Book Review: A View from the Hover

John Farley’s A View from the Hover is a long-awaited memoir of sorts from one of the UK’s most experienced test pilots.

John Farley is best known for the first flight of  the P.1127 in 1964 while a test pilot at the Royal Aircraft Establishment. He spent 19 years contributing to the development of the Harrier, retiring as Chief Test Pilot BAe Dunsfold. He then spent five years as Manager of Dunsfold and a further two as Special Operations Manager at BAe Kingston. In 1990 he became the first Western test pilot to fly the MiG-29 fighter. He is currently part of the Farnborough Aircraft team developing the F1 air taxi.

Like most pilot’s memoirs, A View from the Hover starts out with Farley’s first experiences with flying in general. Then goes into his flying at RAE Farnborough and Bedford.

There’s also a chapter detailing Qinetiq’s Harrier VAAC programme. There’s some very detailed descriptions of the aircraft’s flight control system and the contributions the program made to the JSF.

Harrier VAAC

A great of the book is naturally going to detail Farley’s work on the Harrier itself. From the P.1127 to AV-8A testing with the USMC to the Sea Harrier FRS.1 to AV-8B Harrier 2 testing with McDonnell Douglas, and finally to the Sea Harrier FA.2. Overseas sales demonstrations to Spain, Italy, France and India are also discussed.

There’s some interesting discussion of the preparations and certifications needed for a demo flight. Speaking of demo flights other than the Fulcrum demo he flew the other most interesting evaluation was the IAI Lavi. He offers some opinion of how good an aircraft that was. The reader may gain some insight into China’s J-10.

Farley’s thoughts on simulation has this tidbit:

“A few years later, I was standing outside a Lightning (aircraft) simulator waiting my turn for an emergencies check. The game was the same as in the Hunter (aircraft). If you got the drills right you flew on. The pilot was about 3 miles out on a GCA to land and down to one engine having successfully put out a fire on the other. Then the instructor gave him a fire in the remaining engine. The pilot made a textbook Mayday call and said he was ejecting. When you pulled the handle at this point in that simulator, the canopy slid back on rails and the seat went u p a foot or so. Job done. However, nothing happened and the canopy remained closed. Then we heard this awful scream – it was quite chilling. The pilot concerned had failed to remove the seat safety-pin during his strap in checks and found he could not pull the handle. He really thought he was going to die. A bad dose of AMD (awareness of mortal danger) as the psychologists term it.”

Intense and indicative of just how realistic early simulators were.

The later chapters of the book include Farley’s thoughts on general aviation and actually made me think of a discussion I had with a CFI years ago. Farley wondered why GA airplanes don’t have an AoA indexer in much the same manner as fixed wing naval aircraft.

I won’t go into a description of one but here’s what an AoA indexer looks like:

The conclusion of the book gives Farley’s interesting perspective on teaching the fundamentals of aerodynamics which CFIs out there may find useful.

All in all this is a great book. A View from the Hover is a must read for those interested in flight test. However, if you’re an airplane geek and/or a pilot there’s a lot of great material here for you too. On Amazon it’s a bit pricey. I found the paperback for about $35 but it had been sitting on my wishlist for over a year.

A View from the Hover: My Life in Aviation by John Farley

*UPDATE: There’s a website for the book.

*make sure that you head over to xbradtc’s place and click on the Amazon link to purchase (you’re welcome…even if I was banned from the latest “name the plane…lol)