A Yankee in King Arthur’s Test Pilot School

By LT Ben “3D” Putbrese, HX-21

It was August 2020, and I was preparing to make the move from my JO fleet tour at HSM-51 in Atsugi, Japan to my oncoming shore tour at VX-1 in Patuxent River, MD. My household goods had already been picked up, and soon I would be “LFF Complete” and on my way home after nearly three years in the Land of the Rising Sun– when I was suddenly summoned to an urgent meeting with the CO! I walked into CDR Jason Russo’s office, where he was flanked by the XO, both staring at me with incredible seriousness. Those who have met CDR Russo know that he can be an imposing figure even when delivering the best of news, and already on my way to his office I had started mentally replaying my last few flight hours to figure out when and how I had gotten myself into trouble. After an agonizing few seconds waiting for the CO to deliver the blow, he finally said “Congratulations 3D. You’ve been selected for Test Pilot School...” We all started to smile, and before I had even finished processing the outstanding news, the CO added “…in England!”

England? For test pilot school?? I remember being required to rank my preferences for school location on my TPS application letter (1. Pax River; 2. ETPS, UK; and 3. EPNER, France), but I definitely hadn’t contemplated selection for anything but Pax. Suddenly everything in my life had shifted dramatically, and I immediately began altering all my plans, including arrangements to have my household goods and classic 1995 Suzuki Jimny re-routed from Japan to England. Four ORDMODs later and I was quarantining in an 800-year-old hotel in the medieval cathedral city of Salisbury, UK, and doing everything I could to be physically and mentally ready to start the No. 59 Rotary Wing Course at the Empire Test Pilots’ School, MoD Boscombe Down.

The Empire Test Pilots’ School was founded in 1943 and was the first of its kind–following concern over the number of fatalities during the development of aircraft for service in the second World War and out of a desire for standardization of flight test procedures across services and aerial platforms. The school’s mission was to “provide suitably trained pilots for testing duties in aeronautical research and development establishments within the service and the industry,” 1 and the first course graduated 13 students in 1944 at the military airfield at Boscombe Down in southwest England. Notably, the first ETPS class included one American pilot who was previously a volunteer in a British fighter squadron, and of those who attended the No. 1 course, five eventually died while testing aircraft.

LT Putbrese transitions to forward flight in an ETPS H125 Squirrel

In 1949 the school was presented with its Armorial Bearings (school crest) and began using the motto of “Learn to Test, Test to Learn.” Recognizing the increasing importance of helicopters in military flight, ETPS added a formal Rotary Wing course in 1963, followed by a formal Flight Test Engineers’ (FTE) course in 1974. To this day, ETPS is considered one of the “Big 4” of global test pilot schools, alongside USNTPS at Pax River, USAFTPS at Edwards AFB, and EPNER in France. The four schools maintain a very close relationship, setting the worldwide standard in military and civilian flight test and regularly exchanging students, instructors, and professional knowledge to further advance the flight test profession.

Beginning the Course

I had arrived in the UK on 01 December 2020, and while COVID protocols dictated a two-week quarantine, the country itself was set to end its second nationwide lockdown on 02 December. Naturally the build-up to Christmas that year was marked by an air of joyous return to normalcy, but the mood didn’t last much beyond Boxing Day. A third nationwide lockdown was announced following a surge in cases and deaths, to begin shortly after New Year’s, and this lockdown was set to be one of the strictest of the pandemic. While the administration and staff at ETPS had hoped for a return to in-person instruction in 2021–this was not to be, and online course delivery would again be the standard for the start of the course.

The MD500 Little Bird

The No. 59 Rotary Wing Course formally began on 06 January 2021 with a very socially distanced check-in briefing and course introduction, followed by a headfirst dive into online academics for much of the first month. Classes were held from 0800 into the late afternoon, covering topics such as air data and atmospheric science, performance theory, flight control mechanical characteristics, cockpit design and assessment, and stability and control theory. The instructors and students valiantly battled intermittent internet connections, curious toddlers, postmen knocking at the door, and all the other distractions of the home learning environment. As the students painfully earned a minor in Greek due to the many aerodynamic variables used to describe aircraft stability and control characteristics, we prepared ourselves for flights and check rides in Boscombe Down’s primary rotary wing trainers: the Airbus H125 (or Squirrel) and the Agusta-Westland A109E (soon to be replaced by the newer A109S).

With the academic foundation established, and with the days lengthening as we entered the spring and summer, we began to transition to the schedule that would dominate our lives for much of the remainder of the year: classes in the morning followed by flights in the afternoon. I found that in addition to learning the ins and outs of test flying, I had to adjust to the subtle differences in my host nation’s aviation culture. There were variations in radio terminology and cockpit phraseology, to the point that sometimes an instructor and I could be saying the same thing without realizing it. There were also the funny little markers of British military aviation: the white leather flight gloves, tea before each brief, an air of gentility when speaking with ATC, and the dry but light-hearted banter from instructors following a poorly executed maneuver. There was a tremendous emphasis on raw piloting abilities, like nothing I had seen since the earliest days of flight training, I was often humbled by the most basic of maneuvers (it left me wishing that I had spent more time flying the MH- 60R without the autopilot!).

The Course in Full Tilt

To fully describe the yearlong course would require a book or documentary, of which there are several by graduates far more talented than myself. What I can definitely say,is that on nearly every flight there would be at least one test point where I pushed myself or the aircraft just a little bit farther than I ever had before. I became more and more comfortable flying each aircraft at the edge of its operating envelope and limits, and I learned that at every point during every maneuver there was data to be gathered. I became close friends with my classmates, who hailed from all over the world and represented a vast wealth of operational knowledge across a range of Rotary Wing platforms. While certainly not exhaustive, the following is a sample of the unique experiences the course provided:

• Sideways and backwards hovering flight in formation with a ground test vehicle, in order to assess low speed flight limits.

• Collection of engine and aircraft performance data across a range of operating conditions, for validation of flight manual performance charts.

• Assessment of aircraft handling qualities against the Aeronautical Design Standard-33E, a program originally developed for RAH-66 Comanche trials which is now a worldwide standard.

• Evaluation of One Engine Inoperative (OEI) recovery techniques.

• Extensive training in autorotation and engine-off landings, to include full engine-off autos to landing, engine air restarts, collective delays (i.e., incorporation of pilot reaction time), variations in autorotative flare heights and airspeeds, and H-V diagram development.

• Simulated ship-air landing envelope expansion and overall assessment of simulator fidelity.

• Evaluation of advanced aircraft systems such as Heads Up Displays (HUD) and electro-optical imaging equipment.

• Flight in a variable stability Learjet, followed by assessment of aircraft control deficiencies in a variable stability helicopter.

• Vortex ring state inducement and recovery.

Another key aspect of the course was the conduct of aircraft Qualitative Evaluations (QE). These were short, limited assessments of individual aircraft within an assigned military role, with the objective being to gather as much data as possible in 1.5 hours (or less) of flight time, and to walk away from the sortie with a solid understanding of the aircraft’s performance, handling qualities, and deficiencies. For the QEs, the schoolhouse would provide us with rotorcraft flight manuals, the aircraft provider would give us a safety and technical briefing, and then we were dispatched individually for flight, with as much understanding of the aircraft as we could retain prior to climbing into the cockpit. Through the conduct of these flights, I was able to evaluate 8 different rotorcraft for the first time, bringing my total aircraft flown over the duration of the course to 13 types (11 rotary wing and 2 fixed wing).

While it was certainly a jam-packed year with several late nights, I was also able to fully take advantage of life overseas, especially after the rescinding of many of the UK and EU COVID protocols. I lived in a flat in a modified 1785 manor home in the heart of Salisbury, with lovely neighbors who often provided me with home-cooked Sunday roast and gave me a “proper” education in English culture. There were over 20 pubs in the Salisbury city center, 2 or 3 of which I frequented often enough to achieve first-name relations with the bar staff. As part of completion of the course itself, we visited the Netherlands Aerospace Research Centre in Amsterdam, where we evaluated the latest in augmented reality and were able to design our own HUD graphical aids for landings in DVE conditions. By far the best class trip (as judged by students and staff alike) was the visit to Utti Air Base in Finland, where we had the opportunity to fly the NH90 and MD500 as well as experience the heights of Finnish culture in their squadron sauna, which had been constructed out of an old refurbished Mil Mi-8 aircraft fuselage. All contributed to a truly once-in-a-lifetime year abroad that I will never forget.

The ETPS No. 59 Rotary Wing Course poses with an NH90 flown at Utti Air Base, Finland

Capstone Exercise in France

My final assignment of the course was the ETPS Capstone Exercise, where students were divided into teams of 2-3 and tasked with a comprehensive evaluation of an unknown aircraft for potential service in a military role. For myself and my classmate LT Gareth Forbes, an Australian engineer, we were given the incredible opportunity to travel to Valence, France and work with the French test pilots and FTEs of GAMSTAT (the French Army aircraft test organization). We needed to evaluate the AS532 Cougar within the role as a global battlefield support and special operations helicopter. Gareth and I produced a detailed aircraft test plan and arrived in France with our flight bags packed full of test cards and test equipment, determined to strip the aircraft of every bit of data we possibly could in the 6 allotted flight hours.

Upon arrival at the hangar we immediately got to work, spending many hours over the first two days on cockpit assessment alone. We measured the forces required to displace each control, plotted the visible flight environment from the pilot’s resting eye position, and scoured the cockpit for any and all deficiencies. The real work got started once we were airborne, as we pushed, prodded, spun, jerked, jumped, landed, dove, climbed, rolled, accelerated, and stopped the Cougar in every which way we could to preciselydetermine its handling qualities, performance, and suitability in the desired role. We had the opportunity to fly into the snowcapped mountains just outside the Valence Airport for Nap of the Earth (NOE) flight, clear area and confined area landings in white-out conditions, and finally a one-wheel landing on a snowy mountain peak. The safety pilot, safety engineer, and all personnel at GAMSTAT were outstanding hosts and were incredibly accommodating of all the strange things we wanted to do to their aircraft.

We returned to Boscombe Down with an immense amount of data and a deadline of less than a week to write and submit our report. Gareth and I hunkered down, crunched and plotted all of the data, set down in writing our assessments and conclusions, and then posted the final product for our instructors to scrutinize and score. With our final assignment of the course complete, there was nothing left for the class to do but celebrate, reminisce, and make preparations to move once again. ETPS held its course graduation ceremony at the McKenna Dinner on 16 December 2021, and by the 23rd I was on a flight back to the States for Christmas at home.

LT Putbrese stands with the ETPS and GAMSTAT test team in front of the AS532 Cougar in Valence, France

An Unforgettable Experience

The year at ETPS was truly a once-in-alifetime experience that I will remember with pride and gratitude for the rest of my life. I learned more about helicopter aerodynamics and design than I could have ever thought possible, and I made lifelong connections with both classmates and instructors. I was immersed in a new aviation and national culture, and I hope I left my classmates with a positive impression of the United States as well– introducing them to such things as 4th of July BBQs, Pit Viper sunglasses, and embroidered Friday flight suits. I encourage all who are interested in a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of aerodynamic theory and helicopter design to apply to become test pilots. While I can’t promise you the absolutely stellar year abroad that I had, what I can promise is an incredibly fulfilling career and inclusion in the small, tight-knit community of flight test professionals.

The Armorial Bearings of ETPS, displayed on a graduate patch