Her supervisor, Ashok Gopalakrishnan,
knows a lot more than I about this topic - I've only published six papers
on it and given one grad course on this at UCLA. Also one can find stuff
in Google that provides a start, if slightly dangerous! Google has an
extract from a bit I wrote on formation flight for Tony Filippone's book,
Flight Performance of Fixed and Rotary Winged Aircraft (Elsevier, 2006).
The extract is slightly wrong, but OK in many respects. Be careful of web
material - lotsa stuff I've found in Wikki on advanced mathematics is
incorrect.Trubble is -- how the hell do you know it's BS -- if you
don't know already!!
Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures
Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for.
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