Earlier this year Aero Alliance was asked whether it could conduct a full flight test profile on a Seneca to establish a new data package for the next generation of light aircraft simulators. Aero Alliance was approached because of its wide experience of flight simulation and flight calibration expertise combined with experienced multi-engine light aircraft pilots to undertake this kind of specialised aerial activity.

I was lucky to be available from the Aero Alliance pilot pool to fly this long 2 hour detail which consisted of about 40 dynamic flight manoeuvres and a further 30 to 40 performance tests taken in both multi and single engine across the full range of aircraft configurations.

The day commenced with rigging the aircraft up with accelerometers, strain gauges, force balances and control position sensors. A sequence of ground calibration tests were then conducted before the test engineer said he was ready for the flight test brief.

The pre-flight brief consisted of weather atmospheric data, a discussion on each individual flight test required and the overall schedule of tests, the order expected and a safety brief. Initially this sounded pretty daunting, but I quickly discovered that the way to think about it was to keep things simple, fly the aircraft as a normal flight and deviate from the norm in small steps under the direction of the flight test engineer whilst he ensured the data was being correctly recorded and of sufficient quality for processing on the ground.

The flight detail was surprisingly very straight forward and everything went according to plan. The two hours airborne ended up being far easier than expected. The engine failure after takeoff and single engine climb in all configurations produced some interesting performance results. But my overriding experience of the day was the Phugoid manoeuvre (something I had never attempted before). The roll response to spiral dive and recovery also proved very interesting and entertaining as I could a slight colour change on the face of the flight test engineer !!!

The overall experience was extremely rewarding for me as it finally bridged that gap between flying an aircraft and using flight test data as a Chartered Engineer in the flight simulation industry. This is yet another example of the diverse and bespoke technical aerial work Aero Alliance has ventured into in the last year as we accommodate more business and grow our expertise in these diverse markets. 

Aero Alliance has seen that light aviation technical support is a high growth area as technology allows these smaller platforms to undertake work which would have required a far larger aircraft in the past. With that, Aero Alliance is now very well placed with access to flight calibration high tech instrumentation and aerospace software expertise to make use of these agile light aircraft and provide that reliable aircraft platform solution at a fraction of the cost.