Apologies for not replying for a while. I have been busy away from home doing flying training (and was awarded my PPL on Wednesday
). But now, back to ground school.
Ok G, the course started off with an introductory briefing, which then ran into the first pre-flight briefing about Drag and Static Stability. The engineer chap from the Cranfield team went over the theory behind each stage of the testing in depth, explaining how force was approximated rather than actually measured, the relevance of the minimum drag speed, etc. Most of the theory was revision, but it was good to see how some concepts became useful to the pilots (e.g. minimum drag speed giving you the best range/endurance depending on jet or piston - pretty basic I know!).
Then we would be shown what we had to record in the aircraft and how we had to process it afterwards. When we were actually in the aircraft the engineer would explain what was going on and tell us when a new situation had been established so that we could write down the numbers on the screen. So our role in the aircraft was not a particularly active one i'm afraid!
The next exercises were Longitudinal Static Stability (measuring elevator angle, tab angle and airspeed) and Longitudinal Manoeuvre Stability (measuring elevator angle, elevator link force and normal acceleration). This was followed by some demonstrations for which no readings were taken . These were the short period pitching oscillation and phugoid mode, a stall, dutch roll mode, roll subsidence mode and the spiral mode. The stall was particularly exciting after my experience of stalling cessnas – very noisy and violent in comparison.
The final flight consisted of testing navigation systems, namely comparing IRS against GPS and demonstrating VOR/DME tracking. I wasn’t quite as keen on this bit because it didn’t seem to be related to the aircraft, apart from the VOR bit, which I have done before. We would have been doing an ILS approach, which I was looking forward to, but a thunderstorm meant we had to land on the wrong runway at Southampton (apparently the ILS only comes off one of the runways?).
So on the whole, very enjoyable and valuable. In terms of what I actually learned, I think it is scattered. There is the odd bit here and there which has been enlightening, or clarified. Mostly, I think it was useful from the pilot perspective, showing how the engineering and the flying interact. The best part was the Chief TP explaining what the results meant to him, as this part was all new knowledge.
Ginge
