Amateur-built and experimental aircraft - Australian Transport Safety ...

Emergency procedures. Two people made comments in relation to emergency
procedures stating:
o Probably have better emergency procedures in place. Have another aircraft
as a chase plane if there were any problems.
o Wear a recovery parachute for spin testing.
Test flight courses. Two people made comments in relation to completing test
flying courses:
o Complete a test flying course either on-line or attend personally.
o Would like to have completed a course, even something basic, but 3-5 days
of information & training at least.
Pilots. There were six people who made comments in relation to piloting. They
included:
o Within the first 25 hrs, a second pilot on board would be very helpful just to
keep eye on your flying and the operation of the aircraft. Extra safety factor
on new plane.
o Use a test pilot.
o Talk to SAAA flight advisor and pick a better test pilot for initial flights.
o If possible use a pilot trained as a test pilot. But he or she would have to
become very familiar with the particular systems in the aircraft.
o Do the maiden flight myself.
o Yes I would have a competent pilot take up a portion of the workload
(monitoring).
Preparation. Four respondents talked about preparation stating:
o Take a little more time in preparation. Because it was my own aircraft I found
the distractions of finishing paper work and all the final little jobs required
interrupted my preparation so that it wasn't as smooth as I would have liked.
Previous experience testing another aircraft was much smoother without the
distractions mentioned above.
o Possibly prepare myself more thoroughly.
o More written preparation.
o Additional research and training.
Onlookers. Two respondents made comments about not having onlookers, while
one other person suggested the media should have been present at the test flight
stating:
o Having previously conducted 9 first flights and always using the original
ABAA flight test schedule I have learned that under no circumstances invite
onlookers for 1st flight.
o Only have minimum number of people know about looming test flight, i.e. 2
or 3 people at most.
Data collection. Three respondents, one commercial pilot and two private pilots,
made reference to data collection in their test flight comments which included:
o I prepared test flight plans and faxed them to ATC which helped both parties
understand intentions at all times. I would allow more time for basic data
collection so as not to hurry and lose accuracy and I would keep better track
of weight for each test condition.
o Use [a] tape recorder to collect data.
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