This post completes my memoirs concerning Farnborough.
I must disappoint those wanting some details of my "Preview" of the Canberra as my final ETPS event as I will be hard pressed to separate it from an actual Preview I later conducted on the RAAF's first 'trainer' Canberra which required extensive refit to reach anything close to acceptable.
ETPS at Farnborough continued.
Many early "test pilots" were killed in their unflyable contraptions. One early would be aviator, in the interest of self preservation, proposed," there would be stronger and steadier winds over a lake than over the land, and the selection of a sheet of water to experiment over was very happy, as it would furnish a yielding bed to fall into if anything went wrong, as is pretty certain to happen on the first trials."
Fortunately, we English speaking pilots benefited with the world standard aviation language being English. Standards of measurement gradually became focussed and assigned to the sub-conscious. Some were always a stumbling block. The RAF used yards to measure the lengths of runways whereas the rest of the world was more content with feet. Mach Numbers were a new measure and added a third dimension to the way an aircraft performed. The relation between Mach No, Indicated air speed and True airspeed had to be fully appreciated. Heights and altitudes persist in feet and speed in Mach No or knots, distance predominantly in nautical miles, loads confusingly going through a slow change to metric measures and fuel changing from gallons to pounds. I had already gone through a transition from Miles per Hour to Knots during flying training when one had to closely identify which type of airspeed indicator happened to be fitted to the aircraft about to be flown.
By the end of the Test Pilot Course, I realised that although I had a graduation certificate, I was far from being satisfied that I could readily tackle any flight test task which may become my responsibility. Fortunately, my predecessors who would be my supervisors for the next few years had also had similar misgivings and there was an accepted pecking order of capability amongst the test pilot fraternity. There were also good and not so good test pilots considering their ability to satisfy the stringent demands for each to have a very broad depth of knowledge and the manipulative skills to go with such knowledge. Most gravitated to their areas of best capabilities. Others failed to recognise adequately their own limitations and either came to a sudden end or were eliminated by the fraternity.
We also learned that the vast majority of test flying would be very routine, interspersed liberally with those highlights which are generally considered to be the norm of the TP. The developing TP gradually enhances his feel for aircraft and the atmospheric medium. Subtle vibrations, tiny forces, movements, sounds and other cues begin to be translated into meaningful messages and signs which are not appreciated to the same extent by the average pilot. The TP's enhanced sensitivities to his machine extend from fingertips, seat of the pants feelings, visual and audible inputs to give the TP a complete and continuous feedback loop. He strives to make all of his controlling inputs into this complex relationship between man and machine as smoothly as possible, while maintaining close monitoring over any aberrations to expectations and reactions to his inputs. Special instrumentation recordings provide long term extensions to the TP's sensibilities.
Conflicts arise when other regimes attempt to insert impediments to the TP's feedback loops. For reasons of safety, physiological comfort and personal longevity a variety of these impediments have been imposed on aircrew. Wearing of gloves is not normally for the purpose of keeping hands warm. They are for protection, primarily against fire and to be a barrier against the extremely low temperatures should one have to eject at high altitude. The same applies to footwear, with military aircrew now wearing heavy boots. Both of these are simple examples where the result is a severe reduction in the sensitivity feedback loops for the TP. Whenever I needed high sensitivity I would have my gloves in my flying suit pocket.
Early powered flying control systems made the tasks of the TP more difficult. High break out forces and artificial feel severed or drastically reduced the primary feedback loop for the TP and made it necessary to compensate as best he could.
By now we were fully immersed in the course with the pressures of data analysis and report writing increasing. Flt Lt Dick Wittman developed a grounding medical condition about mid way through the course. He had been pre-chosen to follow on from the course to an exchange post with the RAF flight test centre at Boscombe Down near Salisbury in Wiltshire. With Dick's departure from the course I was advised that I would now take up this exchange posting. I was elated with the prospect and began to make arrangements to bring the family to England.
During 1955, the RAAF was evaluating a replacement for the MK35 two seat Vampire trainer. The British Jet Provost was on its list of contenders. I was tasked to fly an evaluation, which TPs termed a Pilot's assessment. I was thus diverted from the course for a few days to go to Luton for a 50 minute flight in a civil registered Jet Provost GA-OBU. My assessment was prepared using notes written on my knee pad against a pre-flight test format. I may never know how useful that report may have been in the RAAF's decision to equip with the Italian Macchi..
The course finished during the second week in December. I made my last flight at TPS on 14 November to complete the Preview on the Canberra. My flying hours on the course were 112.30, with total hours of 2280.
During the last few days of the course, some of the tutors arranged for a flight in an Avro Ashton, then at Boscombe Down. The Ashton had a Tudor fuselage, modified with a nose wheel and fitted with four Rolls Royce Nene engines. Six of these had been ordered by the RAF for high altitude research. The first of these, WB490, was the one assigned to Boscombe Down. It had two partly underslung engine nacelles, each containing two engines in wings with about 15 degrees sweep back of the wing leading edges. Wing span was 120 feet; AUW 72,000 pnds.
I became a member of a group to fly to Boscombe Down where the Ashton was flying some circuits. We climbed into the Ashton after it completed a circuit and whilst it was holding for a re take-off. This was my first flight in a prototype large four engined jet. We completed about five circuits with pilots rotating through the cockpit. To my disappointment, a malfunction in one of the engines prevented me from flying this aircraft.
Sqn Ldr Fred Cousins and Flt Lt Ken (Black) Murray were posted back to the RAAF's Aircraft Research and Development Unit at Laverton. Fred picked up along the way the responsibility for continued test flying on one of the small scale delta aircraft built by AVRO as development tools for the Vulcan. The aircraft, to be used for extended low speed research, was still at Boscombe Down. On 5 December, I accompanied Fred to Boscombe Down where he was to have a few familiarity flights. I managed to fly this aircraft, the Avro 707B, on 6 December for 20 minutes. It was to be the first of my many flights, over the next two years, in the mature version, the Vulcan B Mk1, from Boscombe Down.
So ends the story of a rapid learning curve produced by the Empire Test Pilots' School with Farnborough having been a dominating proving ground. What lay in store for me at Boscombe Down following my first assignment to investigate the spinning characteristics of a Mk 9 Auster ?
This thread will be best kept for anecdotes about Farnborough and I for one will be most grateful for posts covering the early periods of historic Farnborough.
Another thread on Flight Testing at Boscombe Down is bound to produce a series of stories that will otherwise be lost to posterity.