In this episode of The Kernels of Wheatie, Dave
examines the difference between the pilots of
yesterday and the pilots of today, explaining why
the prangs of one are examples to the other.hese days I work in
a world far from the
fertilizer and pesticide-
encrusted days of yore when
I killed small insects for a
living, many millions of
them with the leading
edges of my wings and
thousands more every day on my
windscreen. The girls at the pub
could identify a “croppie” as soon
as he walked in, and no, it was not
the dashing good looks, the air of
nonchalance or the heroic reputation
... it was the smell of chemicals
mainly, so once you had a seat at the
bar you always had a bit of elbow
room and didn’t get crowded out. Of
course if you were going to take up
three spaces at the bar this usually
demanded a heroic thirst in order
to keep the publican happy. Happy
days. During grub season a crew of
several pilots and ground crew could
provide a country pub with a healthy
income, and carry them through
several droughts.
Times change and things move
on. Domestic restructuring and
other vicissitudes of life meant that
after the cavalier life of an ag pilot
and the mind-numbing days as a
Flight Instructor, I sought a more
interesting path.
I have over the past number
of years been working in a very
different environment. This work
place is now full of computers,
bundles of cables, strange electrical
devices with knobs labelled withmasking tape, various types of
data recorders and technical bods
asking an almost endless series of
often boring questions, each subtly
different from the previous one.
The world of flight test. If a single-
engined aircraft can be jammed full
of such equipment, I surely do pity
those in sophisticated and military
flight test programs, after all there
is a limit to just how much one can
fit in an eight- or 10-seat aircraft.
The one thing that is common to all
the levels of professional flight testing
is that the planning is meticulous and
the execution of the plan is followed
in a very controlled manner. Plan the
test and fly the plan is a commonly
quoted phrase. If a test requires a
specific combination of control inputs
be held for one second, then the action
is to do exactly that and no more or
less. This permits close comparisons
to be made with other cases which
may have been done at different
loadings, speeds, power settings and/
or structural/aerodynamic variations.
The days of improvising are long gone
and the likes of Harry Hawker and
Tom Sopwith attempting all manner
of control combinations just to see
what happened are a thing of history.
Or at least they should be.
Before every flight test a formal
sit-down briefing is conducted where
as many considerations relating to
that specific flight are addressed
individually. Many of these are
mundane, but the idea is to stop
things slipping off the radar when thefocus is on a specific task. Referring
to MR issue and expiry dates and
time-in-service is a matter of course
for all pilots, but it is a full on
briefing item in flight test, not just an
arbitrary scan before starting engines
as is common in GA land. This is to
prevent any holes in the Swiss cheese,
however small, from lining up.
One of the more interesting items
for review is to look at previous flights,
especially when progressing through
a matrix, and see what happened and
consider implications for this new
condition. Not to predict outcomes,
but to anticipate possibilities,
especially bad ones. The flight
test plan has a Hazard Reduction
Analysis (HRA) for any and all of the
items considered as risks to aircraft
and crew and the minimising or
mitigating bad outcomes. Whilst thefire retardant suit, helmets, gloves
and parachutes look like overkill for
seemingly benign manoeuvrers, they
are there for when things don’t go
according to plan.
When I started ag flying, very few
pilots wore bone domes and most
wore overalls or RMW moleskins
and a Gloster shirt. These pilots had
faces with “character” which usually
meant burns or scars from hitting the
instrument panel. These days almost
all pilots wear military-style Nomex
suits and spare no expense on their
helmets; many even wear gloves.
But back to the world of flight
testing, where after every flight a
debrief is held to review the flight
and determine what parts of the test
were completed successfully, what
wasn’t, and what did not get done. As
well as this there is always a LessonsThe Old Pilot Parable
AUSTRALIAN FLYING January - February 2015DAVE WHEATLAND
wheatie
The kernels of Dave “Wheatie” Wheatland started out flying crop sprayers
around South Gippsland in Victoria and was instrumental in
the development of the GippsAero GA200 Fatman and the GA8
Airvan. He has ferried and demonstrated the GA8 all around
the world, clocking up 3000 hours on the type. Dave is currently
heading up the test schedule for the GippsAero GA10.80