Milt

Sammy was the first CO of ETPS and formed it at Boscombe in 43

He was also the only chap to do a second tour (as you say when you were there) There is a rumour that he did not complete his second tour but was posted prematurely due to some early warning example of the awful cult of PC. God how I hate that stuff. Anyhow what is wrong with using the library table in the lunch hour to chat up a pretty girl...or whatever it was.

Real men (as opposed to admin types) never were happy with sitting in the ante room after their meal, putting their head back, opening their mouth and snoring. They had better things to do.

JF

JF,

Was Sammy Wroath required to write up a "preview" or any other sort of report on his 'successful' testing of the library table?:E

TD&H

Since I don't think there was any intention that it would enter squadron use I doubt it.

JF

Milt,

I congratulate you on the most entertaining thread I've read in a long time. Many thanks!

Your mention of the control pushrod incident on the Canberra reminded me of the very first time that I was given the authority to sign off an aircraft for flight test (as a humble RAE outstation FTE doing the job of trials project officer). The job was to do some high speed carriage flights of an experimental light store retarder I'd designed. I'd carefully checked that the store parachutes were secured from accidental deployment in the bomb bay, even asking my boss to cross check before I signed the flight safety certificate as I was as nervous as hell about the responsibility of signing the chit for my own bit of kit.

The initial runs went well, as we increased speed on each sortie in 25kt increments, with landings and inspections of the bomb bay between each run. The routine was to climb and transit out to the danger area, stabilise at the chosen speed, turn on the bomb bay cameras and open the doors. After the film ran out on the Deckos we'd close up and return to the airfield to check everything over and wait for the phots to do the film reload.

On the 425kt run it all went a bit pear shaped. The sequence ran as before, but soon after the bomb bay doors opened the pilot announced in a slightly strained voice that he had a control restriction. After declaring an emergency and doing a gentle handling assessment a safe landing was made, with very limited pitch or yaw control and lots of throttle tweaking and wallowing around.

Subsequent examination of the bomb bay revealed two deployed parachutes, wrapped like dirty washing tightly around the pushrods and jammed up tight against one of those bearing blocks. Despite my best endeavours they had managed to squirm out of the packs as a result of the low pressure at the rear of the stores with the doors open. The chairman of the inquiry board let me off with a written reprimand and words I have always remembered: "Your penalty would have been far worse had you not been foolish enough to wish to fly in the aircraft you had signed off as safe".

As luck would have it, I had the sad fortune of flying in this particular aircraft (WT309) on it's last ever active flight, in July 1986, before it went back to Boscombe to be used as a training airframe. Thankfully, FAST have saved the nose section. Hopefully they will have removed the "A&AEE" lettering that found it's way onto it in place of the original "Royal Aircraft Establishment" wording that belonged there. I have a pic of the old girl (older than me I think) on that last trials sortie in front of me at the moment.

To continue with Jindabyne's question regarding British post-war aircraft that were fit for purpose and JF's reply, let us not forget the Buccaneer! At low level and high speed, it was in a league of its own for handling qualities and performance; very stable but with precise control and excellent specific fuel consumption. However, if you went too fast (greater than around 550 KIAS/0.85M) roll performance reduced dramatically. In addition you could not keep the slip ball in the middle at these speeds. Allegedly, the latter problem was due to the fin not being tall enough as it was limited by the distance between decks of the carriers of the day (HMS Eagle?). But at 350 - 550 kts it was the best aircraft for flying very low that I have operated. But I must add that it had the worst handling qualities in the landing pattern of anything that I have flown. But for its day, getting the approach speed of a 16 ton aircraft down to around 130 - 135 kts was quite an achievement.

The comments on the Hunter are interesting. I agree with JF that its capabilities as a fighter were limited and soon superceded, and that if you assess it academically it has many deficiencies. However, it has a phenominal "je ne sais quoi". Part of me is a professional test pilot who has to take an impassioned view of the fitness of an aircraft for its assigned mission. But part of me (a large part!) lives for the sheer joy of flying and appreciates an aircraft for its pure flying qualities and performance. For this reason, the Hunter is still my favourite aircraft, especially the Mk 6.

To return this thread to Farnborough, in its latter days many of the aircraft were used for research into systems for low flying at night. The "Nightbird" Buccaneer, XV344, was equipped with the inertial navigation system from the Jaguar (FIN 1064) and a Head-Up Display (HUD) that was later fitted to the Jaguar for the GR3 upgrade. It was then an even more impressive aircraft when fitted with what were modern avionics at the time. The last Hunter that was at Farnborough was WV383 (named "Hecate", the Lady of the Night for Classical scholars), another night research aircraft. In its final configuration before retirement, it was fitted with an experimental navigation system that was fed by a ring-laser gyro, GPS and a terrain referenced navigation system. This gave a position accuracy of around 3 - 5 metres. It also had a HUD that had symbology called SPIRE. This was a lattice which represented the terrain ahead, along with obstacles. When flown with the FLIR scene displayed in the HUD and night vision goggles it made night low level considerably easier and was a very impressive system. Once Farnborough closed, both of these aircraft were moved to Boscombe Down and "Hecate" was flown as part of the ETPS course for systems evaluations by day and night. But please don't ask me where the stick from the Nightbird Buccaneer is!

VP959 and Lomcevak,

Its good to see others adding to this thread. It all makes very interesting reading.

Lomcevak, can you explain a bit more of how this night work was carried out? Was it mainly to provide as close to daylight visual conditions for navigation and weapons aiming? Would the Buccaneer have a dual capability, with a safety pilot able to take over if it was felt the handling pilot wasn't getting all the information from the test systems to fly safely? (I seem to recall hearing of a two stick Buccaneer). Did you start high (for a Bucc that is) then work steadily lower and closer to the ground?

We know a lot of work was routine, would any of you care to illustrate that work?

Thanks, H

Pure anecdote here.

I was Genghis the extremely junior engineer, just out of the Student Engineers Training Centre (SETC) over in the white "H-blocks" that Milt and JF had received their ETPS training next to Queens gate. (I believe that those building are still there, but empty and looking rather sorry for themselves). The establishment had recently changed name from "RAE" to "RAE" although most people hadn't really noticed the change from "Aircraft" to "Aerospace", and ultimately it was RAE and all one big happy family. My first job out of my initial "student apprenticeship" was as assistant to just about everybody in "Base Engineering", which was the department responsible for taking the boffins ideas, and getting them into aircraft and airworthy so that Test Pilots like LOMCEVAK could go and break them.

My job was on Lynx ZD285, which was being used for developing various Heli-tele and FLIR systems. I had a desk in a drawing office next door to it's hangar and spent many happy days crawling underneath it with a steel rule and micrometer, then back and forth to my desk and drawing board as I created various "make to fit" installations for retaining various black boxes, cable arrays and external lamps and sensors in the right place, at the right angle, and designed to take the right flight loads. I recall my supervisor having to remind me several times that gravity didn't just act downwards in a flying machine and the importance being hammered into me of allowing for inertial forces in every direction as I analysed the various bracketry I designed. As a 19 year old, allowed for the first time around flying machines, it was all very exciting - although to this day I'm not sure I've ever actually seen ZD285 airborne, not could I find a picture of it - but here is ZD284 it's sister

http://www.rob.clubkawasaki.com/jas5177.jpg

I can recall a few other instances from that period. One was being told to take a couple of days away from the drawing board and go and learn a bit about how Southern Squadron handled it's maintenance, I was passed over into the care of a couple of chaps with the introduction "don't tell them any state secrets, they're armourers". These chaps introduced me to the intricacies of ejection seat servicing (a skill I've never used - as clearly indicated by my Hunter anecdote earlier) and explosives safety. They also let me sit in the back of a Hawk one day for a maintenance engine run. Having made quite sure that the back of the aircraft was pointed directly at Western Squadron's tea room, I got shown what not to touch, given a pair of ear defenders and shut in with the fitter I/C in the front seat. The engine started, and as it started the air conditioning kicked in; however it turned out that this particular aircraft had an air filter saturated in moisture, as a result it started snowing in the rear cockpit. Apparently the look of utter horror on my face, just before all visibility of the inside of the cockpit from outside blanked out was extremely funny - although it took me a few minutes and a large mug of sweet tea to fully appreciate the humour of the situation. My next morning's task was learning how to help remove and replace the air filter in a Hawk's air conditioning system.....


Another task I recall learning a great deal from in that job was a little powered parachute microlight called a Powerchute Raider. We had one of these, with a military registration ZG927. This was being used for testing various "flying wing" canopies - on the basis that starting on the ground was a happily low risk way of testing an experimental canopy. It looked something like this...

http://www.bppaonline.co.uk/images/1small.jpg

Anyhow, this beastie was getting through an embarrasingly large number of engine mounting bolts which were routinely going through the propeller - doing it no good whatsoever, and raising serious concerns that sooner later a bit of bolt would come back through the pilot. I was basically given the aircraft, a corner of the hangar, and told to work out what the problem was and how to solve it. That was when I learned to understand and respect boffins - I particularly recall taking some failed bolts over to M&S (Materials and Structures Dept, often referred to as Marks and Spencers) and tracking down the expert on failed bolts. He took them from me silently, put them under a magnifier and calmly gave me a full run down on how the bolt was mounted, how many cycles it had taken to fail, where the peak stresses where, and even how many weeks it had been sat in the hangar supervisors drawer since it had been removed from the aircraft.

This really was one of the huge strengths of RAE - and Farnborough in particular. There were these incredibly bright chaps who beavered away for 40 years studying often quite obscure subjects. But, the fact is that they became the worlds leading experts in their various subjects - and when called upon could solve a problem of a failed bolt, fit AAR to a Vulcan bomber that was never designed for it, create an airborne radio-range extender for a particular operation, invent carbon fibre, whatever was called for - all in an incredibly short space of time before returning to writing obscure reports about their pet subjects. I really do think that a huge national asset was destroyed when much of this "blue skies" research was curtailed in the name of efficiency and DRA.

(Eventually I came up with a revised design for the engine mount, which changed the loadings and eliminated the fatigue raisers around the bolts. Unfortunately I believe that ZG927 was lost about a year later in an unrelated accident - but by then I was elsewhere and wasn't involved in any subsequent investigations).

G

Ah yes ZD285!. I was sent to Westlands to do a manufacturers course on the Lynx to look after it. At the end of the first week we were taken around the factory and shown the production line. In one corner of the hanger was a pile of bits with ZD285 chalked on it. A week later the production team had assembeled said pile into a Lynx!. We all thought it won't be long before we get it.
Eight months later , after many delays it landed in front of "A shed" late one friday afternoon. As we admired our new "toy" we noticed the delivery pilot's removing the second pilot's collective, cyclic and rudder pedals. When asked what they were doing the crew said that a second set of controls were extra and we hadn't ordered them! Then they took out the seat cushions because we hadn't ordered them too!!.
On the monday our two pilot's, Andy Warner (Now with Eurocopter) and the late Peter Rainey, turned up all excited expecting to fly the asr$e of it. They were not impressed!!.When we tried to order said bits from Westlands we were told that there was a two year lead time on them!!!. Strings were pulled and a set were borrowed from the Army.
The aircraft was used then as a "hack" whilst various people came to make drawings of it for the instalation that was planned (one of those people was probably you Genghis, did you ever come over to A shed?). Then the aircraft was taken away to "N shed" for the instalation to be done. I, in the mean while had left to go into civil aviation and never actualy worked on the aircraft!!!.

Rgds Dr I

LOMCEVAK

Ref 344's stick, will that be the front or rear cockpit item?

lm

I don't recall ZD285 moving out of Base Engineering (was that "N" shed, I don't recall) the entire time I was there. The powerchute I worked on was in the corner of A-shed, so I certainly spent some time there. I certainly remember the constant robbing and jury-rigging that went on there to keep those horrible PA31 ferry hacks serviceable.

G

I suspect that LOMCEVAK is referring to the rear stick - since 344 was the only 2 stick Bucc (unless anyone knows different?) made. Did anyone every fly it with both sticks fitted? Certainly in my time it was only flown as a single sticker.

Yes, 344 was flown with the rear stick fitted by the HOSM folk when they were required to 'certify' the fit. I am not aware of any occasion after that when the rear stick was fitted. I often felt I would have liked it there during the several 'famils' yours truly had to supervise from the rear position. That said, a pair of throttles may have been even more preferable!

lm

What fascinating stuff coming now out of the "back rooms" or should I say from within the black sheds.

If only we embryo TPs at ETPS could have had the opportunity to have seen more of that activity at Farnborough.

The state of the art of Fracture Mechanics was in its infancy in my time and apart from the water tank torturing a Comet fuselage near the ETPS flight line we were not introduced to 'wiffle trees' and aircraft structure fatigue testing - fatigue spectrums and the like. Excuse my pre-occupation with this subject but I may be over sensitive after having survived a main spar failure of the second Valiant prototype and then gone on to be intimately involved with the problems associated with the use of high strength steel in the main load bearing structure of the swing wing F111.

Incidently the F111 structural problems were/are solved by regular "Cold Proof Testing" of every aircraft to +7.3 g and - 3.5 g at - 40 degrees C/F. The freezing is accomplished by boiling off lots of liquid nitrogen.

Was there a full scale fatigue testing facility at Farnborough ?

Yes for Concord. Had to make it hot and cold as well as bend it.

The Concorde test rig used to be heated by boiling amonia I remember. Every now and again there used to be exercises for the emergency services to deal with an amonia leak. Depending on which way the wind was blowing a leak would have wiped out half of the R.A.E. or half of Cove!. The Concorde was scrapped in the early eightys.

Rgds Dr I

Dr I

I never went in the Concord test facility but I was told it was heated by infra red. Might the ammonia have been associated with the refrigerant?

Are you on the effing night shift again?

John

G,

I well remember the Chieftains, having often used the service to get from one or other of the far flung RAE outstations to Farnborough for meetings. It always struck me as an odd choice of aircraft to replace the old gentlemans aerial carriage not unconnected with my PPRuNe username.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh........DeHavilland................

Effing night shift?? naaaa not me John. I don't sleep, it's practicing for death!. Also the eldest woke me up at some ungodly hour!.

Rgds Dr I

My cryptic comment about the stick in XV344 referred to the front cockpit, although it was good that this stimulated comment on the unique dual control aspects of this Buccaneer. In my time at Farnborough and Boscombe Down the rear stick was never fitted in this aircraft, nor even considered for trials. To answer TD&H's question regarding the protocol for night low level trials, I will just give a few general aspects then a couple of stories.

An incremental build up technique is always used for safety critical trials such as night low level. Precursor activities would include a survey of the test route by day for crew familiarisation and to look for uncharted obstacles. Infra red sensors can initially be tested by day, albeit looking at a different thermal contrast to that which will occur at night. As you surmise, a route would initially be flown slightly higher than the test heights required, say 500 ft before reducing to 250 ft. However, as height is increased the resolution of IR or image intesifier displays deteriorates due to the distance from the surface. Another problem with increasing height for a fixed field of regard sensor such as a navigation FLIR is that the distance ahead of the aircraft that cannot be seen is increased. Therefore, it is not worthwhile flying too much above test heights. In addition, wherever possible the pilot would carry out work-up training on other suitable vehicles.

For reasearch and development trials, the item under test would often not be the sole sensor that could be used in the low level environment. For example, if testing a new FLIR, proven night vision goggles (NVGs) would ideally be used for safety monitoring. When we first cleared the Tornado GR1 for flight using NVGs (Gen 2 ANVIS goggles with no automatic separation on ejection!) I flew one familiartistaion sorties with the goggles in the rear seat of a Jaguar from Farnborough and then flew the trials in a single-stick Tornado. However, the initial flying was performed with the autopilot coupled to the terrain following radar under existing flight clearances such that I could just assess the compatibility of the cockpit lighting with the NVGs. Once I was happy, I flew the aircraft manually at 250 ft around Wales. We did not fly this trial in a dual control aircraft with a safety pilot, and in fact the rear cockpit did not have NVG compatible lighting so the navigator was literally in the dark while I flew at 250 ft through the valleys!

In early 1994 at Farnborough we carried out a trial on what was referred to then as "Super Gen 3" NVGs. We had 4 sets, made by different manufacturers, and we had to assess their performance against the current Gen 3 tubes. We flew the trial in a 2 seat Jaguar, and on each sortie flew a 20 minute triangular route using standard NVGs then immediately flew around the same route using the experimental NVGs. In this way we flew the comparison at as close to identical light and humidity levels as possible. On each sortie there was a saftey pilot in the rear seat who had a standard set of Gen 3 goggles. One of the sets of experimental goggles was outstanding, and I well remember one very dark night flying quite happily around the Clee Hills with the safety pilot saying that he could not see anything with the standard goggles! A problem in the Jaguar is that the forward view on NVGs is always worse from the rear seat than the front due to the increased light path at an oblique angle through the front canopy and then through the blast shield. Therefore, he was on a loser even with goggles that performed as well as those that the front seat pilot was using.

This raises an interesting philosophical point in R&D work. When testing equipment that gives improved performance, it is good practise to have a safety pilot who can take control if the experimantal equipment fails. But, if the safety pilot is relying on an existing system and the new system works better than the existing system (inevitably a design objective), he may not be able to recognise a subsequent failure of the article under test and thus not be able to take control! The above NVG trial was a case in point. I was also involved in another series of trials at Farnborough that suffered from this conundrum. The Institute of Aviation Medicine had two Hawks which, amongst other trials, were used for developing the anti-g garments for Eurofighter (I will use contemporary nomenclature). These Hawks had an expanded envelope to +9.5g, but trials on the new kit required a safety pilot in the rear cockpit who just had a normal Hawk anti-g suit. I flew a few sorties as safety pilot and these were hard work when the new equipment was working as the trials pilot in the front seat was quite comfortable sustaining 9g whereas I was very uncomfortable in the back!

Interesting times, and I am sure that more will emerge on this thread.

Talking of Eurofighter
 

Or EFA as I think we called it at the time, I spent a fascinating summer once assisting with wind tunnel testing of a new and still moderately "hush-hush" jet fighter in the 8ft tunnel at RAE Bedford. Sadly I believe that this really quite remarkable bit of kit is now mothballed.

The 8ft tunnel consisted of a huge closed loop tunnel, with a cubic capacity of 450,000 ft^3, driving by a series of enormous fans. Added into this were massive compressors and cooling towers all aimed at allowing windspeeds of up to 3.5 Mach through a small 8ft test section. It took about half a dozen of us to run this, all sat in a large (and thankfully soundproofed) control room in the bowels of the tunnel itself which would not have looked out of place on the Starship enterprise (or equally, in a Quatermass film).

A test in the 8ft tunnel (actually you usually had wallmounted baffles in to bring the section down a bit, particularly if you were running transonically) was a far from trivial affair.

Firstly the incredibly complex (and expensive, Ive heard high 6 figure values quoted) model had to be mounted onto the end of the sting, a high-tech spike on which the model was assembled and which would measure the aerodynamic loads upon the model. Then it was configured as we required for the test - small stainless steel control surfaces and stores, AAR probe and so on would be carefully unscrewed and screwed on in the right settings, before the screws themselves were painstakingly covered over with fine dental plaster.

Once the plaster had dried, and the model and instrumentation were "pre-flighted" (a failure at supersonic speeds would have cost a fortune and put the programme back months) the large safelike doors on the test section were closed and the cameras and lights were tested.

With a big tunnel like that you couldn't just run it up to speed - you'd wreck everything as the shock waves made their way through the system at atmospheric pressure. So the first 30+ minutes were spent with the huge compressors pulling the atmosphere in the tunnel down to about 1/10th of a bar, whilst usually the cooling system also reduced the temperatures down to something appropriate for the test.

Once we were down at temperature and pressure, the fans were run up and you'd watch the mach number rise. As the Mach number got near to around 0.8 Mach you'd first of all see the inevitable condensation shock form then vanish on the visual cameras, followed by the supersonic shockwaves on the Schlieren video.

http://www.dnw.aero/facilities/sst/images/schlieren.gif

Then having settled down on the right Reynolds and Mach numbers, we'd slowly cycle through the series of pitch and bank angles needed for the test of the day - working as fast as possible, being acutely aware of the large power gauge on the wall (when running the big tunnel at supersonic speeds it generally read about 70MW) and what it was costing the taxpayer. (Okay, we didn't really care, we were having fun - but you have to say that sort of thing, and it was a point of pride to do this as efficiently as possible). Outside the control room the noise was so bad that you couldn't go within about 500m of the tunnel without ear defenders, and a line of water towers cascaded as they desperately dissipated the huge amount of heat being generated.

Eventually you'd have completed the test grid, done a quick longhand check for any inconsistent numbers, then you'd spend half an hour or so bringing the pressure back to about 1/10th of a bar, then take the Mach number back down to zero before opening up the tunnel and adjusting for the next half-days work.

Who said that the pilots always had the best toys!


Incidentally, I remember a story I was told by one of the aerodynamicists there - which I'm sure was true but I'm not quite sure which tunnel it was (I suspect the 20ft tunnel at Farnborough). The RAE had received a request from the forestry commission to look into behaviour of pine forests in gales. Analytical tools for predicting the behaviour of a pine tree were thin on the ground, so they decided that the best thing was to import a load of small trees and experiment with smoke generators and suchlike to see how the wind behaved around and through the trees - and thus what advice to give forresters on how to plant their trees and avoid storm damage.

All good stuff, except...

That nobody had considered the fact (which is certainly apparent to me at the moment) that under the slightest provocation, pine trees will shed their needles. This they did, leaving pine needles embedded in every bearing and fan housing throughout an extremely large and complex piece of research equipment the size of a medium sized factory. Apparently they were still removing pine needles (or they were emerging of their own accord) for about 6 months after the, otherwise very successful, forestry commission trials.

G