very clear article concerning leading certification systems!

[Dmitry]

Please pay Your attention, You could find article original here:
http://www.paraglidingforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=16127


There is only one version of Triton. It's not possible to translate every single


 LTF class to a corresponding EN class. There are 5 LTF classes and only 4 in EN. The Triton is not high level in it's class in matters of safety: so it's just near the bottom boarder in EN between C and D.
The systems LTF and EN are very different in the basic idea:

The LTF is an expert's system: the test pilot (expert) is evaluating a wing on his responsibility on the basis of mainly relative comparisons: there are lots of relative declarations in the protocol: slight, average, high, etc.
Do wing's behaviour is not measured, it's mainly compared. The test pilot needs an overview of all the other wings around to classify the behaviour of the tested wing.

Advantages:
It's more easy: the test pilot is free to decide, it's flexible.

Disadvantage:
The test pilot decides on his responsibility: the evaluation is quite subjective.
For someone who has not the overview over all wings (like a manufacturer has: he mainly only know his own wings) a relative classification is hard to do. So it sometimes needs some expensive "try and errors" to find out how the test pilot "experts" are actually evaluating the single manoeuvres.
The result strongly depends on the test pilot itself (and his actual mood), so not really comparable among different test pilots or even different test centres. Because of the fact that the test pilot has lot's of free room to decide, there used to be lots of discussions about the result between manufacturer and test pilots. The pressure on the test pilot is quite high, as he as to stand against the pressure of the manufacturer and decide on his own.

The EN is a documentary system with strict rules. The wing's behaviour is tried to be measured and documented as accurate as possible. There behaviour on the single manoeuvres are evaluated absolutely (nor relatively): so there are lots of "degree", "seconds" and "cm" in the test protocol.

Advantages:
The results are more objective, much less depending on the pilot. It's the way to when different test centres with different test pilots should come to equal results.
It's much more transparent for the manufacturer.

Disadvantage:
It's more work and more complicate.

As you may know, an internationally working group with all the test centres (Air Turquoise, DHV, Aerotest, Academy) and the PMA is working out a solution to bring LTF and EN together. It looks very promising, so we should have only one certification system in near future. It looks like it will be the EN with some updates in matters of more accurate definitions and better documentations.
So no more problems for the British comp. classes.
Smile

There might be still a translation of the results of the single EN manoeuvres to the old LTF classes (1-3), to make it easy for the German pilots. We will discuss this issue in a few days at our next meeting of the German round table. Internationally, it looks like the EN classes will be the only ones communicated.

Here a link to the Triton's protocols in English and German: http://www.para-academy.eu/technikdatenbank/musterbezeichnung.php?ID=59

Regards!

Hannes
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NOVA