Flight Test Safety Fact, 23-03
Imagine that you had magical powers, and you could apply those powers to any part of the flight test safety process? What would you apply it to? That’s one of the questions I’ll ask in this edition of the newsletter
flight test
Cook publishes Flight Test Brevity
I don’t know how much I can say about this given the title, but I will say two things. First, communication is one of the basics, and let’s admit it—we aren’t brilliant. Second, publishing a document in this way is
expressing probability qualitatively
My mother in law gave me a pack of playing cards for Christmas, and I immediately noticed the flag of Puerto Rico on the back. (She lives there now for part of the year conducting disaster relief missions on a
Flight Test Safety Fact, 23-01
“Prediction is hard, especially about the future.” This pithy quote is humorous, but in some sense, we can create the future we intend, especially when it comes to flight test safety. You will find two more pithy quotes in this
Flight Test Safety Fact, 22-12
Sometimes when I write these newsletters, I feel like I am banging two rocks together, creating sparks and attempting to direct them towards the dry, feathery threads of kindling material, hoping that something will catch fire. My hope is that
Safety, Flight Test, and Drones all Over
On Saturday, November 12, 2022, a B-17 and Bell P-63 Kingcobra collided in mid-air at a Dallas airshow. The accident resulted in the loss of all six people on the two aircraft. The topic of Airshows first appeared in the
Orange Wire from Down Under
Letter to the Editor In response to the last newsletter, FTE Jeremy S. sent photographs of Aussie instrumentation he had worked on over the past decade. The only real Frankenstein aircraft we had in recent years was our classic Hornet
Flight Test Safety Fact, 22-10
Just this week, all of the FTEs flew north for the winter (I mean…annual symposium in London, Ontario), and a week earlier, the international Flight Test Safety Workshop ended in the UK. Both meetings resulted in countless discussions that deserve
Flight Test Safety Fact, 22-09
I spent part of the holiday on Monday shooting sport clays with a shotgun. Before we started, I was talking to one of the instructors who learned the skill while hunting ducks. That’s a tough way to learn on the
Flight Test Safety Fact, 22-07
The other day I ran into my stats professor, and I said, “what are the chances?” Almost unbelievably, I happened upon my geography teacher from elementary, and she said, “small world.”** I joke, but understanding the limitations of the 2d