Fte
 

Greetings,

I'm looking for work as a FTE. I graduated with a Masters in Aero. Eng. from the University of Toronto (Institute for Aerospace Studies). I specialized in handling qualities. I'm currently writing a paper for the AIAA on the effects of simulator motion on lateral handling qualities. I've done a little flying too. Got a commercial and IFR with 300 TT, and several hundred hours flight testing 6 DOF motion sims for research. This is where I really got a hands on feel for what good/bad airplanes feel like to the pilot, within the limitation of a motion simulator. I work very hard and am very social.

If you know of anyone who needs an FTE with my kind of background, I'd love to hear from you. [email][email protected]

Cheers

Since you've not had an answer from anybody in the last month, here at least are a few links from my little blackbook. Mostly company websites that if you hunt around also show their job vacancies and occasionally hire FTEs plus the odd agency or newspaper that specialises in aerospace / engineering jobs ...

http://www.fraviation.co.uk/vacancies.htm

http://www.engage.gknplc.com/engage/

http://www.cessnajobs.com/

http://www.piperaircraft.com/

http://www.britten-norman.com/hr/index.htm

http://www.jsfjobs.com/

http://www.jobs.telegraph.co.uk/search.asp

http://jobsearch.boeing.newjobs.com/

Failing that, you could try just about any company in the US homebuilt or ultralight industry, it's time somebody explained to them that handling qualities are important. :} (Speaking of-course, from a British perspective).

Best of luck, I know how hard it is getting your foot in the door of FTEing.

G

Good luck trying to sell anyone on good handling qualities. It appears that only performance matters, then reliability / maintainability, then avionics, and finally, handling qualities.

Unfortunately this is not the best time to try to get into civilian flight test - heard of one TP at Cessna who recently volunteered for furlough & there's rumors of cut-backs at Learjet as the Continental/Challenger 300 program winds down after certification.

May I suggest you try DND or NRC (who are doing a lot of fly-by-wire & synthetic vision research for the military)? Transport Canada also has a small cadre of FTEs who support certification testing.

Have you thought about helicopters?

Look into Sikorsky and Kaman. Also, with your experience with sims maybe FlightSafety may have need for your skill set.

Fte
 

flaretoland

Good luck with your search for an FTE post.

Your thread however made me wonder what the professionals out there think about FTE's. Do you think that an FTE needs to attend formal courses such as those offered by ETPS, to become an "FTE"? We generally expect "tp's" to have attended such a school - does the community think that an FTE is really just an "FTO" (flight test observer), unless he/she's attended ETPS, etc? I've got a PhD, worked in rotary-wing flight test (RAE), continue to support flight test programmes (autogyro work), but there's no way I'd call myself an FTE...

Philosophical point, as much as anything.

I don't have a formal FTE qualification but I would not call myself an FTO. Unfortunately you're just repeating the QQ mantra. I know my systems, I plan flight programmes, I run them, I fly, I analyse the data and I report on it.

I worked with people who have FTE "quals" and some of them I'm not impressed with, others have been excellent. Likewise the same applies to those who have gained their experince in industry.

In my opinion there are places that are totally hung-up on TPS graduates only (particularly as TPs - although CAA doesn't employ many non graduate FTEs I notice) and others who consider it an utter irrelevance. I broadly think that they are both wrong.

My first boss in an FT department, an FTE, was not a TPS graduate. But he had behind him 30 years specialist FTE experience, starting at de-Havillands - he certainly justified the term and was very good at his job (well better than me anyway). Likewise there are TPs out there who don't have the relevant flying suit badge (including if my recollection is correct, one who posts on here quite regularly) but who have become household names in the field.

Likewise there are one or two people I've come across (again, either profession) who are in FT jobs ONLY because they've got the right flying suit badge and frankly would be better flying an airliner or working in a design office where they can't do too much harm. (Having said that, and before the Union jumps on me, the vast majority of TPS graduates (again, either profession) are incredibly capable, competent and employable.)

My opinion is that the French have at least half the right idea - for either a TP or an FTE to license them (us!). TPS graduation could, as with SETP membership, give a streamlined (but not guaranteed) route into that license (as might appropriate degrees), but ultimately a demonstration of suffient training and competence in the role should allow us to wear the label "TP" or "FTE". As a starting point for the requirements to gain such a piece of paper, I'd suggest looking at...

- The SETP and SFTE full membership requirements.
- The RAeS / UK Engineering council CEng requirements.
- The groundschool syllabus of ETPS/USNTPS/USAFTPS/EPNER

Of-course, what I'm describing is remarkably similar to an abandoned project a few years ago banded around the RAeS for a "Chartered Test Pilot", which I'm sorry to say I had no involvement in but I think was a very good idea and perhaps should be dusted off and re-examined sometime; maybe not under that label, but perhaps as the basis for a UK (JAA/EASA?) TP/FTE license to practice?

As to FTO, I'd say that's a separate issue. FTOs need particular training and competence - I'd have great reservation about anybody claiming to be an FTE who has no FTO background, but equally I've known Engineers, Technicians, Navigators or even other Pilots who have made excellent FTOs but would not have claimed to be an FTE.

G

GtE raises a valid point - for those who have not passed through one of the above mentioned orginisations - the need to turn "on the job" experience into a industry recognised "certificate of competence".

The subject is regularly discussed at work although course costs are off the training budget scale. NPTS offers odular courses which are good but still these eat into the trainig budget.

Another reason for aiming towards an industry recognised standard is that, as most in industry will know, is that Directors seem to think that anyone in a flying suit can do the job (preferably those who give the right answer as opposed to the correct answer). Qualifications would elevate the status of flight test within the organisation (and believe me some people think it is a waste of time).

Does anyone have a SFTE qualifications link?

lhb

SETP
http://www.setp.org/applicationforms.htm

SFTE
http://www.sfte.org (then click on "about SFTE").


On the subject, it's easy to forget when working in our own corner of the industry that we work in a particular way. Finding a syllabus and license that will cover everybody from microlight and glider specialists, to Airbus, to Boscombe Down and Warton is going to be difficult - but I still think it would be worth pursuing if anybody's got the nouse.

G

A timely post.
As one of the few who has worked at both a military and now two civillian test pilot schools, I'd like to suggest that for an part of the business that lives and dies by objective, measurable criteria, why the flight test business insists on thinking that the military schools are the only ones 'approved' is a bit silly, at the least.
Why is there no objective means to ensure that you have the necessary skills and training? At least two of the military schools do not touch civil certification at all, at least one does nothing about structures and loads and flutter, and so on.
Graduation from a test pilot school will teach you something, but not everything you need to know to be good in this field. But some better criteria than just graduation is sorely needed.
(Note that the previous post listing the TP Schools did not include us - National Test Pilot School, yet we have been in business for over 20 years, and trained more engineers and pilots in the fundamentals of flight testing than probably all the other schools combined).
To carry this on a bit, we (at NTPS) continually see that the military schools are 'approved'. This implies there is an approval process, but what that process is cannot be found anywhere. Interesting to say the least.
Sorry for the rant, but we really should be better at this after 100 years of flying, don't you think?

My grovelling apologies Shawn for not mentioning NTPS, which was remis of me and not at-all deliberate. In my defence I didn't mention the Indian AF TPS nor one or two other organisations, more low-key than yours, who also train FT specialists such as Cranfield (or the sadly but unsurprisingly defunct ITPS).

I suspect that military schools approve each other by default, and there is (at least here in the UK and Europe) an assumption, formed from the fact that most of the top posts in many organisations are filled with graduates of one of the four western military schools.

If we're to have internationally accepted licenses to practice - which of necessity need to be totally separate to actual crew licenses, I can't think of anybody but SETP and SFTE who could possibly administer them? Presumably the MSETP / MSFTE baseline professional grades, re-inforced with a clearer minimum syllabus would be the way ahead?

G

I'm not fussed about who it is that sets the standards, as long as there is some standard set.
We wouldn't let people go solo in IMC without some training and an approved syllabus or demonstration of ability, why do we let those who flight test do it without some indication know what they're doing?
Not everyone has to go to a TPS and my good friend Nick is proof positive of that (in fact, if all pilots were like Nick, we'd be out of business in flight test training), but you do need to know something - the question is 'what do you need to know to be safe and long-lifed test pilot / flight test engineer???
And how do you demonstrate it?

This chestnut has been around for years. There have been moves in the past to introduce some regulation for FTEs but frankly they've been torpedoed by the problem of the costs of graduate training and what to do with the industry in-house trained FTEs. I'm afraid to also report, although I certainly don't agree with it, that the training budgets within the organisations, are the first to be cut when times are hard.