Right-Stuff School

You, too, could become a diploma-carrying test pilot, as good as any now working for a major manufacturer. Of course, there is the matter of talent that may differentiate you from the real test pilots, and you'll need a degree in physics, math, or engineering just to be admitted to the National Test Pilot School's yearlong course in Mojave, California.

After 11 months and having spent a half-million dollars to complete the course, you will be a modern-day test pilot—one more comfortable with a pipe and electronic calculator than a stick of chewing gum and guts. The year is spent drinking cosines and sines from a mathematics fire hose and flying a variety of aircraft.

There is also a less-expensive two-week overview of the long course—as it is known—that is open to all, no matter what the academic background. It is still heavy on math, but anything you get from it will provide a greater understanding of any aircraft you fly. Despite the high-end, heavy-hitter atmosphere at the school, the NTPS has strong links to general aviation.

You'll notice them right away. Sitting on the flight line are two Cessna 150s, and single-engine, conventional gear aircraft used for spin studies. More important, there is a speedy twin piston-engine aircraft called a Wing Derringer with amazing single-engine capabilities that is planned to reenter production soon. There is even a factory with a "Derringer" sign on it just down the street from the NTPS. More about that later.

Perhaps the NTPS's strongest draw for the GA pilot is the upset course. Depending on your piloting background, there is an excellent chance that you will end up piloting a jet fighter (OK, trainer, but it has guns and can drop bombs). The instructor will roll you upside down repeatedly in all configurations of flaps and gear to train you in recovery methods. Early in my flight, I was losing more than 1,000 feet before recovering from unusual attitudes, but improved to 900 feet on the last few tries. Here's how my flight went.

The briefing is set for 7 a.m. The previous day I had ground school, showing me the switches I will need to start the engine of an Aermacchi MB 326, also known in South Africa as an Impala tandem-seat trainer jet. It was designed in the early 1970s and produced for Italy, Australia, Brazil, and South Africa.

Instructor Ron Bradley won't be able to help me with the switches, other than to voice instructions, so it is important that I am familiar with the relatively simple cockpit. The briefing repeats some of the information about those all-important switches and an overview, as well as a video, on the actual flight we will conduct. I have never flown a jet.

After engine start, Bradley talks me through the taxi and the need to keep the power high in order to steer around corners with differential braking. There is no steerable nosewheel. Once at the runway, I feel like the pilot of a Lockheed SR–71, because a ground crew has followed us out and is now checking the aircraft for fluid leaks and conducting other safety checks. I am wearing a white helmet—the good guy off to defend democracy—along with flight boots and an oxygen mask. Our hands are in the air as though the ground crew is conducting a stagecoach robbery; they need to know that we won't throw the wrong switch while they are on their hands and knees, inspecting for fluid leaks.

Now ready to taxi onto the active at Mojave Airport, power is increased to 60 percent, and it will not be less than that for most of the flight. The pin has been out of the Martin Baker ejection seat since preflight, and if you really pull the handle, you really blast through the canopy. Bradley has promised that if we eject, he will time it so that I am not seared by his rocket blast. What a guy. (The ejection seats are not sequential and are pulled independently of each other. However, they are centered slightly in the opposite direction to each other for separation in the unlikely event that they are pulled together.)

We ease onto the centerline, and Bradley calls for the throttle to be snapped to military power. We time the seconds it takes the engine to spool up; that's an important indicator of its health.

The takeoff is as simple as a Cessna 150's, and the climb about as anemic as we let airspeed build. There the differences end. A steeply banked jet-fighter turn is needed to avoid airspace owned by Edwards Air Force Base. There on our right is the dry lake that the space shuttle sometimes lands on, and over that ridge is the Edwards runway. Bradley is on the radio getting us cleared by an exact route to a block of airspace with a military code name. I could tell you what it is, but then I'd have to…well, you understand.

We climb to 15,000 feet and begin a series of upset recoveries, first from steep banks, then from knife-edge (90-degree) banks, then from inverted flight. We start out with gear and flaps up, and end the series with them down. Each time, Bradley lets the aircraft descend as it would if we were upset in the real world by, say, turbulence from an airliner ahead. At first I am losing 1,100 feet: This is a jet, and a bit of a sluggish one, like a Boeing 737. But because it is a jet, things happen faster.

Upside down, I push on the stick to slow altitude loss and roll toward the upright position as quickly as possible. I jam in more top rudder as the aircraft passes through knife-edge flight, reversing the stick from a push to a pull as the aircraft approaches upright flight to conserve altitude.

The controls are mechanical, and there is no stick-shaker. None is needed. The whole aircraft shakes violently from aerodynamic buffet. During the pull from the descent, I back off as the buffet begins and pull again to the edge of a buffet.

Altitude loss occurs more quickly, and despite my beginner's knowledge of aerobatics, the best I can manage is a loss of 900 feet. In other words, if you're in the traffic pattern, you'd better hope the life insurance is paid. Or learn to recover better. Speeds are never above 260 KIAS, even on the descent back to Mojave. Once the maneuvers are completed, it is back to Mojave, where I am allowed to land the tame trainer. The Impala has proven that even a little training can result in dramatic improvement in recoveries.

That's the point of the $4,000 upset-recovery course. It is one of very few NTPS courses offered to the GA community. Others include spin training (two days, $4,900) and formation training (two days, $4,300). Academic courses cover several topics, from "GPS for the Layman" (four days, $1,750) to crew resource management. The aircraft that are used range from a Cessna 150 to supersonic jets such as the Saab Draken.

The aircraft are managed by Flight Research, a separate company that acts as the school's flight department. Run by Nadia Roberts, wife of Sean Roberts, president of NTPS, it can also serve as a flight-test department for any manufacturer needing such services.

National flags in the front lobby reveal which countries send students to the school. Today, along with the U.S. flag, there are four additional nations represented. Last month there were eight. Some of the students are nonpilot engineers, but they are encouraged to handle the controls during training flights. The yearlong course had about 10 students last year. In all, about 300 pilots have graduated from the long course since the school began in 1980. The two-week overview of the long course costs $5,500.

"People thought we were crazy to start a school that competes with the two military schools," Sean Roberts recalls. "The thing is, the military trains people for military acceptance flight testing. The military pilot never does first flights or envelope expansion. The manufacturers who asked me to start this flight school want pilots who are part of the design team, can help design the cockpit and flight control system, will do the envelope expansion, and will be a consumer interface between the manufacturer and the customer."

He has attracted the attention, and the business, of the FAA. "We train FAA certification officials for both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. We train them to be part of the solution, not part of the problem for manufacturers," Roberts said.

Although the British-born former Fullbright Scholar is heavily into advanced test pilot flying, he retains a link to GA as well. Roberts is bringing the Wing Derringer twin-engine, two-place aircraft back into production as a four-place aircraft with 200-horsepower Lycoming IO-360 engines and new Hartzell propellers.

He obtained the type certificate by a circuitous route. Originally, Roberts was hired by Malaysia to find an aircraft for the country to build that was already certified. "I had just bought a Derringer because I fly at night and over mountains," he said. As negotiations to sell the type certificate to Malaysia dragged on and foundered, Roberts decided to buy it himself in 1997.

Originally the Derringer was powered by Lycoming O-320 160-horsepower engines with 66-inch-diameter Hartzell propellers. It was called the Ferrari of the Sky because it was a fast two-place airplane. It was designed by John Thorpe of Piper Aircraft fame and manufactured in 1973 by George Wing, who operated a company called Sheer Rivets. His fortune had come from making most of the rivets used in World War II. The original Derringer factory was located in Torrance, California. There are still seven Derringers flying.

"I changed the engines to the Lycoming IO-360 200-hp engine that is flat-rated to 160 hp. So I've got 160 hp up to about 5,500 feet. I increased the diameter of the Hartzell prop from 60 to 68 inches and moved the engines up 1.25 inches so we could get the same ground clearance [as before]," Roberts said.

"As you know, if you lose an engine in most light twins, the other one takes you to the scene of the accident," the former Air Force Test Pilot School instructor said. But it is less likely to happen in his new Derringer. The new engines and propellers have improved single-engine climb by a factor of three. Instead of 105 to 110 fpm, the Derringer climbs on one engine at 350 fpm. That has already been proven in test flights. "If you are at 10,000 feet, you can stay flat at 10,000 feet with a loss of an engine. Pedal forces are about 30 pounds. The asymmetry forces are very low," Roberts said.

"We made an extension on the nose for a little radar. We designed a backseat to make it a four-seat airplane. We are going to change to hydraulic systems and hope to change the electrical system to 24 volts, although that is not a done deal yet." The first flight was in December 1998.

The airplane will cost $400,000 to $420,000 for the standard IFR package. "This airplane will go four to five hours at 200 kt, burning 16 gallons an hour," Roberts predicted. He is aiming at the training market, providing a safer trainer than ever before.

It will undoubtedly be a confidence builder for the prospective customer to know that the aircraft will have the approval of the NTPS.

Nadia Roberts: Enough Sass to reach a goal

It wasn't easy to become a woman test pilot in a male-dominated world.

Canadian-born Nadia Roberts, then Nadia Sass, got her pilot certificate in 1965 because she wanted to be an astronaut. But the money wasn't there for all the training she needed to launch a career as a pilot. So she looked for ways to become a doctor, hoping to go to NASA as a mission specialist. But she lacked the connections needed in Canada at that time to gain admission to a medical school. Well, let her tell the story.

"As a matter of fact, they told me to go into physiotherapy. I said fine, I'd do that. After three years, I said, 'I don't want to do this.' So I figured maybe I could join the military as a pilot. But that didn't happen because I was a woman. They told me, 'Are you nuts?' I said no. I asked what they had available so I could get close to airplanes. They said I could become a secretary. I said, 'I don't think so.'

"I fought my way in as a Canadian Forces maintenance officer. Louise Chevalier joined on the same day at the same time, and we were the first female maintenance officers in the Canadian forces.

"A [message] came down from headquarters saying anyone who wants to go to test pilot school should fill in this paperwork and pass it back up to your boss. Chevalier and I filled it in. I sent it to my boss. Chevalier got accepted, but my boss called me in after lunch one day and said, 'Lt. Sass, did you write this?' I said, 'Yes, sir.'

"He looked me straight in the eye and said, 'You're too stupid to go to test pilot school.' And he threw it in the garbage. In my day you just zipped it up and kept your mouth shut." (By that time, Sass had obtained a degree in aeronautical engineering technology. The degree covered both science and physics.)

"Then I talked my way into a test pilot introduction course taught by Sean [Roberts] in Canada. Student falls in love with instructor. Instructor falls in love with student. I moved to Mojave, and 20 years later I am still here. When I left, the Canadian Forces offered to send me to pilot training, and I said, 'I got a deal I can't refuse.'

"And I did end up at a test pilot school, as a matter of fact. Sean was teaching at Edwards as a contractor, so I monitored lots of the classes with the provision that I take the tests with the guys. I did, and I passed. The only thing I didn't do was go on all their flights in the morning. I was working on the flight test program here [NTPS] on the Hustler 400 single-engine turboprop designed and built by Al Paulson in the late 1970s. That was a real flight test program with real problems with a real airplane. I learned an awful lot.

"I was too stupid to go to test pilot school, so I started one, and I teach at one," Roberts said with satisfaction.

That's one tough lady. — AKM

More information on the National Test Pilot School can be found on AOPA Online ( www.aopa.org/pilot/links/links0008.shtml). E-mail the author at [email protected].