FTSC News

It’s officially August, which means hot weather in the United States, a season that brings back many fond memories of summer fun.  One of the things I loved as a kid was the joy of discovery, and that usually included some new scientific fact I hadn’t known before or an adventure, whether that was on a trail or a boat.  Both discovery and adventure are included in this edition of the Flight Test Safety Fact.  

We kick off the newsletter with an op ed that recommends you check out the tutorial videos from our most recent Flight Test Safety Workshop, which is where I found my first dose of discovery.  There are plenty of things to discuss about the STPA videos and the questions they raise.  

Turbo shares reflections from his own adventure at sea, and somehow he links them succinctly to safety.  And you’ll find a recap of his most recent podcast as well, a tale of two pilots.  

As always, we encourage you to send your comments and questions to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and hopefully this edition will generate some comments.

Thanks,
Mark Jones Jr.
Editor

For convenience and safety you can download the newsletter here.

Flight Test Safety Committee Podcast Channel - EP 44 – Battle of the X Pilots (Part 1)

Listen Now!

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, Google Play, and Amazon Music: FTSCChannel

This Podcast is sponsored by Time2climb Training and Consulting

Flight Test Safety Committee Podcast Channel - EP 43 – Signs of Danger

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This month we have an episode recorded live at the Flight Test Safety Workshop last month.  My guests are the 150 attendees of the workshop. We have five visuals you might encounter on any given day that we will discuss applying everything we know about risk management.  You can find the slides used here: Click Here to download

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, Google Play, and Amazon Music: FTSCChannel

This Podcast is sponsored by Time2climb Training and Consulting

It's almost summer, and things in this edition are heating up.  Chia Rogerson shares a recap of the recent Flight Test Safety Workshop from Wichita, and the Textron team also earned top honors with their paper on stall testing of a special mission King Air aircraft.  So you should probably ask them for a copy or make plans to hear it in Anaheim.  

Jeff "Canman" Canclini has a survey (a short one) that you should fill out, and then you can listen in while Ben Luther and Canman philosophize about the future Flight Test Professional.  

Finally, take history and add flight test, and you get the second half of a great interview you don't want to miss in last month's podcast.  

As always, we'd love to hear your comments.  Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Sincerely,
Mark Jones Jr.
Editor

For security and added convenience, you can download the newsletter here.

Flight Test Safety Committee Podcast Channel - EP 40 – This Is The Way. Applying Safety Every Day.

During my years of flying and flight test I learned a lot about safety and making decisions relative to risk.  But what good does any of that do me in everyday life?  Well, turns out it comes in handy.

Tell us about a way you apply flight safety to your everyday life.

Listen Now!

Arrows in the Desert Video Link

Arrows Across America Website

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, Google Play, and Amazon Music: FTSCChannel

This Podcast is sponsored by Time2climb Training and Consulting

Flight Test Safety Committee Podcast Channel - EP 41 – B-1 Flight Test Lessons Learned

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This month we talk with Ken Katz about flight test lessons from the B-1 program.  A link to Ken's Bio is below.

Register now for the Flight Test Safety Workshop: https://www.setp.org/symposium/meetings/workshop/

Ken's Bio: https://www.casematepublishers.com/author/kenneth-katz/

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, Google Play, and Amazon Music: FTSCChannel

This Podcast is sponsored by Time2climb Training and Consulting

Flight Test Safety Committee Podcast Channel - EP 41 – B-1 Flight Test Lessons Learned (Part 2)

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This month I share some observations from the recent Flight Test Safety Workshop and we finish our Interview with Ken Katz who shares more lessons learned from the B-1 flight test program.

Ken's Bio: https://www.casematepublishers.com/author/kenneth-katz/

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, Google Play, and Amazon Music: FTSCChannel

This Podcast is sponsored by Time2climb Training and Consulting

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 Flight Test Safety Fact that explores many topics and landmarks including: 1) American football and the fundamentals, 2) Silly slogans with mostly meaningless words and what we really mean when we say them (it's a Letter to the Editor), 3) FTSC Award nomination guidelines, and 4) AI.

That's a very brief description of this edition, because you'll find lots of words inside, and I want you to save your energy for those words.  I hope some of them (the words in this newsletter) motivate you to send some words to the editor, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Reminder: Flight Test Safety Workshop Call for Papers extended to 1 March (today).

I can't close without warning you to beware the ides of March.  (Seems like the safe thing to do.)

Sincerely,
Mark Jones Jr.
@FlightTestFact
flighttestfact.com
Editor

For security and added convenience, you can download the newsletter here.

This month we talked with Tobias van Esselstyn, Director of Flight Test Engineering at Gulfstream about some of the challenges today's test teams face and ideas on how to meet those challenges.

Listen Now!

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, Google Play, and Amazon Music: FTSCChannel

Tobias van Esselstyn Bio

Tony LeVier Flight Test Safety Award

FTSW Call for Presentations

Pan Am 1959 Promo Video

This Podcast is sponsored by Time2climb Training and Consulting

“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 edition of the Flight Test Safety Fact, and a research group attempts to predict emerging hazards in commercial aviation.  Their report and methodology are both relevant, and they also illustrate another important issue, something addressed in a column aptly titled, “First Things First.”  

Turbo asks us to sing “Auld Lang Syne” with him and also celebrates three years of podcasting.  

Speaking of pithy quotes, there is an important question that warrants your feedback inside this edition.

Finally, a look back at the London FTSW and feedback from the last few months of last year round out this edition.  

Happy New Year.  I look forward to hearing your one-liners as 2023 kicks off.

Sincerely,
Mark Jones Jr.
@FlightTestFact
flighttestfact.com
Editor

Download the newsletter here.

Flight Test Safety Committee Podcast Channel - EP37 - New Testing of Old Aircraft

Listen Now!

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, Google Play, and Amazon Music: FTSCChannel

This Podcast is sponsored by Time2climb Training and Consulting

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 material, hoping that something will catch fire.  My hope is that something in your heart, your mind, will catch fire, some thread of passion and curiosity.  In other moments, I feel as if I have to unwind some of the threads of the rich fabric of flight test safety, pulling the threads apart so that the sparks will be able to set them on fire individually.

There are many such sparks and threads in this edition of the Flight Test Safety Fact, and as we end the fourth year of publication of the newsletter for the Flight Test Safety Committee, I point it out on purpose, reminding the reader that this is one of several objectives of the project.  I don’t know if I have ever stated this objective explicitly, but I want to light a fire.  

In this edition, we mention topics that were addressed in depth in other forums, because we intend to weave those threads (those topics) together—the DARPA and Lockheed Martin Optionally Piloted Aircraft (OPA) is one of those threads.  It weaves into the fabric of OPA and history and the main theme of flight test safety, which then points us to a NASA book on the topic of unmanned aircraft.  The book is a vein of gold ore.  This edition also mentions articles and past editions of the newsletter and the efforts of late members and hopes aloud that someone will pick up the mantle.  

This edition also includes feedback from readers from the October newsletter and another request from a reader for help with a safety survey.  These are some of the oft overlooked but incredibly valuable parts of this project.

As we end another year, I hope you will share your thoughts and observations with This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., an attempt to add your sparks or fuel to the fire.

Sincerely,
Mark Jones Jr.
@FlightTestFact
flighttestfact.com
Editor

Download the newsletter here.

Flight Test Safety Committee Podcast Channel - EP36 - Teaching New Pilots Old Planes

Listen Now!

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, Google Play, and Amazon Music: FTSCChannel

This Podcast is sponsored by Time2climb Training and Consulting

Flight Test Safety Committee Podcast Channel - EP35 - Halloween Episode: Frightful Flights Terrifying Test Points Ghostly Gremlins

Join host Art Tomassetti as he shares stories of frightful flights, terrifying test points and ghostly gremlins.  This is a special Halloween edition on the Flight Test Safety Podcast.

Listen Now!

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, Google Play, and Amazon Music: FTSCChannel

This Podcast is sponsored by Time2climb Training and Consulting

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 their own columns in this newsletter, but instead of a technical paper, this month features something light-hearted and fun...orange you glad?

Orange wire, orange flight suits, and orange paint on our airplanes...each is related to safety, but where does legend meet fact?

Ghouls and goblins might be the source of Halloween fright, but another thing that scares us is the complexity of today's modern systems and the effect of unknown unknowns on flight test safety.  You can help Ben Luther research the topic by facing your fears and taking his survey.  

If you have your own photos of Frankenstein aircraft or flight test modifications, send them our way.  If there is a flight test safety paper we should know about from the SFTE symposium or European FTSW, send that to the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Happy Halloween!

Mark Jones Jr.
Editor

Download the newsletter here.

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 job, but it's another example of "implicit learning."  Implicit learning is when we learn by doing rather than deliberate practice, and it applies to how we do flight test safety.  The first article contemplates these ideas during an afternoon of folding laundry, which is, incidentally, a relevant fact.

The second article is an introduction to the EVTOL committee.  At press time, I noticed that the newsletter still has a typographical error: the name of the committee should appear with a capital E.  If the article and the newsletter attachments constrain you to reach out to the committee--and I hope they do--have them explain why they selected a capital E.  They explained it to me, and I forgot to make the edits.  Also note that "constrain" is another word for motivate.  (English is a strange language.)

Now that I've given you several sundry observations, I'll close by encouraging you to read Turbo Talk and listen to 2 podcasts about the same topic with a host of characters you probably know, both of which you'll find in this edition.

Send questions and observations about the English language to the editor, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Sincerely,

Mark Jones Jr.
Editor

Download the newsletter here.