Fri, Mar 19, 2010
Full Flight Test Program To Be Conducted In Ottawa
After completing all the ground testing, the
'soon-to-be-certified' Seawind 300C received its flight permit and
took its initial flight over Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Canada. The
Canadian National Research Council (NRC) will perform the flight
test piloting under the direction of DAR Chief Test Pilot Robert
Erdos. The flight analytical work will be performed by John
Taylor, who recently retired as Vice President of Engineering at
Bombardier.
The Seawind will be manufactured at the company's
82,000-square-foot manufacturing and hangar facility at
Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu Airport in Quebec, Canada.
The flight test aircraft was piloted on its first flight by Paul
Kissman, and the NRC's Harvard chase plane was piloted by Anthony
Brown, both of whom are NRC test pilots. The initial flight
lasted about an hour, as Kissman got familiar with the amphibian.
Richard Silva, President of Seawind, said, "The pilots reported the
controls in pitch and roll were excellent. The doublet on the
rudder was very good with a light two cycle Dutch roll to be
expected on the close coupled amphibian. The power plant and
aircraft systems all worked as designed and as expected."
After the debriefing, the Seawind was flown to Ottawa, where the
full flight testing program will be conducted.
Silva said, "It will take about four weeks for the NRC to
install the flight test instrumentation, after which full flight
testing will begin. "We are looking forward to the completion of
flight testing and the start up of production. We have a
backlog of over 50 customer orders."
The Seawind program has been an
on-and-off going program for a number of years and suffered
its most significant setback after a fatal accident in
2007 claimed the life of a test pilot.
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