AVIATION IN HOUSTON - 24 September 2015

Early Vomit Comet - Ellington Field, Tx
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Just here near the Johnson Space Center this week for Test Pilot School. Part of the great deal with being at TPS is the many places we get to visit. Here, I'm near JSC to fly the WB-57F. It's a high altitude research vehicle that NASA uses for lots of different reasons such as recording video of space vehicles launching into space and weather research. In fact, the crew we were working with were just preparing to fly over a potential tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico.

I'm here to see if this airplane would be a good platform for our students. Yesterday my coleague flew the aircraft to see if it would be good for our Flight Test Engineers.

Hero Shot with WB-57F - Ellington Field, Tx
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I flew in the back seat of this aircraft yesterday for orientation. Today I flew in the front.

It's a very interesting platform. Even though is weighs about as much as a F-15, it really handles itself like a very large aircraft such as a B-52 or KC-135. The yoke forces are quite high in roll. The longitudinal characteristics are a bit sloppy. All very similar to the bigger aircraft except in one way. It flies extremely well at 50,000 ft. In fact, it might be the best performing aircraft I've ever flown at that altitude.

I'm hoping we'll get students to fly these in the future. I know we'll have a couple of FTE's on it in October, I hope we can get a couple of pilots on the program next year.

Cheers

Tom