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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 1276.PDF
378 FLIGHT, 1 September 1961 V/arton Johnnies: ££ pilots Johnny Hackett (left) and Johnny Squier in the pilots' mess Development and Demonstration .. . Down) or at one of the Royal Aircraft Establishments, then is givenanother posting, perhaps to a squadron. Or he may (unless he has set his heart on becoming an air marshal or a naval captain) findhis way into the aircraft industry as a civilian test pilot. Make your own way, in imagination, to the other side of Farn-borough airfield during the SBAC Show, to the tent where the participating pilots are having their briefing for the afternoon'sflying programme. Many of these men, as you can see from the biographies published with their portraits on pages 387-389 of thisissue, have graduated at the Empire Test Pilots' School and can "wear" the initials ETPS like a university degree in test flying;others, including some of the most famous, have had no such academic training. Many of them have come into test flying direct from the Services;some of the older man (comparatively speaking, that is) entered the profession after brilliant operational careers in the Second WorldWar. Participating with them in the Farnborough display are current RAF and Naval pilots, flying Hunters, Lightnings, Jet Provosts and Scimitars, who were hardly more than toddlerswhen the war ended. All have one quality in common: exceptional flying ability, coupled with complete mastery of the aeroplane inwhich they are performing. All the items in the Farnborough programme, whether soloturns, co-ordinated manoeuvres by two or more aircraft, or Service aerobatic teams, have to be approved beforehand by the SBACthrough its flying display committee. An individual pilot has five minutes or less in which to show off his aircraft, so must think outhow best to use his time. Two outstanding performers at Farnborough in recent yearshave been R. P. Beamont in the Lightning and "Bill" Bedford in the Hunter. The former, with sizzling high g turns and rapidchange-of-direction rolls, has managed to show off a supersonic aeroplane within the airfield area at low level. The latter in the pasttwo years has spun the Hunter Two-Seater—all within five minutes— with brilliant use of smoke to depict its spiral descent. "Bea's"thoughts on demonstration flying (many of them similarly expressed by Bedford) are clear and sensible. First, that the aeroplane, ratherthan piloting skill, should be demonstrated. Every machine has some sort of feature which its designer feels should be shown to thepublic. With the Canberra (Bea's favourite demonstration aircraft) it was take-off performance, aerobatic ability—features stemmingfrom its exceptionally low wing-loading and favourable thrust/ weight ratio. With the Lightning, things are different. Here is anaeroplane designed to produce 1,000 m.p.h. at the tropopause, not low down; in low-level demonstration the aim is to get as closeto Mach 1 as possible: "what you see is about 600 m.p.h." Tight turns and low-speed handling should be demonstrated: "Onealways tries to look for something another aeroplane can't do"— especially things of military advantage. As wing loadings gethigher, what you can do in five minutes becomes more limited; it is all the more important to try to start the demonstration fromthe moment you let the brakes off—for example by using reheat on take-off, climbing rapidly, rolling into reverse direction to comeback over the airfield as quickly as possible. There you are then, waiting in the wings to begin your Farn-borough demonstration: lined-up on the runway in a Lightning, taxying-out with other Scimitars of your squadron for formationaerobatics, starting your Beagle Airedale, or walking out to find your Avro 748 already full of passengers. Flying every afternoonof the week, if the weather is reasonable and your aircraft doesn't have the misfortune to go unserviceable; meeting fellow test-pilots,old friends from ETPS or squadron days. But these are salad days, compared with the bread-and-butter of everyday testing, theonly time of year when the test pilot gets really publicized, unless he is involved in some sensational or tragic incident. For the other358/9 days he is a member of a large team, co-operating closely in a rigorous flight test programme. The sort of flying a test pilot has to do, and the conditionsunder which he works, vary as widely as the pilots' own back- grounds and experience. Within the last year or so there have beenconsiderable changes through the re-alignment of the airframe manufacturing side of the aircraft industry into three big groups,British Aircraft Corporation, Hawker Siddeley and Westland. John Towle, one of the Bristol Siddeley Engines test pilots, with behind him two of the company's test-bed aircraft: a Gnat and a Javelin FAW.7 converted to reheat
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