During the 49th International Symposium of Flight Test Engineers, the Bell V-280 Valor team received the best paper award in the category for “Certification at Warp Speed.” The paper, “V-280 Valor First Flight Build-up:  Preparing for a Technology Demonstration” explains how the V-280 worked through a deliberate program schedule to achieve its first flight nearly a year ago.

This paper exemplified the symposium theme of “Tomorrow’s Flight Test.” The Bell team showed how they, alongside all of Team Valor, applied experimental risk management to prepare for, and execute the build-up testing required to achieve first flight of this revolutionary technology demonstrator in a short period of time.

Video of that historic flight:

The team explained throughout the program the goal was to inform the requirements and reduce risk for a Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program of record. The paper also offered conclusions from their work that could impact future flight testing efforts and the importance of flexibility during flight test execution.

Please join us in congratulating the paper authors:

• Errick Smith, Experimental Flight Test Engineer
• Kevin Christensen, Test & Evaluation Manager
• Don Grove, Tiltrotor Chief Pilot
• Paul Ryan, Experimental Test Pilot