Hi G,
Glad that you asked that, here is the story. There is no such thing as test parachutist license, I mean yes in some armies there is a internal rating that you get with the experience but skydiving equipment manufacturers usually use very very experienced sport skydivers and instructors that actually determine the course of rig development.
Legally it takes USPA D license (master license) which you get when you have 500 jumps and you meet certain conditions. So here I am working my way through college and jumping occasionally at Skydive DeLand Fla, ofcourse there are major equipment manufacturers there and they test their stuff on the daily basis, roughly 100 000 jumps per year at that airport just to get the idea of crowded sky.
So anyhow, all I wanted is to get cheaper jumps so that I can put some ease on my tight buget, so since I knew factory test jumpers very well I kinda get into it doing stuff that they didn't wanna do or simply didn't have time to do.
I have about 40 different test jumps and while that might seem like something dangerous it is actually nothing more than a simple jump with a piece of test equipment and at least on certified reserve or in some cases two, so no biggie.
We usually tested canopies for flight characteristics, filmed opening procedures, measured opening forces, tested cutaway systems etc.
How you do it, well you strap one camera for your leg, one for you helmet, both looking up, you jump, open main canopy, get over the airport and cut away, then pull a reserve and you film all that. I was also a tandem passenger few times for a new harness system and many times for brand new instructors that needed a dummy student that knew what to do in any kind of situation that you might get into during the jump.
So it boils down to that at the time I was getting staff discount and my jumps were $13.5, this way somebody else paid for it, I got to jump and also mine weekend adrenalin dose was there and everybody was happy.
Anyhow in my previous post I was saying that I had only 4 flight tests during our course at ERAU. After all I like to keep myself at engineering lever and skydiving is weekend fun only.
So if somebody needs FTE in Europe or USA call me, you know what they say, will fly for food, lol.
G4