Summary of the 20th SFTE EC Annual Symposium

The 20th SFTE EC Annual Symposium was also the 40th Annual SFTE International Symposium. The Symposium was hosted in Sweden by the SFTE European Chapter from 7 to 11 September 2009.

The start location for the symposium was Linköping and the konference center Konsert & Kongress.

Monday was devoted to training courses and two sessions were performed in parallell and with good attendence.

One was on Humen Factors and Flight Safety by Sideny Dekker, a Professor of Human Factors and Systems Safety, and Director of Research at the Lund University Center for Complexity and Systems Thinking.

The other was the Avionic Focus Course presented by Saab Avitronics in collaboration with Mälardalen university of Sweden.

The first part was presented by Odd Romell, an adjunct professor at Mälardalen university of Sweden, and by Kristina Lundquist, a Professor of Dependable Software Engineering at Mälardalen University.
They both discussed software systems compliant with the ARINC 653 standard.

The second part was presented by Hans Brandtberg, a senior business developer at Saab Avitronics. He presented a modular avionics lecture covering architecture design and development for mission aircraft.

In the evening a welcome reception was held at the Frimurarhotellet, where there was a warm welcome from the SFTE president Pete Donath and our host in Linköping, Ola Rignell, who is the Director of Saab Flight Test and Verification.

Tuesday started out with key note speaker Pontus Kallén, Senior Vice President and Managing Director Saab Aerosystems. He adressed the topic of challanges imposed by changing requirement for defence and security solutions.

This was followed by the first three presentations of Technical Papers.

The afternoon was spent on technical tours at Saab and Tekniska Verken.

At SAAB Aerosystems the highlight was an air display of the Gripen Multi-role Combat Aircraft together with the first Saab aircraft - the Saab B17, used in the roles of dive bombing and reconnaissance.
The tour also included the final assambly line for the Gripen Multi-role Combat Aircraft and also a visit to the Saab Flight Test Center facilities.

Tekniska Verken showed interesting latest generation Waste & Recycling systems solutions used in Linköping.
This included environmental friendly waste handling and bio gas (green gas) manufacturing. The facilities are the most modern in Sweden and also one of few of its kind in the world.
The Technical tour ended with an informal dinner at Tekniska Verken, where good food and music made it a memorable social event.

Wednesday offered a whole day of excellent presentations of technical papers. Between the 11 presentations all got the chance to visit and learn about related tools at the vendors area.

Thursday morning provided six more excellent presentations of technical papers. This rounded of the program in Linköping.

The SFTE Awards and Entertainment Banquet was held at Skansen in Stockholm, a famous outdoor museeum of historical buildings and living conditions in Scandinavia.

The dinner was held in an old "great hall" with matching food and forn-nordic entertainment.

The Banquet Speaker was Mr Mats Nilsson, Director and Head of Department for Military Affairs, Ministry of Defence, Sweden.

The traditional SFTE awards where presented by Pete Donath, and the recipients had interesting speaches in response to the awards.

The awards resipients were:

Kelly Johnson: Prof. Kenneth Edwards, QinetiQ
James S. McDonnell: T-45 HSRIP Flight Test Team, US Navy/Boeing
SFTE Directors Award: Michael Andy Hammer, Boeing (Seattle)
SFTE Fellow Award: Alan R. Lawless, Gerald Dean Carico, Joseph G. Turner
2009 Scholarship recipients: Gregory A. Spruce, Christopher Trousdale, William Grant Stein II, Shaun Thomas Whalen, Gregory Wisdom

Both Technical presentations and technical tours during Friday was at the Saab Avitronics facilities in Stockholm.

Session keynote was held by Pontus De Laval, Senior vice president, technology, Saab Corporate. He adressed both the requirements for and the possibilities that new technology puts on the table.

The last three, out of the total 23, of the technical presentations where presented.

This was followed by the best paper award ceremony.
The award for Best Paper was presented to Mr Patrick Svatek (NAVAIR, US) and LCDR Lawrence Nance (US Navy), for their paper and presentation on HMI tests and experiences, called ”To much of a good thing: A discussion of excessive Advisories, Cautions and Warnings (ACAWS) in the E-2D aircraft”.

Two Honorary Awards were also presented.
The first of these awards went to Mr Michael Bromfield (Brunel Flight Safety Laboratory, Brunel University, UK), for his paper and presentation on loss of control accidents within General Aviation, called “Flight Test: Supporting the investigation of factors affecting loss of control of light aircraft”.
The second Honorary Award was presented to Mr David Kidman (USAF Flight test Centre) and Dr Donald J. Malloy (Aerospace Testing Alliance, US) for their paper and presentation on use of modeling and simulation for propulsion system acquisition, called “Technique for integrating Ground and Flight Test and modeling and simulation to improve aircraft propulsion system acquisition”.

The afternoon was devoted to technical tours at Saab Avitronics and the Capability Development Center.

Saab Avitronics gave a production tour of Gripen display production, EW systems production and PCB production.

The Capability Development Center was shown and in depth demonstrations of the different systems where given.
On top of the opprtunity to fly the Gripen version of the Tactical Flight Trainer, all the systems in the CDC was demonstrated:

StriC - Air Operations Centre (AOC), Strics - Simulator to the AOC, SjöC - Sea surveillance used for both civil and military purposes, BMS - Battle Management System used in combat vehicles, WCU - Wearable Command Unit, management system for civil purposes, ManPac west - ManPac west is a west for training with infra red sensors and GPS

The following link provides a List of participants that attended the symposium.