Hubert C. Smith - Understanding Performance Flight Testing: Kitplanes And Production Aircraft

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To my mother and father, who made my career possible, and to the little town of Dillsburg, where I grew up

I am very grateful to Capt. William L. Posnett, USN (Ret.), former Navy test pilot, for developing a number of the data reduction methods used in , and for reviewing that chapter. I would like to thank Micro Aerodynamics, Inc. and Sportys Pilot Shop for providing pictures, as well as Cessna Aircraft Corp. and The New Piper Aircraft, Inc. for allowing me to publish performance information from their handbooks. I am indebted to Kristie Kalvin for her excellent typing services on this edition. Also, not to be overlooked is Karen Rider, who had the unenviable task of translating my handwritten notes into a typed manuscript for the first edition of this book back in 1982.

In the late 1930s, Clarke Gable starred in the movie Test Pilot. He was dashing, daring, adventurous, rugged, and not too terribly bright. In appropriate garb he could equally well have played a cowboy, private eye, explorer, sea captain, or any one of dozens of heroes typical of that era. Of course, the helmet and goggles, the leather jacket and boots, and the white scarf unmistakably identified him as a pilot. In this role he threw airplanes around the sky, put them into screaming dives, and otherwise pushed them to and beyond their design limits, often to the chagrin of his employers. Sometimes he barely escaped by parachute as the airplane literally fell apart around him. Thus was established the Hollywood image of test flying.

Real-life testing (like most subjects exploited by the film industry) is quite different, however. New airplane designs are tested very carefully and methodically. They are flown only by the most skillful and experienced of pilots whose brains usually exceed their brawn. Their judgment must be honed to an even finer edge than their skill, and procedures must be followed to the letter.

In the early stages of flight testing, the airplane is very gently maneuvered to determine its degree of stability and control. Only after its handling qualities have been determined as acceptable is it pushed to test its endurance near design limits. If any problems arise, it goes back to the drawing board (or computer display, nowadays).

Once the airplane is proved to perform safely, it then progresses to another stage of flight testing. In this stage the airplane is carefully tested to see if it meets the performance that was expected of it when it was designed. This procedure is, therefore, appropriately termed, performance flight testing. Aircraft manufacturers employ rather sophisticated and complex equipment to make this determination, particularly in the case of military or other high-performance aircraft. For airplanes on the other end of the performance scale, there are many old techniques that are much simpler and work almost as well. Many of these can be employed by the average pilot with little technical experience beyond that normally required to obtain flight ratings. These procedures are pretty much devoid of thrills, involving maneuvers less hair-raising than those typically required to satisfy a commercial pilot examiner. They do, on the other hand, require some precision flying if fairly accurate results are to be obtained. Such precision would need to be at about the level expected in normal instrument flying.