bart@ucbvax.ARPA (Bart Miller) (09/28/84)
The question was asked that if we go up and experiment with our planes to find things like minimum altitude loss, "does this make us test pilots". The folks in the orange flight suits at Edwards (i.e., AF test pilots) have insisted that you have to be "pushing the envelope" to be a test pilot. And, the envelope to us civvie types is know as the flight manual or placards- and we're not allowed outside of these limits. On the otherhand, you could argue that at if you experiment to obtain perf numbers that are no in their aircraft manuals, then you are a test pilot (how many people know the mimimum sink rate and corresponding airspeed for their POWERED aircraft?). I like this view...it encourages us to learn about our machines. --bart miller