Lecture by a test Pilot

Couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to be invited to a lecture held by the RAS and given by a chap names Stuart Reed who is the flight test safety manager for Marshall Aerospace.

His previous jobs included Test Pilot for the Typhoon during its initial test phase and he gave a fascinating talk on what is like to fly the Tiffy and some of the more hair raising aspects of test flying.

Said the tiffy is the most powerful aircraft he has ever flown and that he couldn't get the smile off his face after his first full burn take off.

He also talked about his training at the Flight test Pilot school at Edwards in the USA (got to fly an immense number of types of aircraft from sailplanes to F15's) and his previous flying career flying tornado and his secondment to the Canadian airforce where he flew F18C's (his favourite aircraft, said it beats the tiffy because of the feedback it gives a pilot.)

Interestingly, he tried to get into the RAF six times before he got in through a back door.

Showed a nice film at the end of him flying the Tornado in Iraq which included night refueling, which apparently is "fairly demanding".

We took him out to dinner as a thank you, and he was a lovely guy, I wanted to hate him out of jealousy, but couldn't.

Anyway, if you lack an SME for any aspects, then give him a try, he's at Marshall Aerospace and might help out.

Many thanks. Sounds like a great lecture.

Do you have his contact details you can PM me at all?

If not I'll do a search.

Thanks,

Chris.

Contact

He's on LinkedIn, just type in Stuart reed and Marshall. If you cant, I can drop him a message.

He's a nice fella, he might be up for it.

He's obviously still bound by official secrets, but he can probably give some guidance.

Fascinating when he described the flutter testing, only bit that made him nervous. Said the engineers explained that the simulations were 99% accurate, but the 1% can make your aircraft explode.

He also, said that he tested the DASS, Voice Comms (nice story about that), and lost of the other systems.

He took part in Red flag as well, said that a Dutch crew had to land at Groom because of an engine failure and they didn't see them for 2 days, they were kicked off Red flag and banned from attending again.

Failing that try him at Marshall, he's flying Hercs at the moment.

Many thanks. And don't worry I re-signed mine last year ;)