29th Society of Flight Test Engineers European Chapter symposium

The 29th symposium took place 29^th, 30^th and 31^st of May 2018 at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of the Delft University of Technology (the Netherlands). This year’s theme was: The Fewer Aircraft To Flight Test, The More Reason To Share Experience, with two days of technical sessions and a technical tour to the Air Force Base Leeuwarden.

This year the event was supported by the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands Association of Aeronautical Engineers and the Netherlands Aerospace Centre NLR.
On the first day, after the inauguration address by the conference chair Christophe Hermans, three keynote speakers delivered very good presentations that got the attention of the audience.

• Col. M. Kievit Royal Netherlands Air Force Head of F35 project Office: “The F-35 Program: Providing the 5th generation fighter aircraft for the RNLAF”.
• Airbus Experimental Test pilot, H. van der Stichel: “Flight Testing the Airbus A350”.
• NLR VP M. van Venrooij: “The Future of Flight Test Research: Expect the unexpected”.

During the lunch break of the first and second day the Delft University of Technology treated the Flight Test Community with lunch tours to the flying teaching laboratory, the Cyber Zoo (small scale RPAS designs) and its flight simulator Simona. The first day finished with a technical session with three presentations. At the end of the day, we enjoyed a welcome reception at the faculty bar.

The second day was devoted to three technical sessions allocating diverse presentations covering a wide variety of topics. The level of all the presentations was really good and produced interesting interchange of comments and questions between the presenters and the audience. At the end of the sessions the SFTE EC Business Meeting took place. The board of the chapter addressed the audience presenting the usual topics and asking the non-members on the audience to pursue the membership of the society. A small alteration in the “bylaws“ of the chapter was submitted to the members and accepted. It was announced that in 2019, in Toulouse, for the first time the JMR award ceremony will be organized. The board encourages our colleagues to submit proposals of candidates for the JMR awards. Information will be published on the SFTE EC website.

In the evening we had the symposium dinner at the restaurant Van der Dussen. During the meal we enjoyed an interesting address by the dean of the faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Prof. dr. Henri Werij. Afterwards the jury announced the winner of the best paper prize, being Jeff Newcamp from Delft University of Technology for his presentation “Control Room Lessons Learned- a Perspective from F35A Testing”.

On 31st of May we visited the Air Force Base Leeuwarden. The Air Base is the location of the Fighter Weapons Instructor Training and the annual multinational NATO exercise “Frisian Flag”. It is also the location of the flight test office. Unfortunately the F-16 instrumented aircraft J-066 (Orange Jumper) was not available for display.