Flying the 109: Pilot Accounts

[NZtyphoon]

Originally Posted by Kwiatek

Paper data dont tell you exaclay how a plane would behave in the air and in the ground. Such pilots reports are very usefull expecially if you are pilot and you want to know what you should expect from a reported plane. For a pilot such notes are really important expecially if you haven't flown before such type of plane. It is common that before you fly new type of plane you ask more experience pilots about some tips and it is something like pilots code which is understandable for another pilot.

Ditto - raw data cannot describe how an aircraft flying in real world conditions will respond: test pilots still test new aircraft even after terrabites of data has been crunched because it's only through pilot input, objective and subjective ("yeah, she feels like she's flying a little left wing low"), that real world data on an aircraft's characteristics can be gathered. The aircraft that has been designed and successfully tested using paper data alone has yet to be built eg;

F-35 reaches 5,000 hours of testing

F-35 High AOA testing, December 2012

"We take all of our aircraft to high AOA to look at where their departure boundaries are and how recoverable they are once they have acheived the departure boundaries....Any insights we learn...we pass on to the operator."