Flight envelope test reports?

[Ultranomad]

Does anyone know whether flight envelope test reports for major makes of light aircraft are publicly available?

[Genghis the Engineer]

The answer is probably a resounding no - but just in case, what exactly do you mean by "flight envelope test report"?

G

[Ultranomad]

I mean reports of the aircraft behaviour in extreme regimes of flight (low speed, high speed, dynamic ceiling, high-g maneuvres, steep spin, flat spin, etc.). For example, when buying a plane, I'd personally want to read an extensive description of how the plane will behave in different situations.

[Genghis the Engineer]

I doubt that you'll be granted access to those sort of detailed reports unless you work for the national authority, or are a VERY big customer likely to buy numbers of aeroplanes in double or triple figures. The reasons for this are complex, but to offer a few bulletpoints:

- They are very long (sometimes filling several filing cabinets)

- They often report deficiences which, whilst then rectified, can require quite a long trail through multiple reports over months or years to find the solutions.

- They are often couched in terminology which would be at-best unclear, and at-worst downright misleading to somebody not familiar with the flight test environment, or even then to somebody not used to that particular teams way of working.


However it is a clear legal requirement for the operators manual (a.k.a. Pilots Notes, POH, handling notes, etc...) to contain all of the primary information that you require - albeit condensed down to a very abbreviated form. Whilst this wasn't historically always the case, I'd expect this to be true of any civil aeroplane certified over the last 10-20 years.

So, your best source of information is the POH, supplemented by the sort of in-depth knowledge best obtained by tracking down experienced pilots on type, and buying them beer (but not too much until you've got the main things you want out of them).

G