Since you ask...
Yeah, I do know a couple of test pilots! One had been asked by a potential customer to show us what an aborted take-off looked like, stopping from V1. As we were all walking out for our jolly I asked what was on offer, when I was told, 'We're going to see a V1 cut.' I took that for a joke, of course; it's the kind of thing you do in the sim, for obvious reasons. Not least, you can break stuff!
We lined up, Mr Right Stuff gave it the berries, we got to V1 (something north of 100 kts) and then we did indeed come to a complete stop! Just at the last there was a little bit of graunching and vibrating there, but then, almost immediately, we went again, from about 1/3 down the runway. After take-off one could see four bright red bars on the EFIS screen display for the brake temperatures, when we spent a goodly while with the gear down.
Upon landing there came a 'Pop!' from somewhere underneath just as we touched down, as if a tire had blown. Hmm....
Back on terra firma it turned out upon thorough inspection that the V1 cut had made quite a mess of the brakes; the 'Pop!' had been the left outboard main blowing from a locked-up brake. I was watching over the engineer's shoulder as he pulled the left outboard wheel assembly off, when all sorts of metal shards fell out, whatever was left of the pucks, I guess.
Anyway, if a safe take-off is calculated from the full length with normal brake temperatures, how much ability to stop does one have to stop from 2/3 of the available length with red-hot brakes, hmm? That seemed like a fairly obvious point to (non-test-pilot) me!
The machine spent a few days grounded while they flew replacement parts in, a period when it was supposed to be doing numerous demo flights. They finally fixed it, but they flew it out again with no further demos flown from our airport.
I agree that there must be many test pilots with the right stuff, people who are serious, methodical and totally professional. Here I was writing about something rather different, perhaps another one of those with the 'Right Stuff,' when, as it happens, I have met a few, yes, my genius being just the first one. I am sure my guy was 'a really hot stick,' but he certainly was not thinking things through on the ride I got, although I am sure he really was focused on giving the prime customer exactly what he had wanted to see. Different pilots assign different things different priorities, don't they? And that is often done on the basis of one's self-assessment of one's own abilities.
Last edited by chuks; 26th Jun 2012 at 15:50.