Flight-testing Europe's huge new turboprop | Aviation International News

Flight-testing Europe's huge new turboprop

Before the long-delayed first flight of the A400M, the new airlifter’s TP400 turboprop was flown 18 times on a C-130 flight test bed (FTB) modified and flo

By Chris Pocock • Defense Correspondent

February 2, 2010

Before the long-delayed first flight of the A400M, the new airlifter’s TP400 turboprop was flown 18 times on a C-130 flight test bed (FTB) modified and flown by Marshall Aerospace. During a presentation to the UK’s Royal Aeronautical Society last October, Marshall’s chief test pilot Iain Young and flight test engineer Rob Boyle described the challenging task.

The TP400 produces 2.5 times the thrust of a standard T56 engine and weighs twice as much, they explained. “The flight-idle thrust of the TP400 is greater than a T56 at full power on the ground,” noted Boyle. Marshalls had to build a “pilot-in-the-loop” simulator from the cockpit of a retired C-130K and do extensive aerodynamic modeling and computational fluid dynamics analysis before the aerodynamic differences of the C-130 FTB versus a standard C-130K could be estimated.

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