RAE and Fast Jet Test Squadron test pilot Clive Rustin recounts stories from some of the 165 aircraft types he flew over half a century of “flying fun”. Clive starts this barnstorming lecture by explaining how he moved into test flying to pursue his love of flying and to ensure that his father, whose hard work paid for him to go through university, did not think he had wasted his Chemical Engineering degree. After a time flying Hawker Hunters and English Electric Lightnings, he passed through the Empire Test Pilot School in 1961 before flying over 70 types as an experimental test pilot and then OC Flying at the Aerodynamics and Research Flight at RAE Bedford. There his work included supersonic research for Concorde, V/STOL projects including the Hawker Siddeley P.1127/Kestrel evaluation flight and research into short-field landing; though he started on the Fairey Delta 2 simulator before a memorial flight on the real thing.

After passing through Staff or “Stuff” College, as he called it, he describes the flying work undertaken under his command at RAE Farnborough in the early 1970s, together with stories of his time flying for a transatlantic blind landing V/STOL project. In 1974 he was posted as OC of the Jet Test Squadron at Boscombe Down, where his team ran clearance programmes for the military, and tells stories of his work with the Jaguar, Harrier, Phantom and Hunter. Though his RAF career finished at the RAF Handling Squadron at Boscombe Down, his flying career continued and Clive goes on to tell a little of his time as an airship captain and flying the Spitfire, Vampire and Venom in vintage aircraft displays.

The lecture was addressed to the Royal Aeronautical Society’s General Aviation Group on 21 February 2012 and the podcast was edited by Mike Stanberry FRAeS.