Test Pilot: An extraordinary career testing civil aircraft

Chris Taylor – £25 www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

Two decades ago, Chris Taylor burst into the LAA scene when he joined the CAA in the role of Light Aircraft Test Pilot – in those days the CAA had a whole Flight Test department with several TPs covering the range from microlights to Concorde. Allocated to provide the CAA’s oversight of the LAA’s (or in those days, PFA’s) flight testing activities, ex-Navy pilot Chris’ eagerness to get airborne in anything with wings or rotors soon became legendary, and he very quickly grew his experience to cover a huge range of aircraft types from ultralight gyroplanes to warbird ‘heavy metal’ and jets.

His willingness to get involved with flight testing single-seat autogyros made him for a long time the ‘go to’ person in this area, and he was also much involved in developing the techniques needed for evaluating the new breed of factory-built gyros that had taken the market by storm.

Later, along with colleagues Paul Mulcahy and Dan Griffith, Chris headed up the LAA Flight Test courses at Turweston, shortly before the dissolving of the CAA’s Flight Department took Chris into a new direction as a freelance test pilot.

This book tells the story of some of Chris’ most amusing and instructive flight test experiences in a lively and open style, giving a very frank insight into the practical challenges of the job – not least, staying alive, but also the realities behind turning up to fly an aeroplane you’ve never seen before, most likely from an airfield you’ve never been to before, with no ground support – and be able to depart, data gathered, with honour (and aeroplane) intact.

Tales of derring-do abound, but expressed in a self-deprecating style which has Chris as much hassled by traffic jams on the M3 as two-stroke engines that suddenly go quiet in flight.

There’s plenty of LAA and BMAA content in here, as well as a peek behind the curtains of the CAA’s good offices and the intricacies of type certification. From spin testing SSDRs in Wiltshire to engine-outs in helicopters in Poland, Chris’ book entertains and informs from start to finish.

Francis Donaldson