Word: airings
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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After the first few flights have proved it airworthy, the airplane is turned over to a military test pilot as his "project." He takes it into the air, loaded with automatic recording instruments, to find out whether it lives up to the contractor's guarantees. Often a hidden defect, perhaps unknown even to the manufacturer, drags the plane out of the air. The pilot's best bet is to make an emergency landing on the broad lake. Bailing out alive from a modern jet plane is difficult; it is also part of the test pilot's code...
After the first flight tests, the new airplane (if still intact) goes back to the manufacturer with a detailed report. If he can convince the Air Force that its defects have been corrected, the Air Force buys several improved copies and turns them over to test pilots for final "evaluation." Since the airplane's basic flight characteristics are well understood by then, evaluation work is usually done at Wright-Patterson Field, Dayton, close to the great laboratories of the Engineering Division. The airplane is flown at all possible altitudes, loads, power outputs and rates of climb. It is strained...
...Enough Money. The 90-odd pilots of the Flight Test Division, most of them based at Wright Field, have the highest prestige of any group in the peacetime Air Force. Slim, unshakably calm Colonel Albert Boyd, 42, chief of the division, picks his men with minute care. Their records must show that they are not "accident prone." Formal engineering training is valuable, but character is essential. The prospective test pilot must be alert, intelligent, stable and not excitable. He must be enthusiastic about the work. There isn't enough money, explains Colonel Boyd undramatically, to pay for what...
Over & above these professional qualifications, Colonel Boyd demands that the test pilots have agreeable personalities. They are, he feels, ambassadors of the Air Force to civilian engineers and designers. They must criticize airplanes sharply, point out defects, suggest changes. Everybody is happier if such work can be done tactfully. Colonel Boyd is skillful at selecting his ambassadors: one notable fact about them is that they have pleasant personalities (another is that the married ones have pretty wives...
...short time at Muroc, coming & going with their "projects," i.e., the aircraft on which they are making tests. Colonel Boyd, a strict but much-beloved "Old Man," is there a great deal. His pilots testify that "he does everything we do" and he is one of the six Air Force men who have flown faster than sound in the X-1.* ("The Old Man did fine," says Chuck.) In 1947, Test Pilot Boyd also set a new world's speed record (623.8 m.p.h.) over Muroc Lake in a specially built F-80 (TIME, June...