Flight test and test ranges

This category covers flight test organisations, test ranges and the instrumentation and telemetry services around them. Certification consultants who write the compliance argument are a separate guide, and the engineering firm that designed the modification is another. The buyer is usually a manufacturer, a modifier or an uncrewed operator who needs data that will be accepted by someone else, and that acceptance is the real product.

The certificate you fly under shapes the campaign

Experimental airworthiness certificates are issued for stated purposes, among them research and development, showing compliance with regulations, and crew training, and the compliance purpose expressly covers flight tests to show compliance for the issue of type and supplemental type certificates and to substantiate major design changes.¹ Ask which purpose your programme will fly under and what operating limitations come with it. For type certification, the applicant must make the required flight tests and, before making them, show compliance with the applicable structural requirements, complete the necessary ground inspections and tests, show that the aircraft conforms to the type design, and provide the FAA with a flight test report of the results.² Read that as a schedule: conformity and ground test precede flight, and a test organisation that treats conformity as paperwork will cost you the flight window. For uncrewed testing, the small unmanned aircraft rules and their exceptions govern what you may do and what approval you need to do more.³

What to ask a test organisation

Ask who holds the certificate and who is the responsible test pilot or test director. Ask what instrumentation is installed, who owns it, what its calibration status is, and what the data latency and sample rates are. Ask how test points are planned, briefed and dispositioned, and what the build-up approach is on the risky ones. Ask for the safety review process and the hazard analysis from a comparable programme. Ask what the data deliverable is: raw, reduced, or a report somebody will sign. Ask what happens to the schedule when weather, an aircraft snag or an airspace conflict takes a day, and who pays for it.

The range is a scheduling and access problem

Ask what airspace and range time is actually available in your season, and whether your slot is firm or provisional. Ask what the site requires for access: badging, escorts, foreign national approvals, and how long each takes. Ask what facilities exist for the aircraft on the ground and what you must bring. Export control reaches test activity as well as hardware, because the munitions list covers technical data directly related to controlled articles and the defense services performed on them.⁴ If a foreign participant, a foreign aircraft or a foreign customer is involved, settle the authorisations before the campaign, not during it.

Questions that sort suppliers

Ask for the operating limitations from a comparable experimental certificate. Ask for an anonymised test report and judge the quality of the data reduction. Ask what the day rate includes and what is billed separately. Ask what the organisation's last three campaigns actually cost against their plans.