Originally Posted by
LastMinute
Left less than a year later after the disappointing realisation that, in my corner of the world at least, Flight Test Engineering involved very little flying, very little testing and very little engineering.
It amazes me when I peruse the classifieds I often see ads for FTEs that appear to be positions that draw upon your experience as an FTE but in fact involve little flying. Sometimes the nature of the beast dictates this (Single-seat aircraft, UAVs, munitions, etc). I would say if you're looking for real cutting edge FTE job postings, the
SFTE classifieds appear to have more
COOL positions rather than the paper pushing jobs you'll find on places like Monster.com
Originally Posted by
LastMinute
Out of interest, how much flight testing is done on these "established" aircraft (assuming I've correctly guessed what 'X' is
)? What type of testing do you typically do, and how often do you fly?
Short answer: LOTS. Once you've certified an airplane, it becomes a dinosaur if you don't update it with advances in safety and technology. I'm not even talking derivative airplanes here. Nearly every aerodynamic tweak, every FMC S/W update, every new gadget and gizmo must be proven and then certified in-flight. The extent to which you test is often dictated on the level of familiarity or confidence your local regulatory body has in the change.
And then of course there are the new models and deriviatives undergoing extensive test programs with the higher risk performance and handling qualities testing one normally associates with the Flight Test profession.
Generally one works the existing model testing when in between the larger programs.
In larger flight test organizations, FT Ops engineers (those who configure and conduct tests) are usually assigned to airplanes/programs and may fly 3 to 4 times as often as the FT analysis engineers responsible for specific disciplines of testing. Note that this is in contrast to smaller test organizations (such as general aviation manufacturers), where your Ops and Analysis roles often performed by the same person.
In my current capacity aboard one
LION of an airplane, I fly about twice a week.
For the year, I've logged about 145 hrs in a variety of models.