Two serendipitous things happened this week. I.In the first case, I was in a virtual meeting with a group of four other test professionals—friends, really—our conversation wandered about pleasantly, like a river in the flatlands. In the course of our
How often have you heard the term “Lessons Learned”? If you attended this year’s SETP virtual symposium, you heard it a lot. If you have been in this business for more than a few years, you have heard it a lot.
It seems like just yesterday I opened my email and found that Dave Houle had emailed a personal story about the C-17 first flight. He watched it from a hill overlooking the field where he worked. Dave was a distinguished
Welcome back. I needed the break and thank you all for your patience as FTSF took a month off in July. The pace of life is starting to pick back up and accelerate as we head downhill on the back half of
On 25 May, EASA published document number MOC SC-VTOL Issue 1, “Proposed Means of Compliance with the Special Condition VTOL” on their website. Comments are due by July 24, and I hope our readers will take time to look it
What are the chances that important things are happening so fast in our industry, and in so many places around the world, that you missed one of them? One example is the VTOL Proposed Means of Compliance, a document EASA
Broadly speaking, three things happened with the Saturn V and its payload during an Apollo mission. 1. Launch — building momentum very slowly. 2. Second stage — ejecting whatever was expendable to focus remaining valuable resources on what was important. 3. Command Module — precisely navigating
A flight test technique (FTT) is a tool for answering common or frequently asked questions in flight test. It is a maneuver building block consisting of procedures for accomplishing the maneuver together with an objective and metrics. FTTs are the
Have you subscribed to the podcast yet? Most of us can walk a mile in 15 minutes. If you are cooped up at home doing telework, you probably need to anyway, so why not listen to the podcast while you do. Please
For years I’ve waxed and waned in my effort to keep a journal. For most of that time, I was afraid to mar the page, pristine in its beauty. The commitment required to leave an indelible mark on the unblemished