>> Up, down, right rudder, left rudder, release.
Okay, brakes are on.
That's max brakes, right?
>> My name is David Stuart and I am the external pilot
for the AREA-I PTERA aircraft.
[ Engine Sounds ]
Testing this kind of an airplane and doing research
with it is primarily what I've always done.
The unique thing about being a pilot of an airplane
like PTERA is that its multi-engine has the capability,
although we're not flying it with retractable gear,
of being a retractable-gear airplane.
It is a heavy, complex, high-speed airplane
and it flies like that.
>> So, once they get above the 70, 80,000 RPM,
they're about 50 percent
and they'll go together pretty closely,
but down here they'll probably --
>> Right, yeah.
>> Get it down.
Watch the heads; watch the engines!
>> We're here to train NASA on the PTERA airplane
and get them up to speed on it.
We've been flying it now for three or four years.
>> I'm coming with a checklist.
>> Yeah, so we've been here for the past week
and a half training NASA personnel
to use the PTERA system.
We've delivered a set of checklists
that they can reference to make sure
that everything's operational.
Just we reviewed the system.
The best way to do it is hands-on,
so I've had people looking over my shoulder
and explained what the system is doing at all times
and what I'm looking at and what I expect and don't expect
to see at any given time.
My role here at the flight test, I'm the ground station operator.
That means I operate --
I control the aircraft from the ground.
I give it waypoints, air speed, and altitude commands.
It also means that I'm checking the health of the system
at all times, making sure that systems are operational,
that we have good link, that the computer is doing what's
expected, and that all the sensors are working properly.
Come around the far corner,
just do your normal figure-eight pattern
and we'll intercept our course here because we're going
to be doing a right-hand racetrack.
And then I communicate as well
with the pilot throughout the course of the flight,
making sure that everybody has situational awareness,
and if anything is out of spec, I'll have the external pilot
or safety pilot take it back and bring it back safely.
>> Well, you don't know me.
I'm Nick Alley.
I'll be the flight test director for this first flight.
So the maneuvers that we're going to be carrying out today,
we're going to take off.
We're going to be manually performing a figure-eight
procedure out over the lake thread.
>> Break soft, Dave.
>> All right, so the primary project that PTERA is slated
for right now is a partnership with -- between NASA, Boeing,
and AREA-I, and that's in working
on a shape-adaptive wing.
We're designing a wing that will go
on the aircraft that's sitting behind us right now
that can significantly change its shape in flight using NASA
and Boeing technology.
>> All hold.
We're going to do piccolo [phonetic] directions.
>> Hopefully that program will transition
through a successful test flight on PTERA
where initially they'll be looking at controlling
that shape adaptation and how well the controller does it,
how it affects the aerodynamics of the air frame
and how well the onboard flight controller is able to, you know,
maintain flight control throughout the transition
between the different wing states.
>> Antennas are in place.
Go for takeoff.
Affirmative.
All right, 15, 17, 20, 24, 28, 30, 35, 37, 40, 43, 45,
50, 55, 60, 65, 68, 70.
>> The way PTERA was designed,
the way the airframe was designed, was to,
with relative ease, allow it to be reconfigured,
to be able to add -- put on a new tail, to be able to put
on new wings, to be able to extend the fuselage
or even shrink the fuselage, if necessary.
>> Piccolo has it.
Piccolo --
>> The air frame that you're seeing fly right now is the PTERA
baseline, and we call it the "baseline"
because it is the configuration
to which all future PTERA configurations could
be compared.
So you can find, you know, the performance deltas
and compare them back to the PTERA airframe.
In addition to that, the avionics,
the software that's been written, is highly flexible,
so it's a lot like the airplane.
It's kind of the erector set of avionics.
It could be used to add additional flight computers.
With all of the redundancies and the safeties
of a flight-proven system, you can add the new system on board,
and the PTERA avionics can turn control over to that new system,
you know, on a temporary basis
until the new system proves to be flight worthy.
>> All right, prepping for a high-speed pass, full throttle,
115, 120, 125, 130, 134, 134.
Ground speed's 145, 146.
I'm really excited about the ways I think
that NASA could use PTERA.
Just being around this week,
I've already seen people's eyes light
up when they understand what we're going for here
with the system design and seeing experiments
that evaluate new wing treatments
or new wing mechanical designs and allow people
to actually fly experiments
that otherwise might not have made it off the
ground literally.
60, 58, 55, 54, 53.
>> We've dreamed up of a lot of configuration, but whether
or not it's appropriate or not to do those experiments on PTERA,
it's really up to the engineer.
It's up to the researcher to decide, and the system
as it exists is there to support that.