Week 19 - May 16 to 22

Things are spooling up at TPS for the still junior but soon to be senior 11A class. Performance checkrides (both multi-engine and fighter) are complete. Most FTE still have their reports to write. Also, we 'll have to do our oral presentation for the performance data flights first week of june, and that implies a lot of Matlab (plots, plots, plots). Flying-wise, we reached the point where we now have to be ready to fly any of 6 or more different rides. Right now, we have : propulsion, LCO (limit cycle oscillation), departure (tumbling out of the sky - and out of control), all three in the F16 (or control room if you're an FTE - although we will have a demo for departure), C12 longitudinal stability and C12 lat-dir stability, and T-38 HQ (handling qualities) demo. And most of us still haven't done our glider demo.
Academics, on the other hand, were lighter this week : failure state testing, or more simply, "flying with an engine out", store certification and a couple FTT, including F16 departure.
Aside from work, we had an awesome 50 days party for the 10B (it was in fact 2 weeks ago but I think I forgot to mention it). We also had our "thirsty thursday", like almost every week, thanks to our amazing spouses ! They are really great to relax and talk with each other outside of work.
At the end of next week, we will have a much appreciated 4 days WE, and 3 weeks after that, the curriculum break and we will be the seniors !

Week 18 - May 9 to 15

This week, we had a 11 hours class on stall, departure and spin testing. On the flying side, nothing much new, except that we got the first of the propulsion demo : the pilots get to fly the F-16, while the FTEs go to the control room. not as much fun, but necessary ! Otherwise, more C12 practice check-rides, HU16 check-rides, fighter check-rides, the first of the C12 longitudinal stability demo, more learjet VSS (long stat is over, lat-dir also, and a few FTEs got the specific FTE ride and flew in the right seat (instead of staying in the back). The VSS rides are very interesting since we can evaluate handling qualities of many different types of aricraft in one flight, but not very enjoyable from a back-seater point of view : barf bags mandatory ! Even some of the pilots admitted that they had managed to make themselves sick, while being at the controls !!
Next week, we will have many different small classes (failure testing, some FTT briefs, ...) and many different flights (C12, VSS, LCO, proplusion demo, ....). More on that next sunday !

Week 16 & 17 - April 25 to May 8

First of all, let me apologize for missing a week, but I have been quite busy becoming a dad .....
So, what happened over these two weeks ? I'm not so sure, having missed a ouple days, but I will try to give you a good overlook.
We had a structure class, followed by "ASE" : aero-servo-elastic coupling. In a nutshell, we studied all the coupling that can happen both on the ground and in the air : flutter, limit cycle ocsillations, rigid body limit cycle, ....
Then we had to choose our TMP (Test Management Project). They will keep us very busy for the rest of the year at TPS. We will have to manage a full test project, for real customers, while still doing academics, curriculum flights, tests, checkrides, .... We will have to write test plan, safety plan, concept letters, coordinate TPWG (test plan working group) , and so on ! We then had several days of academics to teach us everything we needed to get started on these TMPs.
On the flying side, more VSS flights in the learjet, practice checkride in the C12, checkrides in the HU16, fighter checkrides in the T38 or the F16, and so on.
Next week should be about the same for the flights, with maybe the first of the C12 longitudinal stability demo flights. On the academic side, we will have a serious challenge with "spin and departure".