Trail Flight Test Course

At the end of September 2002 the Department ran a trial of it's new flight experience/flight test course. The course is an integral part of the Aero-Mechanical degree and will be taken by all students at the end of their second year.

For the trial, four fourth year Mech Eng with Aero students agreed to be guineapigs. The course took place at the Scottish Gliding Centre, Portmoak near Kinross.

left to right Russell Grier, Steven Blair, Lucy Schiavetta, Tom McKie, Ian Dandie and George Ross.

The course included four aero-tow flights in two seat gliders to 4000'. The syllabus for each flight was:

Flight 1: Demonstration of aircraft controls,

Flight 2: The stall and stall recovery, the incipient stall and its effect on the controls, stall in a 2g banked turn.

Flight 3: Aircraft performance.

Flight 4: Dynamic Stability, demonstration of the short period oscillation, spiral divergence, dutch roll and phugoid.

For each flight the students were required to undertake an exercise to theoretically model the aircraft's performance which would be examined during the flight. During the flight data was taken from the aircraft's flight instruments which, when analysed post flight, was then compared with the theoretical data.

A most sincere thankyou must go to Ian, George and all at Portmoak for making this first course such a success

For the aircraft Anoraks out there:

The gliders flown were Schleicher K21s HPW and WA1. The tug aircraft was a Pawnee. WA1 is owned by the charity Walking on Air and is modified to allow the rudder to be controlled by the left hand allowing pilots, without the use of their legs, to fly the aircraft.