9. FLIGHT ACCEPTANCE ENGINEERING

This Group was part of the Engineering Liaison Organization. We were based in the Production Flight Test area. Our job was to investigate and resolve problems. Our objective was to reduce our flights to one company and one customer.



Flight Acceptance Engineering



We never really achieved that, but we came close. We investigated discrepancies back to the vendor if necessary. One member of our group participated in most test flights and performed in-flight tasks such as engine topping adjustments, rotor blade tracking and balancing.

 Following acceptance by company pilots we worked with customer pilots and Quality Control through final acceptance.

Most of our activity was with the US Army and Navy, however, we also worked with British, Australian, Italian, Canadian and Spanish customers.

One member of our group was lost in a Chinook accident, another parachuted safely.

Charles Kessler is a retired flight test engineer for Boeing’s Vertol helicopter division (formerly Piasecki Helicopter Co.). He joined Piesecki in 1947, in the company’s fourth year, and retired from Boeing in 1983. During his 37-year career he took part in the testing of prototypes and alterations of such models as the CH-47 Chinook and Sea Knight, the H-16, HRP-2, and the V-107. He taught the stability augmentation system to the German Luftwaffe. He has written about his experience in a blog called “Early Helicopter Years,” which can be found at http://helicopterstory.blogspot.com/.