Dream Big, Lessons from Testers & History: A Week in Berlin

     Brandenburg Gate, with the pretzel

 

I had never been to Berlin. I arrived in early June for the 37th SFTE European Symposium and left with a head full of flight test insights, great memories with colleagues old and new, sober reminders from history, and a new appreciation for the coming aviation future. Day one, obviously, called for a pretzel at the Brandenburg Gate. 

The SFTE European symposium was held out in Adlershof, on the far southeast side of the city, so I got to know the train system quickly.

Berlin-Adlershof station

Opening Session at the Symposium

More than 100 flight test professionals from across Europe and beyond gathered from June 7 to 10 around the theme "Dreams and Hard Realities in Flight Test: Dream Big, Test Harder." The program covered standards, certification, safety-critical systems, UAVs, AI, data acquisition, and training. Speakers came from DLR, Airbus, Leonardo, NLR, ITPS, ETPS, INTA, BAE Systems, Gulfstream, the Indian Air Force, Turkish Aerospace, Politecnico di Milano, and others. What stands out about this gathering is, first, how well the European Chapter knows how to run a symposium.  A small group of 5 makes it happen.  And second, how many nationalities and air arms were in the room, all wrestling with the same questions from different angles, and how many I knew!

Colleagues from Turkey, Canada & France

Campfire Session   Pre-Symposium Dinner. The

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The real work happens at dinner tables, by the river at sunset, and around the campfire session. Flight test is a small world, and it runs on relationships that are close even though people come from different countries.  What I love is we sit at a table where five languages are spoken with many slipping from one to another

Gala Awards Event

Post Symposium Celebration

Outside at the Awards Banquet 

 A Reminder in Concrete.  Our venue had a surprise in its backyard. Steps from the symposium stands a 1930s vertical wind tunnel, built to test how aircraft behave in a spin. The Trudelturm ("spin tower") is a roughly 20-meter-high former wind tunnel, built in Adlershof between 1934 and 1936 by the German Aviation Research Institute. It let engineers simulate the dangerous state of spinning in a laboratory for the first time. 

 

That fits our profession. Nearly a century ago, engineers were already trying to find out how aircraft fail before a pilot has to. We gathered for our group photo at its base, a room full of people carrying that tradition forward. 

Vertical Wind Tunnel

 

I closed the technical sessions with a call to action. Every member should push for stronger Flight Test Engineer development standards in their own organization. The future of this profession depends on developing people and sharing hard-earned lessons. SFTE News Article

Recognition and Awards: The Awards Banquet was the highlight for me. Lyssandre Ramos won Best Presentation for his work on cost-effective flutter testing for general aviation. Lyssandre is the quintessential jack of all trades in the flight test world. Sebastian Rommel received a Director's Award for his service as Treasurer of the European SFTE Chapter. Tom Esser of Boeing is the recipient of the Empire Test Pilots' School scholarship, which I had the pleasure of announcing. We also presented DLR with an SFTE Recommended Practices Certificate of Recognition. DLR is the third organization to earn it and the first in Europe.  SFTE News Article 

 The post symposium tour was to the ILA Berlin: Our group toured the ILA airshow- a huge event featuring aircraft and spacecraft I was not aware of

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The Drones Have Arrived. Then I walked into the defense hall, which was dominated by drones and uncrewed fighters of every size and shape. Some were small VTOL tail-sitters, and others were full-scale combat aircraft like Helsing's CA-1 Europa. 

CA-1 Europa

FIXAR VTOL drone 

 The sea change if aircraft is striking.  One question stuck with me. What happens soon when it's no longer one crewed aircraft against another, but one against twenty, or a hundred? I've spent my career making sure aircraft do what we say they will do. That question is where our profession is heading.  It's what I will challenge everyone with.   The other surprise for me is how many Eastern European companies are in aerospace and space.  It's a whole ecosystem that is a bit more "mom and pop" than the U.S.  Can they compete?

 Between sessions I went looking for Berlin's recent history. I stood at Checkpoint Charlie, where the Cold War was once a daily fact of life rather than a chapter in a book. 

Checkpoint Charlie

 

Berlin Wall Victims

Checkpoint Charlie Then I visited the Berlin Wall Memorial, where a wall of portraits honors people who died trying to cross. Many of them were young, some just children. 

Remnants of the Berlin Wall

 How Could This Happen? The museum I visited next is built inside a WWII-era bunker, the Berlin Story Bunker. Its exhibition asks a single question: how could this happen? 

Hitler Museum 

 It traces Hitler's rise step by step, from a party that won roughly 37 percent of the vote to a dictatorship. Military and industrial leaders chose not to intervene, or thought they could control the movement and use it. Standing underground in a structure built to survive the consequences, I found my own answer hard to shake. Too many thought they could handle Hitler, and too many thought someone else would take care of it. I also stopped at the site of the Führerbunker itself. Today it's a plain patch of ground with an information board, and there's almost nothing to see

That's part of the lesson.  It's a lesson for our time. Democracies rarely fall to one dramatic moment. They erode when good people decide it isn't their problem. Stay engaged. 

Parking Lot where Führerbunker Once Was

What I'm Carrying Home: Berlin gave me both sides of my profession. There was the optimism of a room full of people committed to testing more safely, and there was the reminder of what happens when good people look away. Both reasons are why I'll keep showing up. Next stop, Istanbul.