Hello and Welcome
 

Greetings all,

I would appear to be the guilty party who persuaded Cap'n Pprune himself to put this forum here. I know there are a few FT people around and have Emailed them, but to all and sundry welcome.

It might be worthwhile if we all start off with introductions, so as for myself:-

Formerly military FTE
Formerly aircraft environmental testing
Now airworthiness engineer / head of flight test / design signatory covering small airsports aircraft.
Also a lowish hour pilot and do some basic testing (renewals and performance work mostly), but mostly do my professional flying as an FTE when needed.

G

Looking through PPrune i saw this forum. I am extremely interested in the test flying area and would jump at the chance to talk to someone first hand on how and in more detail what is involved in becoming a test pilot.

I am still only young and in the postion to redirct my flying as to enable me to have a crack at becoming a TP. Any info would appreicated and look forward to future chating.

Diversion,

You might like to take a look at my reply to Darren in his topic "Becoming a Test Pilot" -

G

Nice to see a flight test forum. I'm a FTE with 3+ years Flight Test on commercial aircraft. Also a low time PPL.

Congratulations Genghis in your art of persuasion; a flight test forum should certainly serve us well. Thank you also to Danny for setting this up. I have a couple of thoughts but I shall set up a new thread on the forum.

Never normally bothering to look at any other forums bar the Wannabe one, maybe I've been looking in the wrong place for inspiration!

I see we have some super illustrious members to this forum...

I would have loved to be a Test Pilot but although my vision is almost 40/20 corrected (I tested myself the other day!), being an otherwise four-eyed geek would mean I'd never pass the military's medical although I have a nice shiny Class 1...

I'm an aerodynamicist/flight control engineer. Recently worked for Airbus developing FCMC logic for the A340-600.
Now work for Cambridge Control (part of The Mathworks - i.e., the company that develop Matlab) as an Aerospace Consultant.

I presume you work at Boscombe Down Genghis? AT&E Sector?

I'm finally about to get my first exposure to real flight test work with our involvement developing control laws for the VAAC Harrier...

Its taken years!

Glad to have you on board SR71.

Ex BDN / AT&E, but sadly never got to fly in the VAAC (couple of trips in the Astra Hawk, that's quite interesting, but not in the same class).

Now pursuing a career in the more financially rewarding and less dogmatic world of civil aviation.

I'm looking at purchasing MATLAB at the moment as it happens for plotting some research data on tailless deltas. I haven't used it yet, how good is it at taking error analysis into account in curve fits?

G

Genghis, well done, good idea.
I'm an Turboprop driver, but V. interested in flight testing of light aeroplanes. Have done several CofA issue flight tests and Permit aircraft, so I'll follow this keenly.

Glad to have you on board Iom, it's been a bit quiet lately

Genghis,
I never had a problem doing any kind of generating splines in Matlab although I don't do much error analysis, but you may need a toolbox depending on what you want to do... We obviously have all 40+ toolboxes which is nice!
If you want, drop me an e-mail regards the nature of the problem.
If you want, I'll get onto our sales department on your behalf...

Very good to see that sight has been set up where we mortals can ask questions of a test pilot nature and get a qualified response. How good is your BAe146 knowledge?

Virtually non existent.

I did an exercise on my ETPS course to decide whether it would make a good flying testbed (it would) and once spent an entertaining couple of weeks blowing artificial ice at one to see what shape formations we got for the wind tunnel chappies.

But glad to have you on board; why not start a new topic to see what response you get.