Taylor’s book is a collection of stories told in no specific order, but circling back on one another when required to build a narrative of experience and to connect the dots on aircraft that he sampled as they matured over the years. The saying “I’d rather be good than lucky, but I’ll take luck when I can get it!” is certainly appropriate when you’re an itinerant test pilot. Sometimes, luck has been involved, as is the case for most anyone who has dabbled in the far corners of the flight envelope. However, he’ll be the last one to let his ego take charge and tell you that his survival was all about superior skill. Make no bones about it, Taylor has had to be very good to have survived the adventures he relates. The most remarkable thing is that Taylor tells his story with a self-deprecating style so typical of accomplished British explorers and adventurers. He has flown (and tested) helicopters, autogiros and fixed-wing aircraft as he honed his craft and became the “go to” guy in Britain-and around the world-for doing initial flight testing as well as recurrent recertification testing of flying machines old and new. The back of his book lists all the types flown and it reads like a “what’s what” in aviation history. The second is that it is going to be hard to put down until you’ve finished!Ĭhris Taylor is a British test pilot with years of experience in the military, government and now private sectors of aviation.

When a book starts out as entertaining as this, you know two things-the first is that it was written by a Brit. As I slid sidewards with the metal skids kicking up an almighty cascade of sparks from the tarmac runway you might conclude that I was mad, bad or stupid for me this was just another typical working day in my life as a test pilot. I was testing the emergency landing characteristics of a Polish helicopter in Arizona, USA on a very warm day at an airfield that was a mile above sea level. I could do nothing but ‘Keep calm and hang on’ … I couldn’t steer and sparks were flying everywhere …

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