[Dr K]

Originally Posted by Yoda

He's pretty close, probably 10 or 20 feet back, but not "rest the nose on the ramp" close. You can get very close to another aircraft without too much problem. In form with similar aircraft you routinely cross over from one side to the other 10 feet back or so, and that's with student pilots. The "Blues" measure their separation in inches.

In this case, even though the photo bird is a lot bigger, most of the disturbed air is going to go above the fighter since it's a high wing aircraft and it has relatively light wing loading. The big wake turbulence doesn't wrap up until around 200-300 yards behind the lead. The high wing loading on the fighter makes it pretty stable.

You can have problems if you put a light ac next to a heavy one though. The Navy lost a T-34 in the 80's with two pilots trying to verify the landing gear on an F-14 was down. Got sucked into the Tomcat by the trailing vortices and the resulting damage caused the T-34 to crash.

Thanks. That's just what I was looking for.