STRUCK: An Aerospace Engineering & Lightning Protection Show: Recent Episodes
Allen Hall
The Struck Podcast dives into aerospace engineering and the safety side of the aviation industry. In this show, you’ll learn about new technology in aerospace engineering and the businesses that are driving innovation in the skies. We regularly discuss new EVTOL designs and electric tech advances. FAA designated engineering representative (DER) and lightning protection expert, Allen Hall, gives a deeper look into the intricate systems that keep aircraft safe not only from lightning but from the growing complexity of aircraft design. You’ll learn about advances in electric aircraft, avionics, lightning protection, engines, FAA regulations and much more.
Textron announced the acquisition of Pipistrel, who is working on interesting electric cargo plane designs, the Nuuva series. Does this move make sense for Textron? Plus, we discuss the recent 737 crash in China and the trial of Mark Forkner over his charges related to the Boeing 737 MAX crashes and ensuing investigation.
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Vladimir Putin signed a law that allows Russia to nationalize planes, effectively keeping the planes and breaking the ownership contracts. We also discuss Boeing CEO pay, and how CEO pay is rationalized in general. There is news on JOBY's S4 crash, plus announcements from CityAirbus.
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Allen and Dan discuss the Netflix documentary about Boeing - did it accurately represent the facts in the 737 MAX crashes? Plus, they discuss the PR implications of showing off EVTOL aircraft in public spaces and how that will affect the future acceptance of this new market.
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A Joby Aviation S4 crashed - Will They Still Be Able to Certify? Plus, DARPA is pushing the limits with an unmanned Black Hawk flight. We also discuss Boeing 787 certification issues, F-35 lightning protection solutions, and the flying car safety outlook.
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Tom Warner, a lightning researcher, flew the T28 Storm Penetrating aircraft into thunderstorms in the hopes of gathering data and learning more about lightning strikes. Listen in as he share stories from his career as a pilot, atmospheric science and lightning researcher and photographer. Follow up with him on his blog and his YouTube channel.
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Natilus is pitching the idea of remotely-piloted cargo aircraft, hoping to disrupt the industry and reduce issues with pilot shortages and current jet designs. But, is it a realistic vision? We also discuss a recent opinion on COVID restrictions from the CEO of TAP airlines in Portugal, Eve's certification effort, and Eviation's CEO leaving the company abruptly just before their first flight.
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Airbus mentioned the possibility of building their own engines for a future fleet of hydrogen planes--will they really forgo Pratt & Whitney, GE or Rolls Royce and build them in-house? Plus, we discuss Delta's push for a USA-wide no-fly list to curb passenger disruptions, Jaunt Air Mobility partnering with Flapper in South America, plus the Eviation Alice's push forward into commercial flight.
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Fedex is asking the FAA to put anti-missile lasers on their cargo planes - is this necessary? The Qatar v Airbus fight continues, with Qatar Airways placing a large order with rival Boeing. And, Beta Technologies has partnered with the US Army - will this propel them even further toward the finish line?
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Plus, Ehang gets an order from AirX in Japan, the Airbus and Qatar Airways fight continues to heat up, the 5G rollout in America continues to be a debacle, and more.
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Ehang shares it's new intelligent EVTOL center - are they closing in on launching their aircraft to the public? Plus, we discuss the Airbus A380 returning to service, Airbus vs Boeing 2021 deliveries, Ehang's intelligent EVTOL center, China's C919 program and more.
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Joby has completed a second aircraft prototype for flight testing; this one will go to the Air Force--does this bring Joby closer to the finish line for certification? Plus, Qatar Airways sues Airbus over lightning protection skin damage, a propeller breaks off and enters the fuselage on a bird strike, and we talk about the future of EVTOL stocks.
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Korean Air is using drone swarms to inspect planes - will this work as well as human inspections? The Boeing 777 is getting new directives resulting from their early 2021 engine problems on a United flight from Denver, and Amazon invest in Beta Technologies - will their EVTOL vault ahead of others in the market?
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Six aerospace executives have been indicted on labor collusion charges - will they stick? Plus, a new report shows that the FAA has approached prosecutors, explaining that Mark Forkner, former test pilot for Boeing, is being made a scapegoat in the 737 MAX crashes. What will this mean for the case? We also discuss Eve Urban Air Mobility's plans to go public as a SPAC and a new Bristow EVTOL design.
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The Ehang 216 may be certified in a few months, according to new reports. Is this realistic? Plus, is the idea of a supersonic EVTOL feasible or even remotely reasonable? We also discuss the current pilot shortage in the US, the Jetson One sales numbers, Archer news and more.
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Transcript
welcome back to the Struck airspace engineering podcast i'm your co-host Dan Blewett on today's show got a great lineup first we'll talk about the rather rather desperate pilot shortage that's now gripping uh the u.s and also globally we'll talk about rolls-royce they've been testing one of their electric generators now exceeding one megawatt output which is insane we'll talk about uh hydrogen powered airliners the uk has revealed a plan that they think they can make a long-haul airliner work we'll see if alan agrees we'll also chat a little bit through elon musk's views on the matter obviously he has strong views on electric and hydrogen in the future in general and his are a little bit controversial when it comes to hydrogen power in our EVTOL segment we'll talk a little bit more about elon musk we'll talk about archer ehang jetson one uh which their sort of hobbyist uh aircraft have pretty much sold out by this point and a little uh story about apple car engineers and how they're starting to flee the nearly three trillion dollar company so alan let's start with this pilot shortage i struggle to understand these things a little bit obviously there's shortages of workers everywhere but the world hasn't i mean the world has changed but where did all the people go alan why do we have such a pilot shortage it seems like you know two years ago life was relatively normal obviously covid was a big deal and still is but how could we be desperate that many pilots at this point it doesn't seem to add up to me well when the when covet hit there was a lot of furloughs and pilots got laid off and in that interim because it was long enough it's been a year and a half two years going on two years now that pilots are educated people they can they can find jobs in other industries and they did and now that uh some of them are being recalled back they they don't want to go back in particular maybe they found a better paying job i mean they found a job with better better hours or less stress or a variety of variables there and i there if you look at the tsa numbers we're at about 85 90 of 2019 levels so the the flights at least the flights in the united states are pretty close to where we were and that means there's a lot of airplanes flying internally into the united states overseas not so much still and those tend to be kind of the smaller airplanes the 737s airbus a320s 319s uh the 737 maxes are going to be big in that space and so the most senior people don't tend to fly those airplanes it tends to be the the the towards the youngers younger ages that are flying those airplanes and i think they have other opportunities and and now that uh the the airlines are looking to expand and we have all the evital pilots uber flight kind of pilots that are going to be needed there's going to be a big demand on pilots and i i don't know if we have the infrastructure to support it because 50 years ago most pilots came out of the military i think now it's not nearly that many come out of the maritime like they're coming out of places like embry riddle and in schools like that or flight schools and they're just earning their wings over time by flying freight and cargo and all those different kind of airline airplane flights so you're just getting a different different graphic coming into the marketplace uh and the requirements for hours have gone up the fa jumped the number of hours required so he c...
Sydney Seaplanes placed a large aircraft order from Eve Urban Air Mobility, a division of Embraer. Will it work out for them? The Airbus A350 has lightning protection issues stemming from expanded metal foils and paint peeling, leading to a contentious relationship between Airbus and Qatar. We also discuss new EVTOL designs, FAA regulations and more.
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Transcript Sydney Seaplanes Adds EVTOL Order, Airbus A350 Has Lightning Protection Problems & More
00:00:00:05 - 00:00:24:10UnknownThis episode is brought to you by weather guard Lightning Tech at Weather Guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy. You're listening to the Struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett. I'm Allen Hall. And here on Struck we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection.
00:00:28:09 - 00:00:43:05UnknownAll right, welcome back to the Struck Aerospace Engineering podcast. I'm your co-host Dan Blewett. On today's show, we've got number one something for Allen to really dig his teeth in. We've got some issues with Airbus aircraft and their lightning protection systems.
00:00:43:15 - 00:01:01:16UnknownSome paint feeling some controversy over expanded metal foils, and there's a pretty heavy dispute between Qatar Airways and Airbus. We'll dove into that. We're going to talk about the Dayton Zoning Board has voted to demolish the site of the Wright Brothers first bike shop.
00:01:02:08 - 00:01:20:18UnknownYou know, disappointing decision, obviously for a huge, huge end of innovators in aviation. The grandfathers of aviation. We'll talk about United deciding to put passengers on a safe flight. Not completely safe for one engine will be completely powered by sustainable airline fuel.
00:01:21:12 - 00:01:40:04UnknownAlso, seems like a curious decision. We'll talk about Pratt, they've announced an update to their A320 neo engine. It's going to have more thrust, and we'll see how that might affect their sales and their efficiency. And lastly, in our video segment, we'll talk about Sydney Sea planes striking a big deal for 50 aircraft of Eve Urban Air Mobility
00:01:40:12 - 00:01:54:09Unknownfour passenger EVTOL. They do a lot of commuter and tourism flights down Australia, so sounds like a really interesting proposition there. And lastly, we talked a little bit about Joby's Simulator, which Allen that lacks foot pedals, right?
00:01:54:09 - 00:02:12:10UnknownAnd doesn't have a rudder. Is that right? It's a totally different configuration than most airplanes. Yeah, it seems really interesting and unique, to say the least. So let's start with Airbus and Qatar Airways. So Reuters has obtained a number of photos which are pretty shocking.
00:02:12:10 - 00:02:27:21UnknownThey they make this seem like almost a home brew, a homebrew thing like you don't see paint peeling this badly. Qatar is very unhappy with Airbus. And both sides are sort of in a little bit of a tug of war about, you know, what's going on, who's going to fix this and how big of a deal this
00:02:27:21 - 00:02:46:13Unknownis. Yeah. So the A350 is primarily a carbon fiber airplane. It like the 787, so they're comparable airplanes in that sense. And the the what Airbus has done is they've used an expanded what the article say is expanded copper foil as lightning protection.
00:02:46:13 - 00:02:59:04UnknownAnd so what you do is on the top layer, the carbon fiber, you sort of embed this, this mesh is copper mesh into it and that access your lightning protection and then that mesh gets over coated with paint.
00:02:59:04 - 00:03:14:04UnknownSo the outer surface looks white like most airplanes do. So you kind of cutting this three layer thing,
The Otto Aviation Celera 500L made some big claims on fuel efficiency and laminar flow. After flight testing, how have those claims held up? We also discuss more Boeing 787 manufacturing defects, the GE9X sand ingestion tests, Joby news on certification and the CityHawk EVTOL.
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Hyundai has spun off its EVTOL business into Supernal, with an interesting aircraft. And, the company shares a big vision for being a start-to-finish transportation company, with aircraft being on piece of the puzzle along with scooters, cars, etc. Plus, Boeing is in hot water with the FAA, now accused of hiring inexperienced or incompetent certification personnel - is the FAA justified in their warnings to Boeing?
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AMSL Aero has a boxwing EVTOL design with a prototype that's nearly ready to fly - can this interesting design work? Rolls Royce flies successfully using 100% SAF fuel, Volocopter sees big things happening in Rome, and more.
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The U.S. has an aging air traffic control tower problem. How will airports replace 100+ aging towers? Plus, is the Jetson One personal EVTOL the future of fun-to-fly aircraft, with little to no barrier to the skies? And, will Alaska Airlines' backing of hydrogen conversions mean we see jets flying on Hydrogen power sooner than later?
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The Cyclotech EVTOL is back, with a recent flight vaulting it back into the maintstream media. With a very unorthodox lift system, can it really become airworthy one day and reach mass-market acceptance? We also discuss more of the Forkner charges, Boeing 777x freighter rumors, the Boeing Starliner's flight date pushback, Lilium and ABB's partnership on charging stations, Wing's drone partnership with Walgreens, and more. Cover image copyright: Cyclotech.
Check out the Cyclotech in action here.
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In this episode, we discuss the Volodrone EVTOL cargo-hauling drone - is it going to be a game-changer? Boeing's former test pilot on the 737 MAX project has now been indicted - are the charges fair? The 787 dreamliner has new parts problems, and we discuss the Pratt & Whitney 3D printed jet engine - could we see a full-scale size sooner than later?
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We discuss the Tetra personal "Buy n Fly" EVTOL, which purports to be a kit experimental aircraft for delivery in 2022. Will this one-seat concept gain mainstream appeal? Southwest Airlines earned a tsunami of bad PR with 1000s of flight cancellations and a dodgy response as to why it all went down. Plus, LA and the UK are taking steps to get ready for Urban Air Mobility, and more.
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The DigiProp program is aiming to bring complex composite propeller designs to life easier and faster - is it working? Plus, we talk about the COVID recovery and a recent report that $201 billion was lost due to the virus' impact on airlines. Lastly, Ehang showed off its new VT-30 EVTOL recently - where is Ehang going? And, AirBus and Honda are now off and running - will their designs fit a different niche than Joby, Volocopter and others?
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TRANSCRIPT: Ehang Shows VT-30; Will EVTOLS Ever Have Swappable Batteries?
this episode is brought to you by weatherguard lightning tech at weatherguard we support design engineers and make lightning protection easy you're listening to the struck podcast i'm Dan Blewett i'm Allen Hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection
All right welcome back to the struck airspace engineering podcast i'm your co-host Dan blewett on today's show we'll talk a little bit about uh southwest and some other coveted vaccination rules that airlines are starting to enforce their employees and we'll talk a little bit about the recovery still kind of an update for the fall season here about uh covet and where the airlines are going we're going to talk a little bit about digiprop which is a program looking at the use of thermoplastics and braiding and some other interesting techniques for making propellers and we've got a bunch of evtol news we'll chat through today alakai and their sky hydrogen ev2l is looking for investment we'll talk about their design and some of the challenges there honda's also throwing their hat into the ring developing a hybrid electric evtol and we've also got some announcements from ehang on their vt30 some clarity on airbus as they explain explain their design behind the city airbus and lastly uh just some interesting um info about battery swaps and whether this might be something that could come to aviation or maybe it won't work we'll see um alan let's start with southwest so the latest airline to uh mandate their staff all 56 000 employees to get vaccinated by december 8th and of course this comes at the heel of a of a article by al jazeera that says the global airline industry has seen a 200 billion dollars 201 billion dollar uh loss due to cove at 19. so is this just the latest airline just trying to protect themselves as much as they can obviously hiring and the workforce is a very difficult it's a very difficult time to find employees and to keep everyone up and running i mean how do you view is this like the natural progression here that all these airlines are doing this well united did it a little while ago and now southwest is into the same position i think uh i think american and delta are in the same boat at the moment uh i think you have a really hard time with this we're already seeing the same sort of prescriptive uh you either have a vax vaccine or you or you're fired and we don't provide severance which is a nice little twist uh that is not working well in my area right now and new york state has had a big purge in a sense of where they're just firing all the health care workers that refuse vaccinations and that includes all staff it's not just nurses and doctors it's everybody that works around the hospital food service clean uh janitorial people it's a big deal uh and i'm not sure in in the sort of uh environmental today that it this is a good long-term solution for the airlines i know at the short term it raises some pr it makes people a little more comfortable to go fly i think but do i really care if the line mechanic has a vaccination or not or has previously had covet i i don't think i care as a part of the flying public it seems like more o...
Eve Urban Air Mobility, owned by Embraer, has announced an agreement to sell 100 EVTOL aircraft to Bristow, the well-known helicopter operator. What will come of this partnership for the two companies? Airbus is back in the EVTOL hunt, announcing a new aircraft with a unique design. But, it has insiders scratching their heads - why now? Plus, we discuss an intricate luggage scam, Rolls Royce winning the B-52 engine contract, Bell Nexus EVTOL being featured at the Smithsonian, and more.
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Should a Boeing test pilot face criminal charges for the 737 MAX crashes? Or, is this just the FAA and government looking for a scapegoat in a tragedy? Plus, Boeing faces increasing pressure to sell planes to low-cost carriers at a reduced price: is this good business? Lilium is now a public company, but will their EVTOL take flight with a 25% reduction in available cash? And, we discuss the future of EVTOL heliport locations.
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The Boeing 737 MAX has an extending wheel system - how does it work? The Northrup Grumman Model 437 autonomous aircraft is impressive, but when will we see it in action? And, the Biden Administration is handing out half a billion dollars to aerospace companies and airlines - is it just a bandaid? Great video on the Boeing 737's Wheels here.
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this episode is brought to you by Weather Guard lightning tech at weatherguard we support design engineers and make lightning protection easy you're listening to the struck podcast i'm Dan Blewett i'm Allen hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection
Transcript: Northrup Grumman Model 437 & Boeing 737 Max 10 Wheel Engineering
Alright welcome back to the struck aerospace engineering podcast i'm your co-host dan blewett on today's episode a lot of policy news coming out of the u.s so the biden administration has put a bunch of awards out there are there's clean air and cleaner fuel there's a big push for improving some of that efficiency and reducing carbon emissions you know getting sustainable airline fuel developed all these sort of things so the byte administration is pushing a lot of money out to the faa and other agencies to end to some large aerospace companies themselves to help to develop some of these technologies so we'll talk through a bunch of the implications there uh in our engineering segment we're going to talk about northrop grumman's new uh model of an autonomous aircraft that's got some serious speed um possibly used for future drone missions uh the boeing 737 max's extending wheels which are really unique and interesting and we'll talk a little bit about a 2 megawatt electric motor from right so let's start allen with the faa so biden has you know the administration has earmarked some money to the faa and as part of their clean program they're doling a lot of this out to general electric aviation honeywell pratt whitney boeing roar delta techops gk and aerospace mds coding and america's phoenix they're all working on different projects to meet some of these standards for co2 emissions you know hoping to reduce that to by about 20 percent uh nox uh emissions by 70 and noise as well also particular particulate matter so give me some of your perspective on this obviously you know reducing emissions is difficult um and you've talked a bunch at length in the past about how maybe the airlines should be not quite in the same boat as you know transport other other forms of transportation yeah so the by the administration essentially handing out checks to some larger aerospace companies is kind of unique uh and they can do it under the veil of a lot of different uh projects at the moment and the obvious one for them is uh clean air right so they i think this is sort of indicative of a larger problem that's going on that the airline industry in general has been has been in a financial hurt and they've been asking congress for some relief for at least a year maybe a little bit longer now and they're starting to get in the in different forms uh so there's been several hundred million dollars over a half a billion dollars doled out so far and i think more is yet to come now you know you kind of wonder if ge and honeywell weren't already on some of these tasks uh particularly ge you know gets been pushing cleaner skies for a long time and and they've been doing a lot of work internally forever so this is not unusual for them but i think it's just a a a unique way of trying to get funding to these companies and i i think the bigger scope is at what point will the abide administration start to realize that they need to get the airline industry going and pumping ...
The Gulfstream G700 broke a transatlantic speed record, reaching Mach 0.88 - can they break the sound barrier in the near future? The FAA is investigating Virgin Galactic, asking why they departed from their flight path; they'll be grounded until the answer is satisfactory. And, Archer Aviation just received their G-1 certification, but the ISS nonetheless has issued a warning to investors to decline the intended SPAC merger deal. Will it go through?
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EP69 Transcript
this episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech at Weather Guard we support design engineers and make lightning protection easy you're listening to the struck podcast i'm Dan Blewett i'm Allen Hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection welcome back to the struck aerospace engineering podcast i'm your co-host dan blewett on today's episode we're gonna talk about golf stream setting a new transatlantic speed record at 0.88 mach from savannah to katar uh we'll talk about faa and virgin galactic some of their woes ryanair also with boeing and talks to get some 737 max 10s out the door but it looks like those talks might have collapsed in our evt well segments say we've got a bunch about archer the faa has approved a g1 uh certification for them and the iss on the other hand is advising against the arger spac merger so we'll talk about that some big stock news there and lastly uh interesting uh article from the vertical flight society uh explaining that they've taken a directory of what now includes 500 evtol concepts a which is up from 200 from last summer so we'll talk about some of that and what we can expect if maybe all 500 designs will come to fruition um i'm sure Allen has a lot of thoughts on that so first let's talk about golf stream so Allen this is a g700 that reached 675 miles per hour or mach 0.88 on the flight across the atlantic from savannah georgia here in the u.s to qatar and then they also hopped over to paris uh reaching mach 0.90 which is 690 and a half miles per hour so this is pretty fast but i mean how fast is this it's pretty good for a business jet yeah for especially as large as it is i think the cessna citation 10 which was the fastest at the time was like 0.9192 maybe on mach yeah so it it's it's really moving aerodynamically the gulfstream's earthcraft have gotten better and better as it gotten bigger and bigger obviously it takes bigger engines yeah yeah i mean i mean if you're going to have a top-end business aircraft gulfstream is definitely leading the pack at the moment it's beautiful airplane so obviously supersonic flight is a big one um is that just breaking mach 1 like or is it are we really looking like mach 1.5 like companies like the now defunct arion and now boom who are looking in the supersonic jet realm i mean is this not is this not close enough or i mean what's the big difference here well it just takes a lot more fuel to go faster uh and a different kind of aircraft to break this sonic sound barrier gulfstream has pushed the envelope pretty well in terms of subsonic flight the aircraft is very clean and as they as they develop and continue to develop they have better computational models better aerodynamic cfd models for the aircraft so the aircraft keeps getting cleaner and cleaner if you look at a g3 to the g700 it's it's almost a different aircraft in terms of its aerodynamics and its performance i always think it's really interesting when they do these sort of like speech trials or world records on speed because they used to happen the united states quite a bit they would go from the airplanes would go from like new york to los angeles or new york to miami places where the busines...
Raytheon has announced that it will acquire FlightAware, as part of its Collins Aerospace branch - will this pay off? Boeing is under scrutiny by the FAA, again about pressuring engineers - is this valid? And, Archer Aviation is partnering with Reef, a parking garage company, to transform garage roofs into vertiports for their EVTOLs...will it work?
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Dufour has entered the EVTOL arena, with a tiltwing design - can it work? Plus, we discuss Archer going public, cell phone fires, Viasat radome problems on 737s, and more.
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Joby Aviation is now public through their space acquisition deal - what will they now do with the money? Plus. JetBlue is going transatlantic - is this a big deal for the company as they choose Airbus 321LRs for their JFK - Heathrow flights? We also discuss a new folding transwing design EVTOL, continued Boeing Starliner problems and more.
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In this episode we discuss the recent issues between NASA and Boeing, as the Atlas Rocket and Starliner capsule have had their launch yet again delayed. Boeing has been in the news consistently for quality control issues - is the company simply not what it once was?
Airbus and Qatar Airways are in a new spat, this time with Qatar Air unhappy about fuselage issues on some A350 aircraft. And, the FAA approved Heads-Up Displays last month, but will they catch on, and what benefits do they provide? Lastly, Lilium and Eviation made big EVTOL news, and the Scorpion Hoverbike crash left a test pilot unharmed, but how lucky was he?
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Volocopter recently recorded a fully crewed 4 minute flight, whereas Joby performed an unmanned 77 minute flight. The two flights were very different; what do they say about each company's distance to flying commercially? Plus, we discuss how shape-memory allow can help reduce airplane noise at landing, Airbus and Textron news, and more.
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Jeff Bezos blasted off with Blue Origin, successfully reaching space and returning to Earth safely. What's next for the billionaire? Archer has continued to press for dismissal of the Wisk patent lawsuit--will they be successful? And, might Tesla enter the EVTOL market in the future, given their battery technology, engineering sophistication and manufacturing capabilities?
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Transcript: EP63 - Bezos Reaches Space; Archer vs Wisk Continues; Might Tesla Enter the EVTOL Space?
Heart Aerospace gets a 200 plane order from United and Mesa Airlines, a regional partner. Richard Branson reaches space with Virgin Galactic--what's the significance of this milestone? Reliable Robotics is working on automating Cessna flight--will we have automated, remote cargo flight sooner than later? Plus, FAA fines, EVTOL news and more.
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Transcript of EP62 - Heart Aerospace Order with United; Richard Branson Takes Flight; Reliable Robotics work with Cessnas
Eviation prepares for test flights, and the Leonardo AW609 is back in the news--will it finally achieve certification and commercial success? Plus if a plane emergency lands in water or has its parachute deploy (in the case of Cirrus aircraft's CAPS system) is the plane capable of returning to service? And, we discuss United making a big jet order and big push toward the top of commercial aviation.
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[TRANSCRIPT] EP61 - United's Big Move; Flying a Waterlogged Plane? Plus, Eviation & Leonardo Tilt Rotor Aircraft
0:00This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech at Weather Guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.
0:14You're listening to the struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett. I'm Allen Hall. And here on strike, we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection.
0:30Alright, welcome back to the struck podcast. This is Episode 61. On today's show, we're going to chat about United Airlines making a pretty big push.
0:39Obviously, they've been a big player in commercial aviation for a long time. But maybe they're really doubling down with a big order from Boeing and some other endeavors. We're talking about a pretty interesting space balloon that challenges what this sort of edge of the earth travel could look like. We'll talk about planes whether they're flyable, again after a water landing, or even the cap system deploying on a Cirrus aircraft, if there's any chance that are ever a chance that they could be flyable. Again, lastly, on our EBT wall segment, we'll talk about aviation Volocopter. And this tilt rotor from Leonardo, the AWS 609, which is not an EBT. Well, exactly, but really interesting and might be coming to fruition soon with certification. So, Alan, how are you sir? What's the deal with United? Are they trying to be the I feel like they've always been a tertiary commercial airliner, but it seems like they're, they're they're done with that image? I mean, is that how you sort of
1:38look at them? Well, I think at the moment, there may be taking the advantage of the market conditions where airline May, while the airlines got infused with some government cash in the United States, even though the travel industry is still down the opportunity to buy your planes at a lower price, if you're thinking about inflationary pressure, and not, particularly in United States and Europe, it may be a good time to buy an airplane and because Boeing is looking for some cash right now, and Airbus also, you may be they may have negotiated a really good deal for themselves, because you never see the published sale prices that is University published prices and sales, right? So yeah, you always see what the list price is. And they always have a disclaimer, any article you read, well, they probably paid a lot less than what the market says the value of the aircraft is, which is fascinating. Every airplane sells at a different price. It's it's kind of like cars, but worse. I think, really, that's that sounds really surprising. You wouldn't think that as a consumer, you'd think that this was very, because of just how how many costs are involved and just how much I mean God to build an airplane, it's such a such a process and so much engineering, you think it'd be much more fixed and original, then then some Yahoo slinging cars on a used use lot, you know? Yeah, well, you got to remember that they have part sales and support sales on the backside. So that they may have signed long term contracts in terms of parts and engineering support going forward. So there may be some cash and that side of it, obviously, to clear up airplanes off your books right now is a good idea. And to get that,
Can the GE & Safran collaboration produce a viable open-rotor turbine engine, allowing for a greater swept area and increased efficiency? Gogo has successfully tested ground-to-air 5G, recently installed new antennas on ground towers, whereas Starlink's Elon Musk has announced it may take 30 billion USD in investment to keep the company afloat. Archer and Wisk continue their patent battles in court, this time with the tables turning.
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Will Jetoptera's fluidic propulsion system work, and reach new applications of aircraft? SpaceX wants their satellite wifi on planes--can they make the technology work with existing radomes? And, can a 3-winged jumbo jet really deliver on fuel efficiency and lift projections?
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Transcript: EP59 - Jetoptera, 3-Wing Jumbo Jets, SpaceX WiFi & More
0:27Alright, welcome back to the struck aerospace engineering podcast. I'm your co host, Dan Blewett. On today's show, we've got a lot of prototypes to talk through. So my co host, Allen Hall here is gonna kind of pick apart a bunch of these different designs, talk about some of the good things and the bad things. And but we'll start with some news, Airbus, talking about hydrogen starlink, internet, potentially providing fast Wi Fi to planes or something pretty interesting that I hadn't thought about. And then we'll get into some different concepts of trialing jumbo jet, and electric sea plane. And a really interesting what's called a fluidic propulsion system on a flying car concept, as well as one that has the wings, detach and fly home. So again, this would be kind of fun. But let's start with news. Allen. So Airbus has said that the, you know, hydrogen is probably not going to be widely used in planes before 2050. So 30 years off, Does that sound right to you? Well, they're talking about larger aircraft, like in a 328 350 kind of aircraft not being able to switch over to hydrogen, I think that's right. The shorter kilometer type aircraft, maybe propeller driven aircraft will be an easier conversion. And it makes a lot of sense, because there's a lot of short routes in Europe and also in the United States, that could handle a hydrogen aircraft, but it's gonna have to be specifically designed. And that's why Airbus is pushing the back a little bit. I think, early on, there was an impression like we're going to make an Airbus A 350. with hydrogen. That's not where Airbus it. I don't think that's where their intent was. I think eventually, yes. I mean, that's that they did put up some PR about that, right. I mean, we saw the promotional things.
2:10But that that didn't have a timeline, if they're talking about hydrogen aircraft. Yeah, I think they can totally
2:18like an ATR 72, or the dash eight q 400 turboprop aircraft, aircraft would be relatively modifiable into a hydrogen configuration. But after that, when you talk about changing a turbo fan engine to hydrogen, and all the infrastructure involved in aircraft to for the fuel system, that's just going to take a long time, because there's so many, so many pieces to it. Hydrogen is a very small molecule, it leaks everywhere.
2:49Whereas liquid fuel doesn't do the same thing. So all that is all the design elements change, and pressures, and temperatures are all different. Just starting over. It's what's what's what Airbus is saying is like, Look, guys want to start over?
3:05We can't do that overnight. We can't even do it in 10 years. Yeah, so it's definitely they're gonna more all these current planes that use turbo fans to just run their course, essentially. And then, like I said, just start from scratch, like a different designer. I mean, do you see it being like a really wacky, very different looking like futuristic looking? Or is it just gonna be an A 320? That's still pretty normal looking that runs on Hydra? Like, is there a reason that it has to be strange looking to be futuristic and use a different system? Because like, all these renderings You see, like, yeah, so Oh, they always seem very science. fictiony. Right, but right, because it has to be that way, or it might look the same. And 2050, I think the aircraft, essentially, it's gonna look the same,
In this episode we discuss plane discounts - are used Airbus A330s a viable plane in today's market? The Hermeus team is trying to get a Mach 5 plane to market within five years, and is working with the Air Force on a Mach 5 Air Force One - is this realistic? Plus, Vertical Aerospace is going public with a SPAC merger, and has taken on a significant number of orders lately - are they surging ahead in the EVTOL race, despite no flight demonstrations to date?
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TRANSCRIPT EP58 - Hermeus Mach 5 a Reality? Vertical Aerospace Orders Surge and Are Used Planes a Thing?
0:00This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech at Weather Guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.
You're listening to the stroke podcast. I'm Dan Blewett.
0:18I'm Allen Hall.
0:19And here on struck we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection.
Alright, welcome back to the struck aerospace engineering podcast. I'm your co host, Dan Blewett. On today's episode, we're going to talk about used planes, how long do they last? And what's the market like for older Airbus and Boeing aircraft? And is this going to hurt their sales of new aircraft, and our engineering segment we'll talk about Hermeus. They are looking to create a Mach 5 aircraft and they are working in conjunction with the Air Force to develop the next Air Force One Mach addition. So we'll talk about some of the engineering challenges that will come out of them. And then there are a VTOL segment lots on Vertical Aerospace today, which they've been in the news quite a bit. 2 billion worth of orders from Avalon, which entails quite a bit of quite a lot that gets 500 plane orders. American Airlines has also put an order for 250 planes, Virgin Atlantic 150. So there's a lot going on here. And it looks like they're gonna go public with SPAC merger. So lots in the in the news about Vertical Aerospace, and they admittedly have a beautiful looking prototype. I'm into it. But we'll see what Alan has to say. So first, Alan, let's chat about USD plane. So especially popular right now is the Airbus a 330, with smaller airlines who want to save money or startups, and they can be reduced, sometimes up to close to 50% of their sticker price. What are like what's the deal with the a 330? And why is it so it's such an attractive use plane and what what kind of routes can the a 330 fly?
2:07Well, it's a bigger airplane. So it's a twin aisle airplane. So it's it's made for longer haul routes. Similar to what like a triple seven would do. And the but that airplane is much older in terms of when it was developed. The problem with anything as twin owl right now is that there's not a lot of long route flights going on anywhere in the world. Forget about you know, United States, Europe is really hard you still now so there's there's just a depressed market. There's a lot of airplanes, twin, all airplanes that are parked right now. And obviously, the newest ones are going to retain most of their value, but the older ones are gonna have a hard time especially older designs are gonna have a hard time maintaining their value through this just because they're older designs, you can buy a new one for also a discounted or newer one for a discounted price. Why wouldn't I do that? You totally what. And I think a lot of times in these down situations and COVID has been one big downer for the airline industry, airplane models just disappear for the most part or they are they shift where their main focus is they get because they're just less expensive to operate, they can be operated by a lot of airlines that couldn't otherwise afford them. And so you'll you'll see,
Will the Boom Overture supersonic jet take off now that United Airlines has placed a future order? Can Boom succeed where Aerion recently failed? The Boeing MQ-25 drone recently refueled an F-18, a first in aviation. Plus, the Ehang 216 takes flight and Joby announces their new, simple flight controls: are they are a game-changer?
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Transcript - EP57 Boom Supersonic, Boeing MQ-25 Refueling Drone Plus Ehang & Joby EVTOL News
0:00This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech at Weather Guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.
0:14You're listening to the struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett. I'm Allen Hall. And here on strike we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection.
0:30Alright, welcome back to the struck podcast. I'm your co host, Dan Blewett. On today's show, we're going to talk about a new contract between bombard a Learjet and the US Air Force looks like it's worth about almost half a billion dollars, so exciting for them. We'll talk a little bit about more about supersonic jets. So obviously aireon collapse, we'll talk a little bit more about that. There's been some interesting news stories that have come out. And then we'll also talk about boom, announcing a partnership with United united wants to buy a bunch of planes. So we'll see if that comes to fruition. Obviously, that's going to be quite a long game. In our engineering segment, we'll talk about a Boeing mq 25 drone, refueling and FA t fa 18 in flight. So pretty exciting. First time a drone has refueled manned aircraft. And we'll also talk a little bit about airships, and why one maker is betting that passengers will choose comfort over speed. Lastly, in our E VTOL segment, we'll talk about ehang. And some interesting news about flight controls from Joby. So, let's start with mrda. They've got a $464.8 million contract for bombarding a global 6000 aircraft with their Air Force. what's notable about this aircraft, it's just a thing of it as a midsize business jet, which makes the tube section
1:54decently sized. So you can put some humans in it and put equipment in it. So if you're running a special missions aircraft, where you want to put a couple of control centers, in it, monitoring stations, those kind of things, you can, you can fit that all that infrastructure into the aircraft, you have room to do it, there's places to mount all that hardware. And then typically what those aircraft will have is sensors mounted on the top of the aircraft on the fuselage and on the belly to look left or right, up and down and communicate satellite data back to whoever they want to send it to. So there's a you just need a certain amount of size aircraft to do all that and the global 6000 is sort of is really a nice platform for that and that's they've been doing a lot of work in Wichita Learjet, they're on modding and doing military support aircraft for a long time. I mean, I think I can revert back into the early 2000s. They were doing some back then I worked on a couple of those. And I think the the bonus here is that Wichita as a city has been really getting hammered on terms of not having any really new projects going on. Textron has got a couple of derivative projects going on. But in terms of Lear, Jet Lear jets been shrinking and they shut down all production of Lear jet just recently so everybody is left at Lear jet on the west side of town there needs something to work on. And so it's good they earn you know, 400 $500 million project gets some a couple years out in terms of support, and they have a great flight test. And they've always had a great Flight Test Center in Wichita. So all the Bombardier flight test programs,
Bye Aerospace lost their battery supplier, as Oxis Energy went into bankruptcy--what does this mean for Bye? We discuss the Alpha Electro, a trainer from Pipstrel, and the use of electric motors in light sport aircraft. Plus, more new EVTOL designs continue to pour out, including a 40-seat design. But are these prototype renderings just a pipe dream? Or will they ever actually fly?
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Transcript EP56 - Pipistrel Alpha Electro; Battery Woes for Bye Aerospace; Is a 40-Passenger EVTOL Just Science Fiction?
0:00This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech at Weather Guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.
You're listening to the struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett.
0:18I'm Allen Hall.
0:19And here on strike we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection.
Alright, welcome back to the struck aerospace engineering podcast. I'm your co host, Dan Blewett. On today's show, lots to cover a lot of interesting news in the cycle this week. Number one, and we'll chat about Southwest. There's just way too many flight attendants getting getting punched in the face. So we got a we got a chat about it. EVTOL. Startup Archer is seeking to dismiss the trade secrets lawsuit filed by whisk but that doesn't look like it's going anywhere. That seems like it's getting only increasingly messy. We'll talk about mighty fly, which has been cleared to start autonomous cargo drone service. They've gotten some some clearance from the FAA, which will be cool. And then in our engineering Simon was about pipistrel. They've a light sport aircraft, they got an electric motor and about an hour of flight time with an hour charge time. So pretty cool. Some rough news for by aerospace, their battery supplier oxes energy is facing bankruptcy. So we'll talk about the implications there. And then our EVTOL. Segment lots of interesting stuff going on there. We'll talk about some certification issues, which we've talked a bunch about in the past ehang is unveiling a longer range design, and Kel akona has thrown out a 40 passenger concept, which seems straight out of science fiction at this point. And we'll talk a little bit about that as well as some price controls. So start with Southwest isn't really sad Southwest is calling off plans. Well, the plans to sell alcohol in the plains does not make me sad I I'm neutral to it. But there's just been a lot of incidences with unruly passengers. And more recently, Southwest flight attendant was punched in the face loss of teeth. And I mean, things are getting are getting rough. What do you attribute this to?
2:18Alcohol, alcohol, people being upset about masks, reconnecting with the rest of society after being disconnected for a year, all those all those things are playing into it. I recently flew to Las Vegas and I was I kind of like flying to Las Vegas, because it's just it's different places a little more activity. Most airports, the only place I guess there's more places with slot machines. There's a couple places with slot machines in the country. But that has to have the most. And the amount of alcohol there is says hi right You mean that people can leave in the casino gonna go home? For the most part and I think you see it in places where people have been partying in Florida had a rash of it. Some of the islands had a rash of it. I think that's that's just a big problem with alcohol. People being upset about mass people being overly sensitive about stuff and flight attendants worried about their well being which they have every right to it for a two hour flight. You're going to get to a fistfight and punch somebody punch a flight attendant,
In this episode we discuss Airbus Corporate Helicopters (ACH) and their 70% marketshare of the yachting helicopter segment--is this sustainable, and recession-proof? Aerion, who was making headlines with their X2 supersonic corporate jet prototype, has shut down operations. What does this mean for the industry, and should other startups be nervous? And, Allen dives into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF)--will it catch on and prove viable with new legislation proposing tax incentives for airlines that adopt it?
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Episode Transcript: Airbus Corporate Helicopters; Aerion Supersonic Shuts Down; Will Sustainable Aviation Fuel Actually Catch On?
0:00This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech at Weather Guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.
You're listening to the struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett.
0:18I'm Allen Hall.
0:19And here on struck we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection.
Alright, welcome back to the struck aerospace engineering podcast. I'm your co host, Dan Blewett. On today's show, we've got a bunch of Boeing related news, some other news. So first, we'll start with Emirates, sending a warning to Boeing that it might refuse their 777 x shipment. That doesn't meet commitments. We'll talk about Airbus and some other helicopter market and our engineering segment today we'll talk a little bit more about the grounding issue the electrical issues that Boeing's had. And how does the complex fastening riveting? Just the order of operations in manufacturing played a role in that. And we'll also talk about sustainable jet fuels and a potential tax credit that's coming out in potential legislation. Lastly, on our EBT well segment, like a little bit about john Air Mobility as they're trying to get a will they have a partnership now with cae to accelerate design of a flight simulator. And we'll talk about the implications for aireon shutting down. Of course, Ariane is not an EBT well, but a supersonic jet company, now defunct, but this will certainly send a ripples throughout a lot of these throughout the industry, as a lot of these other startup companies, which were well funded like aireon, maybe wonder if they're next. So Alan, let's start here with with Emirates. So they warned Boeing that they were refused 777 x jets, if they fall short of contractual performance commitments, is this a big deal, or is this pretty sort of normal par for the course, it's normal if you're inside company to company, but it's unusual to see that get into the press.
2:06So somebody is getting upset, and those using the press as a leverage point. Because the aircraft manufacturer doesn't want to be in the press about that stuff. And they don't want it to spread that maybe their performance numbers are not being met. And on the triple seven, there's been a lot of conjecture about the performance of the power plants, like what kind of thrust we got, what kind of fuel burn we have, because that's critical to the operation of any airline or freighter company, for that matter of how much fuel we're gonna burn with x kind of load in it, and what's the range and all those kind of things. As you can imagine, if you're the analyst at the airline company, and you're trying to put that into your database and figure out what the cost of an airline ticket is, or what kind of profitability this airplane is going to be what routes you can fly it on, you have nothing to base that on, you just have no data without having that that's like the most crucial piece of data of all of it is engine performance. So you can get a lot of back and forth between buyers and producers of ...
Will the 4-seat Voloconnect EVTOL change everything for Volocopter, as they moving into longer range flight prototypes? Beta Technologies got a big investment round from Fidelity and Amazon-what does this mean for the company's future? Plus, Allen talks electrical grounding; is Boeing in trouble with their latest 737 electrical problems?
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Transcript: EP54 - Voloconnect EVTOL, Beta Technologies Investment, Plus Boeing Grounding Issues
0:00This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech at Weather Guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.
0:14You're listening to the struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett. I'm Allen Hall. And here on struck we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection.
0:33Alright, welcome back to the struck podcast. I'm your co host, Dan Blewett. On today's show, we're gonna catch up a little bit talk about some good growth Coronavirus News with quarantine free flights, from American to Italy. We'll talk a little bit about Airbus and Air France, standing, potentially standing trial over 2009 crash and a potential partnership between Rolls Royce and Boeing. In our engineering segment, we'll talk about grounding today, as it kind of relates to some of the new Boeing 737 issues which that plane remains embattled. And then lastly, bunch of E VTOL. News to catch up with some really interesting stuff from Volocopter. We'll talk battery tech a little bit re lilliam and Beta Technologies. So Alan, how you doing, sir? Hey, great, Dan, we're almost out of COVID in the United States. I know. The mask mandates have been lifted recently and will be lifted at the end of the month. So that's that's a really good sign. I hope our friends, especially our friends in Europe, and in India and South America
1:40can get to this point relatively soon. I know there's just a lot of a lot of Coronavirus going on around the world. And it's really serious in certain parts. So from the aviation community standpoint, it's a big problem.
1:54Travel is still going to be limited for the next several months easily. Yeah, well, and so, so much reporting on American Airlines, they're offering customers flights, quarantine free from JFK to Milan, and and from JFK to Rome. So yeah, basically, customers will have to provide proof of a negative COVID test and then also get a COVID test when they arrive. But after that, they can pretty much go about their merry way, which seems like a you know, big sort of breaking of the seal. Because international travel has been a big No, no, right? It has been it. But it's also really done a lot of damage to the economies that rely on vacation or some business travel. It's just been slammed, totally slammed for more than a year now. And it's it can't go on much longer without really having lasting lasting
2:46consequences. And so it's good that at least where we can do it. We should be starting to open up some of these routes. Obviously, having the COVID test makes infinite sense. Having been vaccinated, I had my second vaccination over the weekend. And that was an experience. But if we can do
3:07it little 16 hours of sickness.
3:09Oh, yeah, it was here. Now. It did. It really did. It really did. I felt like it felt like I was having the flu, every part of my body was achy, and tired. It was amazing how fast that reaction happened. But, hey, I wanted to go through that if I could travel again, or travel more, I've already traveled quite a bit. He already COVID times. But it's it's you know, always like super cautious about wherever you go. And rightly so me in the vaccine is not going to prevent you from catching it necessarily. But it'll just knock the symptoms way down. And hopefully,
The Aska Drive n Fly EVTOL is being billed as an air SUV, something you can own (for just below $800,000) and fly to the city and back. Is this realistic? Boeing was outpaced by Airbus in the Q1 aircraft deliveries--will this trend continue? Plus, we assess some EVTOL market projections out to 2035...are these analysts just guessing?
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In this episode we discuss Boeing's new 737 MAX troubles - the FAA has grounded planes from 16 customers due to an electrical issue. We also dive into helicopter lightning protection and look into the safety records of rotocraft: just how safe are helicopters in 2021, and should we trust them in light of recent high profile crashes the likes of which took the life of Kobe Bryant and Olivier Dassault? Lastly, Wisk has released a white paper on the future of air taxis, using data from surveyed commuters. Does the autonomous air taxi really have a realistic chance of becoming reality? We discuss.
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In this episode we discussed the new Horizon Cavorite X5 EVTOL design, FAA regulations on evacuations and middle seats due to COVID, Heart Aerospace's ES-19 electric turboprop plane, and SPAC news--are the EVTOL companies going public overvalued?
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Lilium, the EVTOL company now going public via SPAC Qell, has unveiled plans for a new 7-seat model of EVTOL aircraft. But, will this heavier model have a chance to fly when no company has demonstrated significant flight time with even a two-seat model? Plus, we discuss recent Boeing 737 MAX orders by Southwest (now confirmed), deliveries of 787s, the Rolls Royce UltraFan jet engine, and a unique EVTOL design called called Talyn that has an autonomous lifting craft separate from the main aircraft.
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Struck Aerospace Engineering Podcast EP50 - Boeing Orders Surge; Rolls Royce UltraFan Plus 7-Seat Lilium EVTOL?
In this special episode, Allen and Dan discuss aerospace engineering and the skills that are more important, relevant and evolving in 2021. As aircraft become more and more complex, work shifts increasingly online and remote, and companies push their employees to be more productive, what does the the modern aerospace engineer look like?
Watch this episode on YouTube here.
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EP49 Transcript - What Skills Do Aerospace Engineers Need in 2021?
you're listening to the struck podcast i'm Dan Blewett i'm Allen Hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection all right welcome back to the struck podcast on today's episode we're going to have a little bit of a different format kind of do a Q&A dialogue with Allen about the state of aerospace engineering and engineering in general talk about jobs and education and some of the different skills that are really important especially now in 2020 as you know the landscape is changing and communication digitally and in person rapidly changing and so we'll kind of dive into that today so Allen let's start um you know you have just recently hired a new engineer to the team so let's start with some of the skills that you value today and then we'll kind of double back um through you know your education and some of those skills that are maybe more valuable when you were younger and uh you know a young blood engineer but let's let's talk about your your new hire and some of the things that you are looking for in an employee it is unique in the aerospace world when you're trying to bring somebody new on and we we are constantly looking for the best engineers we can find and so when we we come across one we tend to grab them and what do i mean by uh really good engineers what i mean by that is they have a couple of different skill sets uh what scott adams would call a talent stack so i want to steal that term but it's a talent stack and that talent stack is uh things that are developed uh usually outside the office place uh and or the office environment uh from what i've seen um it's a combination of one being able to work with others to play well on the playground right and that that you can relate to others that have uh you know have a little bit of fun but also be serious at the same time and uh negotiate right i think part of it's just a negotiation in engineering is a lot of negotiation a lot of times and being able to do that and on top of actually having some engineering skills having the the book knowledge that you need to have an engineering degree and to do it well on top of having the ability to turn a wrench and to understand what it means to turn a wrench or have not be willing be willing to get your hands dirty if needed those those skill sets really combine into what i always feel is a very useful versatile engineering person let me run with one of those for a second so we've talked about boeing a lot on the show and in the past boeing did a lot more of their manufacturing in-house right they produced much more of the entire aircraft themselves now speared air systems those you know huge sections of the fuselage and and and with airbus also not just boeing you know you're essentially getting huge pieces coming together to be assembled so i can imagine that if you're uh an engineer for boeing and now you've got to work with engineers from spirit and everything's got to be kosher everything's got to fit snugly together with these incredible tolerances that's where it seems like it you can't just be the engineer because i know engineers have you know my dad's an engineer they have the reputation sometimes of being you know just they're at their desk and they're really good at what they do but don't talk to them right t...
Ehang is the target of a class action lawsuit, claiming the company has misled shareholders--what will this mean for the Chinese EVTOL company? Boeing reports a significant increase in orders, reaching positive order flow for the first time since 2019. Southwest is nearing an order of 300 737 MAX aircraft, which is more good news for commercial air travel, and Honeywell reveals their new turbogenerator, which could have huge implications for EVTOLs needing to rely on more than just battery power. And speaking of battery power, can Lithium-Sulfur batteries make good on significant energy density promises?
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Transcript: EP48 - Ehang Lawsuit; Boeing Orders Surge; Southwest Ready to Buy More 737 MAX Planes; Honeywell Turbogenerator
you're listening to the struck podcast i'm Dan Blewett i'm Allen Hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection
all right welcome back to the struck podcast i'm your co-host Dan Blewett on today's episode in our new segment we'll talk about Boeing has a net positive on their orders for the first time since 2019 southwest is looking to order 300 737 maxes which obviously ties into both and the code recovery which is great in our engineering segment we'll talk about honeywell they have a new turbo generator that can potentially power a lot of hybrid electric aircraft in the future which also runs on biofuel and then our evtol segment we're going to talk about ehang a new lawsuit was filed today against them we'll talk about the loyal wingman drone which is a boeing project out of australia and lastly we'll talk about lithium sulfur batteries and the implications they might have on the electric aircraft market so alan let's first talk about boeing this is good news they've got net positive orders since first time since 2019 and um it sounds like things are on the up and up yeah well at least in terms of 737 max sales they're going to be uh because there's just going to be a huge backlog of companies that were waiting for the aircraft to get quote unquote re-certified uh for use again so you're gonna see that airplane explode and they had a couple hundred sitting on the tarmac waiting to be sold since 2019 to early 2020 so it's it's there's going to be a huge surge of uh of sales that happen over the next year uh to to get that backlog into service which makes sense right i mean i don't know how our airbus is ever going to keep up with that because you just had those contained contained inventory that had that had been sold that you couldn't release and so now you can release it that's not you can't really compare boeing and airbus in that situation at all that's not fair that's fair yeah so it sounds like in february 2021 they booked 82 aircraft orders 27 kc-46s which was aircraft or air force order uh 14 747 maxes a 747-8 some 787 dreamliners 11 777 x's which went are going to singapore airlines so so yeah all all in all it sounds like you know the recovery is starting to shape up and obviously in the stock market and let's shift to south southwest here like southwest's uh stock is doing very well they're in the low 60s now um you know down i mean they were struggling in the summer right i mean that was a scary time warren buffett sold out a lot of his southwest stock so some pretty big recoveries and of course i'm not sure those are going to match like their revenues obviously but there's a lot of optimism right and so uh and with southwest they're just announced that they're close to an order it's not in the books yet for 300 737 maxes now do you feel like the public is going to understand this because the 737 max is still this embattled scary plane that people are probably rapidly forgetting about but still you know there's that ...
LiquidPiston's unique rotary engines are gaining traction, as the Air Force has awarded them a new contract working in the hybrid propulsion space - what does this mean for the Company and the electric aircraft space? News has surfaced on the Boeing 777 Engine failure case, with the Pratt & Whitney engine suffering metal fatigue in fan blades; Allen explains what this will mean for the company moving forward. We also discuss Rolls Royce moving into the EVTOL space, Joby news, the NASA X-57 Maxwell and the tragic passing of Olivier Dassault.
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Lots of big news recently, as a United Airlines flight from Denver on a Boeing 777 had an engine catch fire; what was to blame? In EVTOL news, Allen and Dan discuss infrastructure of the future EVTOL and ESTOL market. The report by investor and short position holder Wolfpack Research tore Ehang's business apart, claiming lack of ability to produce the aircraft, lax security at their facility, improper revenue projections and more.
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In this episode we discuss Boeing's new pledge to have a commercial aircraft 100% powered by biofuel by 2030, along with Joby's purported plans to go public using a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company). But, Joby Aviation still has many skeptics (including Allen) who don't believe their publicly-made statements about range and battery life will prove accurate in real-world passenger-carrying conditions. Will Joby have the battery power to make good on their claims and succeed in large commercial scale?
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In this episode of the Struck Aerospace Engineering podcast, we discuss the Metro Hop ESTOL, news on Volocopter and SpaceX's plans to "catch" their rockets after flight to re-use them and save money. We also discuss LED panel walls in private jets - could this replace windows? And, Honda's wing facility - how do they engineer some of the systems in these high-tech manufacturing plants?
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Transcript: EP44 - Metro Hop Evtol, Volocopter Plus SpaceX Catching Rockets?
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You are listening to the struc podcast. I'm Dan Blewett I'm Allen hall. And here on struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightening protection.
All right. Welcome back to the struc podcast. On today's episode first in our new segment, we're gonna chat about Honda, opening up a new wing facility. Second Virgin orbit. Finally getting up into orbit. It's exciting. Uh, in our engineering segment, we're gonna talk about space X, trying to catch the rockets on the way down, which is fascinating and sounds just crazy.
But then again, what is it about space travel? Uh, and then we're also gonna talk about a wall LEDs and private jets. It's an interesting new technology report out the, the Robb report. And I'm just wondering if that changes, design, and if that's going to have any negative drawbacks last year, R E V T O L segment, we'll talk about Volvo copter, a couple of new designs, um, from manta and also from Metro hop, which is a.
Electric, uh, it's a short takeoff, um, not necessarily a verdict bill takeoff. So Alan first let's start with Honda. So they're opening up a new facility. You're a big Honda fan. Um, you like their engineering tactics there, you know, they've sort of revolutionized painting their aircraft, but this is a wing facility here.
And, uh, what sticks out to you at this, uh, 83,000 square foot facility that they're bringing to North Carolina?
Well, I think they've reached critical mass. When you open another facility to build wings, that means you're having a pretty good production run. And the part of the facility is also too, uh, handle spare parts.
And I think they have about 170 aircraft in service right now. So you're starting to get that need of servicing a lot of aircraft in a lot of different places. You need to have spare parts on hand to get them out the door relatively quickly to get the airplanes back in service. So. They needed to have that parts supply center essentially on site.
So they can manage that. Uh, cause most of the aircraft companies, when they get to a certain size will start to do that. So it's a really good sign. That Honda one thinks there. Production is going to continue at some reasonable rate. And two, it gets some, uh, more room to, to build wings because they had, they were building wings already in the existing factory, but this gives it a lot more space to do it and building a lot more wings concurrently, and then having the parts distributor ship is even better.
So it just looks, even though we're in the middle of COVID right now, Honda is. Playing the long game has been playing a long game for awhile. And I think it's a good positive sign for Honda, the Honda jet and North Carolina, because it's, it's a big facility, North Carolina, they probably put 200 plus 300 plus million dollars down in North Carolina at this point, plus salaries.
It's a big
deal. So I have a question and I think this gets overlooked because one of the things that I find the most fascinating about the production of anything is production lines and some of these factories and some of these facilities like this one,
GM just unveiled a new EVTOL concept - will it actually work? Bombardier has a high-tech wing factory - what makes it so unique? We also discuss Jaunt Air Mobility's pursuit of a potential hybrid power source and news of Archer partnering with Fiat Chrysler on the EVTOL front.
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EP43 Transcript - Bombardier's Wing Factory; Jaunt Explores Hybrid Fuel System & GM's new EVTOL Concept?
All right. We'll come back to the struck aerospace engineering podcast. I'm your co-host Dan Blewett on today's podcast. First thing we're gonna talk about in the new section, unfortunately is the, the crash of the recent 737 500 aircraft out in Indonesia. So we'll talk a little bit about that. In our second segment, we're going to talk about Bombardier.They have a pretty amazing factory where they produce wings and they're pretty just high-tech in general, Allen's worked there in the past. So we're gonna talk about some of their tech as far as their assembly line goes and all that stuff. And in our EVTOL segment today, we're going to talk about JASA merging it's general aviation and VTL certification.John exploring their fuel system to potentially extend the range, which is something we actually chatted about last week, Archer finding a production partner and GM their their crack at the EVTOL market. And how far it's now lagging behind. So, Allen, let's start with the Boeing seven 37 so that crashed out of Indonesia.It has gotten a lot of press, obviously, cause you know, terrible, terrible accident. But it wasn't in the air very long. And then it seems a plummeted 10,000 feet in less than a minute. And can you just shed some perspective on that? That seems like a really precipitous drop. Yeah. Thth the aircraft was at about 10,000 feet.It had taken off and headed over the, over the water and then just seem to disappear. And there were some reports from some ships nearby that watched the aircraft plummeted to the ocean, and then it satellite that the aircraft was essentially. Full nose, dive right into the water, which indicates really one of two things that the aircraft has, something, something severely wrong with it, then yeah, you can kind of get in those situations, you stall it and push the nose down and continue to push the nose down.And then obviously you will crash that sort of situation. But most aircraft, when they have some power plant problem of some sort, don't go plummeting downward like that. The airplanes are. Can glide. And you would think you would try to set it up to glide, but it just leads you to think that one of two things happen here, either the pilot slash pilots decided that for whatever reason they were disoriented or they were, and maybe in some cases there's been cases of suicide suicides that they just put the nose down and drove it into the water.The other possibility is you have some control flight surface. Anomaly where it just drives a nose down in the pilots. You can't fight it off. As soon as they find the black boxes for that aircraft are going to have a pretty good indication. And then in an hour or two, usually of what the flight parameters were, airspeeds attitudes cockpit.Cockpit voice recorder will tell you a lot. I could have some previous crashes, so there's a lot still to be learned here, but this is not, I think the, one of the first things that happen and every ticket held their breath. As soon as I saw this news was. Is it a, is it a max airplane, right? Is it something to do with the M cast system?You know, weird things happen? It doesn't sound like it's a dash 500. Right. And it was built back in the nineties. Is that26 years old? That plane? Yeah. Okay.So it's been around a long time. I'd also heard it was a former continental aircraft. It came from the United States originally flew l...
Lilium's CEO has publicly declared the desire to go public in the near future - but will it work? Can certification really be attained in just a few years? Elbit creates UAVs and their new models are garnering attention. And, a great article on agile engineering discussed its application to the EVTOL market and whether or not the approach can work. This and more on the Struck Aerospace Engineering Podcast EP42.
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EP42 - Lilium Going Public? Elbit UAVs & Can Agile Engineering Work for the EVTOL Infrastructure?
you're listening to the struck podcast i'm Dan Blewett i'm Allen Hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection
welcome back to the struck podcast i'm your co-host Dan Blewett on today's show uh number one we're going to talk about oxford university has a interesting report out says they can make jet fuel from atmospheric co2 so really interesting development we'll chat a little bit about a little bit about that the cessna citation is now 50 years old coming up this year in 2021 so we'll talk about why that's important with this monumental little plane we'll talk about venus does lightning strike on venus these are good questions um in our engineering segment today we'll talk about while agile engineering uh which is obviously a sort of a mainstay in silicon valley you know move fast develop your prototypes you know the those the saying move fast and break stuff does that really apply to maybe the evtol market and uh air travel in general probably not and then lastly in our evtol segment we're going to talk about Elbit and a bunch about Lilium which a lot of really interesting news uh in the in the news cycle recently with them so al first let's start with oxford university so they said they can use iron to turn carbon dioxide into jet fuel what's your take on this well there's been a number of different ways to make fuels from and you see some of this on television where they've used algae to make hydrocarbons or catalysts like in this oxford study it was a catalyst to create jet fuel so there's a number of different ways to create hydrocarbons the question is what is it cost effective or not and at this point the catalyst method hasn't been very cost effective or has used some rare earth metals like cobalt to do it this uses a obviously a lot cheaper materials to do it but there's still it's an energy-intensive process is it cheaper to do it this way or is it cheaper to refine petroleums to get to the jet fuel it's going to take time on both sides i know there's a big push in europe to make quote-unquote cleaner fuels this wouldn't necessarily be cleaner but the carbon dioxide that goes into it is the carbon dioxide comes out of it so i guess it's carbon dioxide neutral if that's an advantage but what's the cost right airlines spend so much money on fuel right now if you doubled or tripled that you would put airlines out of business a number of them would go out of business can't afford it so there's a lot of more work to do there it it is a good sign but i always when i see these i always always think all right this got to get some scale to it and see if you can drive down the cost just like tesla's doing on like the gigafactory for the for the batteries they're going to drive down the cost we're going to produce them in massive scales this hasn't been scaled up yet they're still in the laboratory so you're at least five to ten years away from having something real and then another couple of years away before the certification authorities would even let you use it uh so yeah so it'd be it would take a while and is that going to be chased out of the equation by electric power by hydrogen obviously we talked a bunch about hydrogen fuel cell technol...
In this episode of the Struck Aerospace engineering podcast, we discuss the design of Pratt & Whitney GTF geared turbofan engines - they're incredibly fuel efficient--what makes them different? We also discuss the EPA's new emissions rules for commercial and large business aircraft, which will take effect for new designs in 2020 and others in 2028. We also discuss EASA being urged by families to NOT return the Boeing 737 MAX to service just yet, FAA Drone ID Rules, a new Airbus helicopter drone and more.
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Transcript EP41 - Pratt and Whitney GTF Engines, EPA Aircraft Emissions Standards, & Will EASA Let the 737 MAX Fly?
All right. Welcome back to the struck podcast. I'm your co-host Dan Blewett. On today's episode. We're going to cover first in our new section. Uh, families are urging. Yassa not yet to approve the seven 37 max, even though it seems like a return to air worthiness is, uh, obviously right up upon the European union, the seven 37 is back in service in the U S but families are still urging.So we'll talk, uh, talk a little bit about that today. Uh, the EPA is finalizing the first ever airplane emissions rules, which sounds like a good thing on the surface. Uh, but Allen's take here, I think is, uh, A little bit, not surprising, but it's an insider's take. And so we'll chat a little bit about why, um, EPA emissions rules for airplanes might be a little misleading and maybe not be the best thing.Uh, all things considered and our engineering segment. We're gonna talk about Pratt and Whitney engines. Um, there's a new factory North Carolina. And, uh, they're GTF engines have gotten really high, high marks on reliability. So we'll chat about some of the technology there. And lastly, on our EBTL segment, we're going to talk about the new FAA drone ID rules.So these aren't, these are obviously EVTOLs, but not in the traditional sense that we talk about in most of our episodes, but this is a really interesting thing. And it's going to be important as the drone, uh, capacity increases in the airways. And lastly, the Airbus drone VSR700, uh, I was getting pretty close to landing on Navy ships, which is a, apparently a pretty interesting feat of engineering.So Alan, let's start with EASA and these families over in Europe who are urging, um, the certification organization to, um, delay the re-entry of the 737 max. So is this. Pretty typical after a crashes like these after a safety situation like this, or is this, um, is it atypical more and more common? I would say that the families take more legal steps against the aircraft companies and against the certification authorities to speak in saying that, uh, they have a say in the certification process and, and are, are trying to push additional.What they would believe to be additional safety measures onto the aircraft? Uh, the one in particular is they would like to see a third angle of attack sensor used on the 737. The latest update from all the safety reviews is that they've added a second AOA or the cross comparing the AOS that they have on the aircraft right now.So that if there's some dispute one's not working correctly, it's going to flag it and it's going to. Therefore disengaging them caste system, the updated and caste system, but they think they ought to have a third one there as a compare for the other two. And, um, there's regulations set up about that and about the reliability of that system and what the failure modes are.And. The families just disagree now, will that stop EASA from moving forward? I don't think so. Uh, unless there was some political reasons to use the families in, in leverage that to delay the start of the 737 max in Europe, which they could clearly do. But I think on the certification side, I don't.
The United States Senate released their scathing report on Boeing - but was it justified? Allen weighs in on the blame Boeing continues to take and whether or not Senate staffers should be named in these reports. Joby Aviation had its EVTOL design approved by the Air Force - is this a big deal? And, is hydrogen power-- a la the HY4 aircraft that just completed a successful demonstration -- gaining traction?
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EP41 Transcript - Hydrogen HY4 Aircraft Takes Flight; Joby Approved by USAF, and The Problem with the Senate Report on Boeing
Welcome back to the struck podcast. These episodes we're going to cover in our first section, a bunch of stuff on Boeing. Obviously the Senate, uh, just released their big report, a rather scathing report on some FAA and Boeing. Perhaps improprieties. So we'll talk a bunch about that today in our second segment about engineering, we're going to chat about the H Y four a, which is a vehicle that just made its first flight over in Slovenia.It's a hydrogen fuel cell powered hybrid electric vehicle or aircraft. So we'll talk about that in our section. Well, you've got a couple of good things, a little bit on Joby being approved by the air force, an update on and John air mobility, and also some interesting news about LA. Creating a partnership for urban air mobility to do some planning about how that might come about in Los Angeles.So, Allen first thing here, obviously the Senate came out with a pretty big report and a very far reaching as well and wagging their fingers some more at Boeing who. Well, as we were just talking about off-camera I can't stay, I can't stay out of the news. Um, but this is raising questions about and propriety and reaction time and all this different stuff.But, um, what are the key takeaways for you that are really raising eyebrows? Cause you know, there's a bunch,well, the report. Covers so much territory involving the FAA and some part Boeing, some part other airlines, uh, uh, not necessarily affiliated with Boeing and sense and Southwest airlines, because Southwest is a big user of.Sevens obviously. Yeah, but it just seems like any time that there's some issue involving the FAA, that didn't go the way that a particularly employee wanted to go, that that ended up in this report. So it's like, uh, uh, beans of kicking the FAA around, uh, from a congressional side and it did it. It doesn't really have a point.It's just seems like there's just a series of, uh, of, um, disgruntled employees slash, um, uh, maybe some poor performance on some, or maybe, maybe there are some employees looking the other way at the FAA for particular aspects, uh, that just get cumulated and, and. Stuck in a report and an issue to as how you look, how bad the FAA is.That is not, uh, a valid exercise. It doesn't help anybody. There's there's no one that's going to read this and go, Oh yeah, well we need a correct ABC. That's not, what's going to happen here. And in fact, during some part of the report has to deal with, uh, uh, congressional subpoenas and employees of the FAA slash DOD department of transportation.Not showing up for, or not responding to the subpoenas and maybe there's some blackballing or, uh, obfuscation that's going on here. That's that is just that's. First of all, it's mind reading. And, and second of all, it's not backed by facts. And so you would hope that a Senate report, would it be backed by a lot of facts?And if you ever read a lot of center reports, you realize there's just hardly any facts. And most of them that a lot of it is sort of a mind reading event, uh, put together by staffers. So there's, there's a lot, if you read through this report and it is extremely long and it lists all kinds of people. In it, uh, that it makes accusatory claims about a lot of p...
The Blade helicopter rental company is eyeing the EVTOL market, Boeing finds new 787 fuselage quality problems and NASA reaches new milestones with its X-59 wing design.
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Transcript: EP39 - Blade Entering the EVTOL Market; Boeing 787 Fuselage Issues and NASA X-59 Milestones
All right, welcome back to the struck podcast. I'm your co-host Dan Blewett on today's show. We've got a good docket of topics. Number one, we're going to talk about the eco pulse hybrid designs. Uh, interesting new aircraft. And we'll talk about some of that. Uh, NASA supersonic X-59 has a wing, a wing milestone.
So some, uh, good work from NASA. And we'll chat a little about that. And then obviously Virgin galactic, um, still big and has his hands in lots of different industries, but we're going to chat a little bit about their space tourism play in their headache. Concerning, but, um, sit still safe, sort of a board as part of the recent, one of the recent test flights in our engineering segment, we're going to talk about the Boeing 787, continuing to have fuselage issues.
Some new slight defects have been detected. And we're going to chat a little bit about the way carbon fiber and other materials are machine and manufactured and how, just how difficult it is to get some of these really high tolerance parts built. Right. And then lastly, we're going to chat about blade, which is a helicopter, a rental service and their potential entrance into the EVTOL market.
So, Allen, how are things going? We're closing on the holidays.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it's going to snow first big grill, snow storm, or the season is happening now, which means all our aerospace engineering companies in the Northeast are preparing for the worst, but that's okay. You know, it's part of this seasonal shift and we're getting close to the holidays, Christmas and new year and Hanukkah and everything's starting.
So that's exciting.
Dan: Yeah. It's um, well it's been currently snowing and. It's kind of half raining most of the day today. So it's definitely feeling Christmas-y that's for sure. So jumping into it today, what is, uh, striking to you about this eco pulse distributed propulsion hybrid aircraft it's coming out of France?
Um, this is news from to lose. Um, but tell us a little bit about what this propulsion system is and what do you think the long-term ramifications are?
Allen Hall: Well, it's first off, it's being funded by the French government. And it is essentially a consortium of French companies like, uh, saffron that makes electric motors and it is, it'd be very similar to what happened to the United States when there's government funding for a project where you're trying to.
Boost the industry and get to the next steps. Uh, so the airplane itself, I don't know if the airplane's all that important. Maybe it is in a longer scheme of things, as much as developing the system components and the products that they can offer worldwide in which. They are totally going to do so think of it as a, as a government funded jobs program a little bit, but also a technology development program that gives those companies resources.
So the, the company names, it was dark, soft run and Airbus, um, tied in with w what was it? Core act, a civil aviation resource council in France to tie them all together and see where they can come up with an aircraft. It will be a demonstrator more than likely just to. Get something out there, but I know there's, if you, if I'm working a lot of different aircraft programs concurrently right now, and you hear those names pop up more frequently in the last six months, uh, for electric propulsion systems.
So, you know, that, that, that funding, that the government France is actually going somewhere there actually,
In this episode we discuss the life of test pilot Chuck Yeager, the trust issues that might surround the Boeing 737 Max and how the public will get past them, plus Uber Elevate's sale to Joby.
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EP38 Transcript - Chuck Yeager, Uber Elevate Sold to Joby Aviation & Boeing 737 Max Trust Issues
welcome back to the struck podcast I'm your co-host Dan Blewett and on today's show we've got a couple of major topics not as many uh scatter shot ones today but number one we're gonna chat about Chuck Yeager the uh the legendary pilot has passed away so i know Allen's got a a lot a lot to say about his legacy in our engineering segment we'll talk about the 737 max and specifically how consumers can get confidence back in this plane because i think it's really interesting most of us who are not aviation lifers aerospace you know engineers we don't really know what happens with the faa i mean we've heard on one hand this is a like the most technologically amazing plane like it's one of the best planes ever created but then it's crashed twice and it's been this villain of the story so we'll talk about how those two pieces get married and how people get back uh flying in the 737 max with confidence and lastly we'll talk about uber elevate who we did chat about last week and they were sold to gob aviation uh right after we had recorded that show so we're going to talk about uber and joby and that whole outlook so alan number one let's talk about chuck yeager so who was chuck yeager chuck yeager is probably the the most identifiable recognizable test pilot in the world he's a legend yeah yeah there's really two i think uh and on the soviet side it's trying to be yuri gagarin just because flying into space that's a big name is the test pilot and on the american side it tends to be chuck yeager there's a couple others in america that people could rattle off if you're in aviation but chicken was always the one and a lot of it had to do with the movie that was made based upon the book the right stuff uh that tom wolf wrote years and years ago back in the 80s and the thing about chuck egger and if if you're interested in aviation you should read chuck yeager's book the autobiography because it explains a lot about his his life uh he came from i believe it's west virginia if i remember correctly as a kid really young enlisted wanted to fly ended up in world war ii shooting down some enemy aircraft got shot down in france uh hid out in france him and another pilot i think he carried another injured pilot across the pyrenees mountains and if you've ever been to the pyrenees mountains you know because he had to get spain but if you've ever been to the pyrenees mountains or seen the pyrenees mountain it's like it's like the rockies in the united states those mountains are huge and it's cold up there and there's snow on them and they were evading uh german soldiers all the way to get to spain and once he got back into spain he kind of slipped back to the united states and then started flying again in combat and then after the war he ended up working in ohio at dayton ohio for a little while and then getting sent to edwards air force base or air base i guess at the time and uh becoming a test pilot obviously his most recognizable uh claim to fame was break the first person to break the sound barrier back in 1947 with the bell x1 which was essentially a rocket ship with wings and it was full of rocket motors and the and he did it while he had a couple of busted ribs and a banged up shoulder because he had he had fallen off a horse the night before uh wow yeah so he's sort of crazy he's not the biggest physical guy at the time a lot of touch pilots you couldn't it's like astronauts at the time they're not the tallest people you see in the world t...
In the episode we discuss Uber Elevate - where is it going, exactly? We talk about advances in propeller technology and ways wasps are impacting plane safety down in Australia, and what there is to be done about it.
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EP37 - Propeller Blade Advances, Uber Elevate & Animal Control at the Airport
All right. Welcome back to the podcast. On today today's episode, we are going to cover a couple of really interesting animal related, uh, airport issues. Number one, a poor Brown bear got struck by a seven 37. Um, so we'll talk about that wasps in Australia. Have been actually a wreaking havoc also on seven 30 sevens in their pitot tubes.
And we'll also talk about a lightning strike, uh, that prompted a New Zealand air, um, aircraft to divert. So, you know, keeping up with some recent, uh, lightning strike news and our engineering segment, we're going to chat about some interesting aerodynamics on, uh, on props and, uh, some aerodynamic stuff there.
We're going to talk about a interesting new bell rotor, uh, tail rotor concept. And lastly, in our, uh, EVTOL segment. Uh, I know Allen has some pretty interesting thoughts on Uber elevate and just the scope and the, uh, the future of their business, because there's a lot of stuff that seems very. Nebulous. And it's starting to sound a little bit like maybe some, uh, as Scott Galloway, the business, um, professor would say yoga Babel.
So Allen let's first talk about this, uh, bear strike. So that seems a really hard, how did the bear get on the runway, but also just really sad bears are super cool. Yeah, well, it's up in Alaska and they had a Brown bear and a Cub crossing the runway as a seven 37 was landing. And there's really not much to do about it.
And it, it acted like the pilot didn't even see it obviously, or w. What had gone around and it's an occasion, you see things about aircraft striking deer, right? So a deer is a slightly taller animal, tends to be, and aircraft hit those two is there's a lot of, um, in today's world, there's a lot of periphery fences around airports because of nine 11.
So there's not as much wildlife walking around on runways, but still wildlife gets in. And, and if the bears going from point a to point B and the run winds in the way, they're going to walk across it. And then this particular case, it just hit the inlet on the engine. And Dan, they then have the inlet and obviously it tilled the bear, which is just a bad situation.
So I'm sure everybody just feels horrible about the whole thing that I'm sure it passengers saw it. It just doesn't. This is nothing good about it, right? Yeah. Well, they said that Cub was on, on harmed. Yeah, not a poor guy, but poor gal mama bear. Yeah. I it's terrible. I've seen cattle on runways, but it happened here locally.
One time there was a cow or cattle, cattle had gotten loose and, uh, th the local airport didn't have a surrounding periphery fence at the time. So there's cattle on the runway. Thank goodness and aircraft. Wasn't trying to land because that would have been a real mess. But you just gotta be aware of that.
And runways are not like any different than a road and you see deer on the road and there's drone runway. And then in Alaska, there's bear on the runway and Canadian geese. Right. We all know about the airplane landed in the river, right? So aircraft around wildlife, a lot more than you think. I think if you actually go look at the number of interactions between aircraft running into some animal on the runway, it's, it's a lot, it's a lot more than you think it would be.
So everybody's got to keep their eyes open. I think Alaska is one of those places where you probably have to do it a lot more because it's just a lot. More wilderness there then you'd say and Newar...
The Boeing 737 is back in the US - approved for flight and airworthiness. What does this mean for the company? We discuss the BMW flying wingsuit--an impressive piece of skydiving technology. We dive into wing aerodynamics, shapes and materials and talk through Wisk's new partnership with NASA on EVTOL use.
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Transcript: Struck Aerospace Engineering Podcast EP36 - Boeing 737 Max Returns; Wisk Partners with NASA; Wing Shape & Aerodynamics
All right. Welcome back. This is the struck podcast, episode 36. Uh, in today's episode, we're going to cover. A recent lightening puncture, um, in a ups seven 47 Radome. So we'll talk a little bit about that. Uh, Korea has a fun new offering where you can basically get in a plane and go nowhere and come back.
So we're going to talk about the state of the airline industry. A lot of Boeing, 737 max news. Uh, obviously the FAA. Granted it's a airworthiness certificate. So we're gonna talk about that. And also some of the countries that are still not allowing the Boeing seven 37 max to fly in our engineering segment, we're gonna talk about the BMW electric powered flying wingsuit, just fascinating.
And we're gonna talk about the sweep of wings, carbon fiber, reinforced plastic, and some other, uh, Wing shape, uh, considerations. And then lastly, in our EBTL segment, we're gonna talk about whisk and NASA and a little bit of, um, collaboration, uh, between them recently. So Alan, number one, Ups had a radon punctured, huh?
Yeah, they did. The FAA had an incident noticed, uh, over the weekend that said a seven 47 that had departed from what I can tell departed Portland, Oregon, and landed up in Alaska and Anchorage had a radon. Puncture right in the nose. And that's the only damage description they had, which was odd and, uh, did a little digging on it to see if there was any photos of course, landing in Anchorage, Alaska on a ups in the middle of the nighttime is there's no one out there to take a picture of it.
With that radon will end up in some repair facility somewhere across the United States, more slightly. And, uh, it's a, it's an unusual thing. She don't, we hear a lot about, uh, radon damage to seven 47 is that must occur. But that radon was ancient in terms of this design, it was designed back in the seventies.
And it uses metal bars for lightening protection, which are pretty standard Boeing fare. And the, the only issue is the sort of the, the front part of that radon was really doesn't have any lightning protection on it at all. So it would seem theoretically possible. You're going to get a puncture in it every once in a while, but it's just kind of the wrong time of year, too.
It's November. There's not a lot of thunderstorms going on. Maybe there are in the Northwest, uh, but. Evidently took a puncture. So it was a significant enough that the FAA or somebody had reported it. Well, that's key piece of news. Yeah. Well talk about that a little more. So obviously, like I've seen more and more photos of radon punctures, and they seem insane that like this smooth tip of your airplane can just suddenly have a smashed in open hole on it.
And the plane is just fine. I mean, how has that aerodynamically? Okay, well, that's a really interesting question because we went through. A couple of different scenarios with that recently of what happens when there's a hole in a, in a nose radon, because a lightning strike can cause that, but there are a number of other causes for it.
Some sort of structural issue, like a bird strike potentially. Yeah. Or a bird, a bird coming right through the radon, which is not uncommon to go right through anatomy. Pretty. Massive Holsey and Missy and smelly too. Yeah, it doesn't smell good either.
In this episode of the Struck Aerospace Engineering Podcast, we discuss how the GAO is talking with Boeing about their aging workforce - half of Boeing FAA delegates will be of retirement age in just 5 years, which is worrisome. The Eurocopter X3 broke the speed record for a helicopter, and is an impressive machine. We discuss the Beta Technologies EVTOL making an important flight, Eviation getting a new partner on composite doors plus much more on this episode.
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Transcript: EP35 - Boeing vs GAO, Eviation Partners on Composites; Eurocopter X3 Breaks Helicopter Speed Record
This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightening Tech. At Weather Guard, we support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.
You are listening to the struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett. I'm Allen Hall. And here on struck, we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightening protection.
All right. Welcome back to the struck aerospace engineering podcast on today's episode. In our new segment, we're gonna talk about easy jet. There was a lightning strike that caused that flight to be diverted kind of scary, but everyone was okay. Secondly, we're talking about the FAA did GAO here in the U S has talked about that.
A lot of, uh, engineers are going to be hitting retirement age pretty soon, and there's some key training and competency gaps that need to be addressed. It's a really interesting topic right there. Uh, we're going to chat a little bit about Boeing and some of their UV technology and other technologies they've developed to help clean airplanes.
Obviously COVID is still affecting a lot of the way we travel. And speaking of the way COVID is affecting travel. Australia has some new protocols potentially, uh, in place soon that will keep, uh, honestly passengers pretty happy, but also make screening a lot easier and safer potentially in our engineering segment.
We're going to talk about the, uh, the Eurocopter X3, which has set a new speed record for a helicopter and also the supersonic business jet that just went through wind tunnel testing. And then lastly, in our EVTOL segment, we're going to talk about Eviation, uh, getting a partner for composite doors and lastly, the Beta Technologies EVTOL and a flight test they recently completed.
So Allen let's talk first with some lightning news, easy jet. They think they got struck by lightning. But take us through that scenario. What happened? Well, there's, there's, there's a lot happening in this particular one. So it's flying from, uh, essentially Scotland down to Southern England. And there was a lightning strike on the communication tower down and in Bristol.
And what happens in a lot of cases, this is not a normal, but when lightning strikes the airport, you can lose airport lighting, which is a big deal, or you can lose communication tower. And when you lose communication to the aircraft that are coming in to the airport, uh, you. You lose control of traffic.
So you, you probably will end up diverting somewhere, which is what happened. They ended up diverting to Birmingham and then being bust the bus down at night time to where they needed to go. So a lot of the airports though have lightning protection because this is not infrequent and a lot of the gear.
Uh, communications gear and, uh, anything that may be susceptible to lightning strike has protection in it. So it makes you think something happened, uh, loss of power loss piece of damaged equipment, which just makes for a fun flight because you're not expecting that to happen. If you know, usually aircraft gets struck not, not the airport, but the airport gets struck in this case.
It made it for a little bit of an adventure. So bigger story here.
Joby Aviation has released numerous patents, giving a glimpse into their technology. Bye Aerospace partners with Korean company Aerospace9 in what looks like a very lucrative deal. Spirit Aerosystems revealed Q3 results, and we discuss the future of the Airbus A380, which one airline recently has phased out of commercial use.
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Transcript EP34 - Is the Airbus A380 Going Away? Bye Aerospace Gets Key Partnership & Joby Aviation Releases Patents
You're listening to the struck podcast i'm Dan Blewett i'm Allen Hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection all right welcome back to the struck podcast this is episode 34 and on today's show we've got some news some engineering and some evtol action for you today so number one we're gonna chat about the A380 one of airbus's largest offerings uh kind of being phased out it sounds like a recent incident with an a320 that was not down per se not almost down i don't think it was really almost down but it sounds like the pilots were very heavily effective which put them in a really scary situation uh by fumes coming in the cockpit which is crazy also we're going to chat a little bit about spirit era systems third quarter results and some optimism from their leadership in our engineering segment we're going to talk about by aerospace they've got an investment from a Korean company which sounds promising and lastly in the evtol segment we'll chat about Joby who has recently filed a bunch of patents which is starting to shed some light on some other technology so Allen first let's start with the a380 so Hi-fly which is one of only apparently 15 companies that ever leased or operated uh the a380 because they're such a darn big aircraft but they said they're planning to phase this out they've done three years of of leasing it and now they're gonna kind of move forward and swap their a380s for more a330s so is this a trend that you expect to continue yeah that's why the 747 has gone away also and that in the triple 7's having a little bit of struggle on the new development side is four engine airplanes and large uh multi-aisle airplanes are going away because international travel has gone to zero and it doesn't make any sense to have four engines anymore and as we there's some huge consolidation in the industry the a380 is is and it seems hard to believe because it hasn't been around all that long but the a380 it's going away and it'd be in a couple of years you won't be able to see it really maybe besides the museum and it's hard to think about the evolution of aircraft because we there's some aircraft that have been around so long that you just come ubiquitous that you could say 747 to pretty much anybody in the planet and they even know what you're talking about but they're in that same cycle there's been all kinds of airplanes that have come and gone and it takes a very unique aircraft to last tens and twenties and thirty year spans it just doesn't happen all that often so uh it is special that some of these airplanes have lived as long as they have and been in service as long as they have the a380 really wasn't one of them it was pushing a particular segment of the aircraft market the the large volume traffic market the upper end of the marketplace for the most part uh because you're burning a bunch of fuel and it just never and long haul too so it just didn't really make any sense after a while and and even though fuel prices are low right now it just there's just not a customer base for it it just really isn't and i think you'll see a lot of other airplanes kind of get stuck in that same mold anything that is really dedicated international travel routes is going to have problems for the next year or two until things s...
In this episode, we discuss some of the interesting ways airlines are hustling to make a dollar, including selling bar carts...Volocopter announced an interesting partnership with Japan Airlines--will it make sense for the EVTOL company? We talk about Hexcel PEKK composite, an electrically conductive material that has some fascinating technology behind it. Plus Jaunt Air Mobility 's road to certification and is the F-117 Nighthawk back in business!? and many more topics on this wide-ranging episode.
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EP33 - Airlines Hustle to Make a Buck; Volocopter Partners with Japan Airlines; Hexcel PEKK Composite Tech; F-117s Back in Service?
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Boeing is discussing selling off their Seattle HQ as the company ponders what the workplace looks like in the future. We discuss more lessons learned from the flight of the Barn Owl and the Airbus Albatross project, a new demonstrator with flapping wings. FedEx is testing drones in Memphis to help workers become more efficient, and Ampaire makes a long flight in their all-electric aircraft. Check out the video of FedEx's drones here and the Airbus Albatross here.
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Transcript EP32 - Will Boeing Sell Their Seattle HQ? Airbus Albatross Project; FedEx Tests Drones at the Airport & Ampaire Makes Important Flight
Welcome back to the Struck podcast, episode 32. And in today's episode, in our new segment, we're going to chat about this potential Jetpack person flying at 6,000 feet above a LA, which is seemingly unconfirmed and also terrifying. Uh, and also we're going to talk a little bit about Boeing, uh, potentially selling one of their HQs and considering some mobile.
Options. So as you know, as everyone is rethinking what office life looks like in our engineering segment, we are going to talk a lot about birds. There's an interesting study on bird flight with the barn owl, also the air, uh, the Airbus albatross, which has actually, uh, segmented wings, if that's the right term for it, but they sort of flap.
So really interesting demonstrators technology there. And then lastly, in our electric tech segment, we're going to chat about drones being used at the airport, which is a pretty cool idea. And then the Ampaire. So their EEL, uh, aircraft has made some pretty impressive, uh, long haul flights. Well, maybe not a long haul, but some pretty impressive distance flights recently, uh, as in what they call the most, maybe commercially relevant, uh, electric aircraft at the moment.
So. Allen, let's start with what is the deal with this? A jet pack. Yeah, I don't know. Isn't it crazy that we've had now two sightings from airplanes from multiple aircraft coming into lax, where they see what looks or appears to be a guy on it and a Jetpack cause the, the, the, the feedback to the control towers and the ground crews are.
It looks like a guy in a jet pack. So in a pilot's eyes, you know, think about pilots is they usually have pretty good eyes. That's one of the criteria to fly an airplane. So, uh, I would say that they're probably telling you the truth that they actually seen this guy on a jet pack. Now, uh, the, uh, in this, uh, mobile phone dominated world where we're taking video of.
All kinds of things. It's weird that nobody has posted any video, or I haven't seen any video on TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat. And you know, there's just no video of this thing occurring. And it seems like if it's, if it's some sort of prank, there'll be a ton of video online about it that, uh, would get picked up somewhere.
But we don't have that either. So there's a lot of curiosity about it because. If it ever got to a situation where it ran into an airplane, uh, that result would not be good. And if it is a real person, now there's been conjecture that it's a dummy attached to a jet pack or some sort of, um, I've even heard some discussion about being a helium filled thing that just floats around.
Maybe it is maybe it isn't who knows, but it just don't. Want to be playing around airports. That's one of the sort of basic fundamental rules around airports is don't put things in the air where an airplane can run into them because you're risking a lot of people's lives for some nonsense that you want to go pull off.
Uh, but do you think it's a real jet pack? Dan D well, you're reading this article from NBC news. Uh, so David May, may man is the CEO of Jetpack Aviation in LA. And he said,
The Kittyhawk Heaviside EVTOL aircraft is impressive, and has been flying recently and making headlines. But with an engineering team that is very small, will they actually have the staff to get it to market? Blue Force Technologies is a leader in carbon fiber, and they have some techniques that seem to be pushing the industry to new limits. We also discuss the VoltAero Cassio hybrid electric aircraft, Airbus deliveries surging and a commercial airliner caught in a terrible hailstorm that shattered the windshield.
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Transcript: EP31 - Will the Kittyhawk Heaviside EVTOL Actually Reach the Market? Plus Blue Force Composites New Carbon Fiber Molding Techniques
You're listening to the struck podcast I'm Dan Blewett I'm Allen hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection all right welcome back to the struck podcast this is episode 31. on today's show in our news segment we're going to chat a little bit about airbus so they've got uh an increase in deliveries this past month month which is uh great to see number two a really scary moment a hail storm uh cracked a windshield of a recent flight and we're gonna talk a little bit about covet and the odds of getting it uh on a flight so it seems like it's actually quite low which i think all of us or a few of us would have predicted many many months ago when we're you know still in the grips of the uncertainty of it all but some new data is pretty interesting suggesting that you're pretty unlikely to catch on a flight in our engineering segment we'll talk about blue force composites some of the interesting work that blue force technologies is doing and we're going to talk about the VoltAero Cassio which is a quirky hybrid electric aircraft and then lastly in our EVTOL segment we're going to talk about the Kittyhawk Heaviside which is flying and they're kind of making some waves recently but I think Allen's got some strong views here on the overall scope of the EVTOL certification process and whether some of these companies are actually going to make it to the finish line so Allen let's start with airbus deliveries are up this makes you excited i'm sure yeah it's good to see some airplanes being delivered for once uh airbus sold about 57 airplanes in september uh i'm sure exactly 57 - 57 it's an easy number to remember uh that they're probably clinking the shame champagne glasses and toulouse because that is a decent number that's the highest number it's been all year and i think they're hoping that it continues to rise uh that's in comparison to Boeing's 11 aircraft sold in september so there's a five to one difference between Boeing and airbus which i'm sure makes Toulouse excited to hear that uh but it does i think that the bigger picture here is that aircraft sales and deliveries are not so much sales but deliveries are starting to happen and there's a small but growing demand for aircraft i think that will continue as we start to come on the back side of COVID even though it doesn't feel like it i think uh for the most part there is a big uh positive change in covet and with vaccines coming relatively soon i think we're gonna be looking forward and hopefully some of these airlines are looking forward to and start picking up some airplanes because when the demand hits people will gonna go on vacation i i don't know how they're not gonna go on vacation after being stuck in their homes for literally a year i think there's gonna be a lot of travel once everybody feels comfortable they're gonna get out and they're gonna spend some money and the airlines want to be ready for that yeah well it says the bulk of the delivery so 43 of the 57 were a320s which is narrow body yep but question for you i know very little about ...
We talked about Southwest CEO Gary Kelly's letter to employees and the Cyclogyro EVTOL's Crazy Design - can it work? We also discussed Boeing 747 fuel tank ignition problems, the Airbus ACJ TwoTwenty, Learjet 75 Liberty and much more.
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Full Transcript: EP30 - Cyclogyro EVTOL's Crazy Design; Boeing 747 Fuel Tank Ignition Warning; Airbus ACJ TwoTwenty vs Learjet 75 Liberty & More
you're listening to the struck podcast i'm Dan Blewett i'm Allen hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection all right welcome back this is the struck podcast episode 3-0 the big 30. so moving right along here in today's episode we've got a bunch of different topics number one we're gonna talk a little bit about southwest airlines Gary Kelly the ceo released a letter to his employees recently just talking about the trouble that the company is in so we'll chat a little bit about that lots of boeing news this week uh first uh we'll talk about how boeing's consolidating dreamliner production in south carolina we're also going to chat a little bit about a bird strike actually in a chinese jet fighter which caused the plane to crash and he had to eject so we'll chat a little bit about that uh we'll also talk go back to boeing with the 747 and 767 receiving an faa warning about fuel tank ignition and what the implications might be there lastly we're going to talk about two different business jets the learjet liberty 75 and the airbus acj220 uh pretty interesting to kind of compare and contrast some of the the uh marketing ideas i guess uh in the upgrades of these two jets and then lastly in our evtol segment we'll chat about the cyclogyro one of the more bizarre designs that we've talked about here on the show and uh we'll chat also a little bit about volocopter and some other plans for the olympics so alan let's talk about southwest probably your favorite airline right i it is i would say it's mine but i had some i had a period of rough flights with them not physically rough but just delays delays and like they were telling me that my flight was delayed and then they undelayed it and it was like physically impossible to make the flight this happened three times something like that so anyway but i do respect southwest they've always had good leadership it seems like they are still doing great things as far as you know their leadership Gary Kelly is reducing his own salary to zero through the end of next year and he's asked for a 10 to 20 pay cut from many in leadership and he's trying to avoid layoffs so does this come as a surprise to you in general i mean do you think things are getting better or what's what's your take here well i don't think airline flights have really increased in terms of number of passengers very much over the last couple of months and with the prognosis that we are probably three months out right now between two and three months out from vaccinations and really protecting the most vulnerable not you know people like us which are pretty healthy for the most part are not going to get vaccinated first we're going to be probably last in line so it's going to you know drag out the airline thing i everybody is still there's still a lot of contention about whether it's safe to travel on an airplane and i think it's all about risk and reward and there everything we do today and everything you do every day is full of risk and we have to evaluate risk i do think one of the features of americans in general not to say we're not much different than other countries but i think there's this part of america which is uh we take risks and we do we risk freedoms larger than we do uh health consequences you see it all the time america america yeah well it just it just sort of sort...
In this episode we discussed the GE9X jet engine and its increased power output and status as the largest jet turbine engine in the world. Boeing announced publicly that they thing hydrogen powered commercial airliners will be much more difficult than previously thought, and Allen weighs in on why this is probably correct. Lastly, we touch on some lightning strike news and discuss at length the future of EVTOLs - are they really as viable as many think, and who will win the race to the market (and profitability). Is there enough room for so many companies?
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Full Transcript: EP29 - The New GE9X Jet Engine, Boeing's Take on Hydrogen Power & The Future of EVTOL Air Taxis
Welcome back to the struck podcast. On today's episode, we've got a bunch of topics. First. We're going to talk about Boeing. And their assessment of hydrogen power, which they think it's going to be a pretty difficult task to get up to speed there by 2035, where it talks about the 737 max and FAA administrator has, um, committed to flying that plane coming up soon.
So we'll chat a little bit about the implications there. There's also another hydrogen powered passenger plane from Piper that took its maiden flight and a recent, uh, was struck by lighting in New Zealand. So we'll chat about that in our engineering segment, we're going to talk about the GE9X jet turbine engine.
It's going to be used on the 777X, the triple seven, um, such a big engine, the biggest in the world. So we're going to talk about that. Also incredibly fuel efficient. And lastly, in our EVTOL segment, we're going to talk a little bit about the Embraer X concept, but overall, we're going to chat about the state of the industry in general.
So Allen let's jump into it. Boeing thinks hydrogen is going to be difficult. Why?
Allen Hall: Because you have to redesign everything. And when, I mean, redesign everything, I mean, redesign everything. You're going to probably start with a different looking airframe. Uh, so you're probably talking a blended wing type of design, which NASA was working on for years ago and Boeing was involved with, and some of those and which Airbus is also talking about now go figure.
And every other piece of a fuel system. On that aircraft will have to change. And that, that includes the engines cause the fuel burns hotter. Uh, all the plumbing and all the safety features that go into, uh, making sure a fuel system works properly and doesn't endanger, the aircraft will have to change and that, and that means plumbing, clamps, brackets, uh, valves, or working at way different colder temperatures.
Uh, you gotta worry about condensation and frost and, and, and Bredell elements and all the things that come along with working with a very cold fuel you'll have to. Does it redesign the system? So what Boeing is saying is guys industry, do we realize that it's not as easy as like flicking a switch and we can just basically plumb in hydrogen into this existing architecture because it won't work and we have to start over.
And starting over on engine development, which is tremendously expensive to fuel system design and structural components and leak detection. And all those things that we do are, have to be start, are starting over. And we don't have a lot of history with any of those systems and the companies that would make those systems like a Parker.
Uh, you named one of the fuel companies that, you know, Parker being one of the bigger ones, is that how they gotta, they gotta learn how to do that. So every part of the industry, no matter what tier you are in the aviation world, from Boeing being the, you know, the tier one and then narrow the suppliers down to little companies like our company will have to rethink how they do everything.
...
In this episode we discuss the Airbus Vahana EVTOL, Gogo challenging SmartSky's patents, hydrogen tech, Airbus ZeroE, and more.
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Full Transcript: EP28 - GoGo Challenges SmarkSky Patents; What Did we Learn From the Airbus Vahana EVTOL? Plus Airbus ZeroE & Hydrogen Tech
Welcome back to the Struck podcast. On today's episode, we've got a wide range of topics. Number one, we're going to chat about smart sky prevailing in a. A patent dispute with Gogo. We're going to talk a little bit about Airbus and potential unsafe condition. They got a warning from both the, EASA and FAA this past week.
And we're going to chat a little bit more about Boeing, specifically this week, suspending work at their futuristic next innovation unit. So that unit covers drones, futuristic aircraft, potentially EVT, a Wells air taxi market, stuff like that. We're going to chat a bunch about hydrogen today in our engineering segment.
So some potential planes being converted to it, and as well as a Airbus concept of zero E. So we'll chat about those. And the lastly in our electric tech segment, we're going to talk about Airbus a little bit about Tesla battery day and some of the potential, electric changes upcoming in the future.
So Alan let's get started. Tell us about this patent dispute, between smart sky and Gogo. So obviously there's lots of, intellectual property that you know, is, pretty easy, to dispute. I've heard that up to 40% of patent, Patent claims are thrown out when they finally actually get disputed in court.
but what is this smart sky company? What does this mean to the industry here?
Allen Hall: [00:01:49] Smart sky and Gogo are in the air to ground ATG. They call it, data, transmission networks. essentially cell towers are located across the country. And as you. Fly above them. It works like a cell phone. Does where you hand off between different cell towers is how it works.
the, real interesting thing about all these systems is that you're moving at such high speeds and at altitude that the logic to switch between a tower to tower and where to be looking at, to know where the next one is. Is really key to that function of the system, much like the way your, mobile phone works.
and Gogo has been doing that forever and they've got thousands of installations on all kinds of business aircraft, and they've been the leader in that market for a long time. So smart sky. it has a patent out which sort of overlaps and they're going to smart sky is saying that they have some IP, they have a patent and Gogo feels like it infringes on things they're already doing.
And smart sky says Gogo is infringing on their intellectual property. And the patent office, basically stepped out of it. And so when you apply for a patent, the, all the patents are go through like a, pre-publication thing. So the there's a, process of which the patent office published the application.
And then there's a list of claims there, and the world could see it. And if I'm, if I have a similar idea or I already have the idea and I've put it into practice, I can tell the patent office like, Hey, I, whatever. Company B is doing is, not patent. And here are the 20 reasons why I'm already making and it's already for sale.
it's obvious. those prior those knowledgeable in the art would have intuitively come to this conclusion, those kind of arguments that were made there. but I don't know. A lot of times the patent office like Dan, you were saying the patent office will not want to get involved in those disputes because they are not a court system.
and the patent offices can get in some cases in a pinch there. And so what they tend to do sometimes is Hey, there's too much of a squabble, let the course decided, and I let them hammer it out,
In this episode we discuss the folding wing tips of the Boeing 777x airplane, and what this engineering feat means for the plane's versatility. We revisit 737 Max troubles and discuss engineering testimony, plus dive back into the Otto Aviation Celera 500L and talk more about laminar flow and its claims of fuel efficiency. Lastly, we look at the AutoFlight V400 and talk through this EVTOL's possibilities in the market.
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Transcript: EP27 - Boeing 777x Wing Tips, 737 Max Troubles, More Otto Celera 500L and AutoFlight V400 News
Dan: You're listening to the struck podcast.
Dan: And here on struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightning protection for aircraft radomes.
All right. Welcome back to the struck podcast. In today's episode, we are going to cover a bunch of interesting topics. Number one. There was a recent, uh, engine fire causing a emergency landing with an . We're going to chat a little bit about that. Uh, and our engineering segment, the 777X. So obviously Boeing's had a lot of press recently, most of it bad, but we're going to talk a little bit about the engineering and the 777X and they're folding wind wingtips, which is pretty cool technology.
Uh, we're going to chat more about the Boeing 737 max. Obviously the congressional report just came out today. We're not going to touch on that in this episode, but we are going to talk a little bit about some of the executives and the D the D design process and their defense of it. And then we're going to chat a little more about the Otto Celera.
500L - So the Otto aviation, they're one of their really unique jets, um, uh, planes. Uh, they have some crazy efficiency claims. We touched on it last time. We're going to chat a little bit more about it today. And then lastly, in our EVTOL segment, we're going to talk about the Autoflight V400. Uh, which is a unique cargo, um, you know, electric vehicle that's coming out of, and it looks like China and we will chat about it.
And as well as maybe the, some of the bigger models that auto flight is going to be spring off of that one. So, Allen, how are you, sir? Let's jump right in the, had an engine fire this weekend. Uh, I was at American airlines or this week and American airlines, Airbus, a three 20. They landed safely, but how common is this?
How scary is this? I mean, what's your take here.
Allen Hall: It's not common. And to have engine fires, obviously it usually raises some red flags with all the certification authorities when that happens and all the mechanics that are associated with it in the pilots too. So there'll be paperwork filed. Uh, it'll get reported, uh, and you, if you actually follow the aviation safety, Databases.
You'll see those lists of incidences pop up. So you can actually scan, uh, how many times they've had brake problems, landing gear problems. Don't deploy flaps, don't work. It's actually pretty common. Now the engine fires a different level, right? Fire's bad on any airplane, but things that break are, are pretty common.
So the driver here is that. Um, there's been a lot of, uh, engine related issues lately. Um, just because of the newer designs that are trying to drive efficiency way, way up. Uh, and when you do that, you can have some funky things happening. Remember all these engines today are all electrical, electronically controlled.
There's a lot of hi Lee efficient, um, highly refined stuff going on inside that engine. So, and top of it, they're made not to catch fire. Right? So something has gone really wrong here and it'll the engine be pulled off, tore down, looked at right. And. Try to find a root cause to it and then alert everybody if it's related to some other issue that is going on it's, but it's a,
In this episode we discuss Boeing 787 tail fin safety issues that appear to be related to shimming. The Boeing 737 Max also went through EASA testing, and a bit of it is beginning to feel politically charged...the Pipistrel Nuuva V300 is a potentially game-changing cargo EVTOL aircraft that could be delivering cargo to remote locations that were previously accessible only by helicopter. Lastly, we dive into the technology behind Chevrons, serrations cut into the trailing edges of jet engine nacelles and nozzles that reduce noise.
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Full Transcript: EP26 Boeing 787 Tail Fin Problems; Pipistrel Nuuva V300 & Chevrons on Jet Engines; Boeing 737 EASA Testing
Dan: And here on struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightening protection.
All right, welcome back. This is the struck podcast episode 26. I am your cohost Dan Blewett and I'm joined here. Remotely with our lighting protection expert. Allen Hall, Allen, how are you?
Allen Hall: Hey, great. Dan, boy--another troubling week for Boeing with the seven 87 on the engineering side of all things, uh, is just the hits.
Keep on coming there. It's gotta stop at some point. Don't you think?
Dan: You think so it's like spreading amongst their fleet now. So in today's show, we're going to start with some of the 737 max testing. So Yas has been testing them and we'll talk about. What they, uh, what they're doing and how it's going.
Um, and our engineering segment where we're talking about Boeing 787 issues. So the Dreamliners got some vertical fin safety issues. Uh, it sounds like shim problems, so yikes and other potential nightmare, I guess, for right now. Um, also we're going to chat a little bit about chevrons and their use in reducing, uh, engine noise.
Cause obviously jet engines are like the. Most intensely loud things on the planet. So every effort to reduce that as important, even a couple of decibels. And then lastly, in our electric tech session, we'll talk about, uh, PIPA stroll. And one of their new cargo planes that they're hoping can really take off.
Uh, no pun intended. The Nuuva V300 is they're hoping can tackle, uh, the helicopter market and replace them where, you know, we've got to ship cargo out to an oil rig, or we got to ship it out. So some other place where helicopters traditionally, the only place that can get there, but these EVTOLs are going to be coming for that market.
So I know you, um, Are a proponent of getting away from helicopters, which are many respects. Do you think more difficult to maintain and have some pretty spectacular failures when they do fail? Which is scary. So, anyway, so let's talk with, uh, let's talk first about the 737 max. So Yas has been testing it.
How has it been going?
Allen Hall: 737 flight testing concluded up in Vancouver, British Columbia, uh, just recently with, um, looked like there was multiple certification authorities, uh, participating in that, uh, EASA, obviously transport Canada would have been there and it sounds like the Brazilians were there too.
So there is. A lot of eyeballs on the 737, the, the flight Teske, uh, would be a low risk thing at this point. So there has been at least listened to the news. Reports has been no unexpected outcome of that. Boeing would have had been flying at any way. And check in to make sure that the angle of attack sensors and all the, um, all the sort of the flight management, uh, difficulties that they had would have, would have been taken care of.
So it's, it's a check in the box, but also to, to, uh, have some external eyes watching what happens in the cockpit and see how pilots respond to stuff. So, um, that's a good checkpoint to have done. The next step though, is probably the most important,
The Otto Aviation Celera 500L makes some big fuel-efficiency and operation cost claims. It can glide 125 miles from 30,000 feet, but can it deliver on these promises? We discuss a jetpack incident at LAX airport, the potential of a supersonic Air Force One, Hyundai’s entrance into the EVTOL market, Gogo’s sale to Intelsat, and Tesla battery technology that could change the aviation industry forever.
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EP25 Transcript - Can the Otto Aviation Celera 500L Deliver on Efficiency Promises?
All right, welcome back. This is the struc podcast episode 25. I'm your cohost, Dan blewett and I'm here. Joined remotely by lightning protection expert. Allen hall, Allen, how are you? Great, Dan. Hey, uh, just reading the information about that auto, uh, aircraft design kinda looks like a fish with a propeller on the back.
That's a pretty cool thing. New technology, sort of old technology combination between the two. Super dynamic. Yeah. We've got some interesting things to cover today. So with our, some of our news stuff, um, there was a man in a jet pack reportedly near LA lax airport. So that's terrifying. So we'll talk a little bit about that.
Uh, Gogo has been sold to Intel set, so some movement in the radon because radon business, uh, we are going to talk about the auto aviation. Uh, they have a bullet shaped plane, which. That's some really interesting specs. I mean, it can glide up to 125 miles. They said. So the fuel efficiency is they're proposing is tremendous.
Um, and lastly, we'll also chat a little bit about, uh, potential for a supersonic air force, one, a Hyundai entering the EBTL market. And some battery advances by Tesla that might make a real big difference also in the electric aviation. So first let's talk about this jet pack fellow. Uh, what is your take here?
I, I saw this article. That they're investigating that there might've been a guy very close to the airport, which is obviously big cause for concern. Um, I mean, how do they regulate this stuff at the airport? Can't fly anything near an airport because an aircraft might run into it. So they're super cautious.
Pilots are very aware of, of periphery peripheral things around the airport that could pose a safety risk to the aircraft. So, uh, seeing, uh, somebody in a jet pack suit or something of the sort, probably set off a lot of alarm bells in the cockpit and, uh, because. The sh he shouldn't be doing that, but I don't think they have found who, who, what, when, where this thing is like this, this is still sort of a mystery.
As far as I can tell from the news sources, they haven't identified who was doing this. And is it, it wasn't a real person. Was it a dummy? Was it a drone of some sort who knows? Right. It could have been a high school kid with. So, you know, some sort of who, obviously they're not the kids aren't really at school right now looking to, you know, entertain themselves who knows.
Uh, but it is a real safety risk. Holy moly. Well, just, I mean, we were talking about bird strikes last from last week. Yeah. We'll we'll we don't need to have his human strikes with people. Just stop there. And I mean, that's horrific, so yikes. Yeah. They got to stay, stay away from the airport, right? Yeah. And are the, you know, the iron man movies have.
Uh, have a creative influence on a lot of, uh, people who are sort of quasi scientific and have the skill sets to, to make stuff. Right. So in today's world, it's not very hard to, to buy little jet engines that can propel you that have more thrust. Um, then your body weight and so they can lift you up. And, um, the guys off of, uh, MythBusters, do you ever see that episode or the one of the MythBusters guys built that iron man suit and was flying around in it?
In episode 24, we discuss EVTOL HEXA's first flight and design, DARPA's Ai Dogfight contest between artificial intelligence pilots and real ones, combating bird strikes and the "snarge" they leave behind, Boeing 737 wire harness issues, and more.
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Full Transcript: EP24 EVTOL HEXA, DARPA Ai Dogfight, Bird Strike Countermeasures and More
Struck 24 Audio for Podcast
Dan: This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech at weather guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.
You're listening to the struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett
Allen Hall: I'm Allen hall.
Dan: And here on struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightening protection.
All right, welcome back. This is the struck podcast episode 24, Alln, how are you?
Allen Hall: Great Dan. Boy, uh, aviation just doesn't keep churning. Does it busy weekend?
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. And we have a really interesting show today. We have lots of like very diverse, strange, strange topics from guns. Found it TSA, more Boeing problems, uh, lightening rods, protecting birds, hitting planes.
Um, Crazy looking EVTOLs, DARPA Ai Dogfight, and drones. So look forward to an interesting show today. So let's get started. So new article shows that right now, TSA is finding guns and carry on bags. 80% of which are loaded at three times the rate compared to last year. So 15.3 guns. Per million passengers compared to 5.1 guns last year.
So, Allen, what's your take? Why do you think this has happened?
Allen Hall: Well, I haven't seen any good reason for it explained, I've seen the articles and TSA has put out some notices about it because they were alarmed about it and trying to make everybody aware, like, Hey. Check your luggage for the, the weapon you left in it.
But I either chalk it up to people. Haven't been driving around a lot and have forgotten about, and we're moving around a lot. And I had forgotten about the handgun they have put in their backpack or a handgun that may be sitting in their duffel bag. And. Load it up and go to the airport, not thinking it's in there and TSA will find it.
They will clearly find it. Yeah. That's the one thing I think the other one is that in this sort of a climate of, of concern, everybody's in. Maybe people are thinking it's a smart thing to take a handgun on an airplane. And that is never a smart idea. A TSA will take you down and it's a, yeah, it is a big problem.
Uh, when you, cause that's, that's basically you breaking federal law, when you do that. So there's no, there's no reason to be carrying a handgun onto an aircraft ever. Uh, there are rules in which you can take care, uh, weapons onto aircraft, obviously unloaded, obviously in a hard case, obviously you're checking that luggage in with the counter so they know what's going on.
Cause you see it around hunting time all the time. You see people traveling out to the Montana, Wyoming, whatever to go deer hunting. But yeah. Yeah. I mean that, and that's totally cool, but we can't. Have something stupid happen on an airplane. So TSA has been really vigilant. I know the times that I have traveled.
I'm surprising one. It still, how few people are actually on aircraft, but to how long it takes to get through the TSA lines. And I kind of wonder if they're not being overly cautious on handguns and generic weapons coming through the security lines and taking slower looks at luggage. Uh, and. Find it. So it's either they're ticking, stolen that luggage and finding more weapons or two thirds.
They get the same rate of weapons coming through there and only catching one third of them, which is hopefully not
Dan: the right. The answer. Yeah. Well, I mean,
In this episode, we discuss the odds of catching COVID-19 on a flight, as explained in an interesting new article that explores proximity to other passengers and more. Boeing may be fined $1.25 million in a clear-cut case of undue pressure applied to engineers in their South Carolina plant. And, Allen likes the Volocopter EVTOL design - is it a future winner in the market?
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Transcript: Struck Podcast EP23 - Odds of Catching COVID on a Plane? Boeing In Trouble for Undue Pressure, Plus: Is Volocopter an EVTOL Leader?
Dan: This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. At Weather Guard we support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.
You're listening to the Struck Podcast. I'm Dan Blewett
Allen: I'm Allen hall.
Dan: And here on struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightning protection.
All right. Welcome back. This is the Struck podcast episode 23, I'm your cohost, Dan Blewett. And in today's episode, we've got a lot of good stuff to cover first interesting article about the odds of catching COVID-19 on a flight, which uses some, uh, percentages. And this was actually a really interesting read.
Glad we found this article. Um, we're gonna talk a little bit about the advantages and challenges of electric powered airliners, which are potentially in our future. Maybe allow along with, uh, with hydrogen as well. We know all these, all these technologies are being explored by all these major companies and our engineering segment.
We're going to talk about Boeing in trouble, again, with a undue pressure that they've been applying to some safety reps out of their South Carolina, uh, factory. And. Man, that's been an ongoing thing. We've talked about that before and here we are again, and we're also going to chat a little bit about vertical airspace and Honeywell.
They're doing some interesting stuff together. And lastly, in our electric texts segment, we're going to talk about Vola copter, which. Yeah, Alan, there you are. How are you, sir? You are very outspoken about these designs. And this one in my view is like the most, it looks like a toy plastic helicopter of all of them, but you're digging it.
So why?
Allen: Yeah, I think it's cool. I think it's cool. A bit of flying a human in it. So that puts him ahead of everybody else on my scale.
Dan: Yeah. Well, your proof's in the pudding, I guess so. Well, let's, let's talk about this before we get there later, let's talk about the odds of catching covert in a flight. And so.
Planes are flying an increasing amount. Obviously it's still knower like normal, but we're getting back there. And so far it doesn't seem like these are the, these are the vehicles of, of infection. Like, it doesn't seem like there's mass spread coming from airliners. And they're talking about in this article, I'm at a Bloomberg, which is really interesting.
Uh, just about the odds of getting it. You know, the, basically this a researcher, mr. Barnett is talking about that you have a base sale, one in 4,300 chance of getting COVID-19 on a full two hour flight. Um, so yeah. What, what, what were your takeaways from this article?
Allen: Well, that's the, that, that number is based upon just the, having somebody sitting next to you with a, uh, sitting extra for two hours and everybody's mast, obviously.
So there's, uh, you know, the percentages kind of change depending on where you are in the aircraft rights. So. That's why the probabilities are so low that unless you're really sitting real close to that particular person. And there's some, some probabilities with that. I, it seems like the there's enough flight data and enough tracing history right now that there's, I think you could.
In this episode we discuss BAE's partnership with Jaunt Air Mobility, Boeing's continued trouble delivering airplanes, a lightning strike to an Airbus A320 in New Zealand and more. We also take a look at the VoltAero Cassio, a unique medium-range hybrid electric aircraft prototype and discuss its road to airworthiness certification.
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Full Transcript: Struck Podcast EP22 - Boeing's Tough Sales Month; An Airbus A320 Gets Struck By Lightning, BAE & Jaunt Air Partner on Flight Controls, Plus VoltAero's Hybrid Electric, Aircraft, the Cassio
Dan: This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. At Weather Guard we support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.
You are listening to the Struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett.
Allen: I'm Allen hall.
Dan: And here on Struck, we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightning protection.
Alright, I'll come back to the Struck podcast. I'm your cohost Dan Blewett. And we've got a great show for you here today. And our first segment, we're going to cover some kind of scary news, uh, on an Airbus, uh, out of New Zealand was diverted after a lightning strike. So we'll, we'll chat a little bit about that.
Um, Boeing seven 37 max might be delayed again. I mean, the saga continues, uh, we'll chat a little bit more about Boeing and the, the amount of jets they delivered this quarter or not this quarter, but this past month, which was crazy low, um, and a little weird quarantine run in from, uh, unlucky a plane full of people.
So that's a, some. Kind of funny, uh, COVID news here, but in our engineering segment, we'll talk a little bit about, uh, BAE working with John's, um, on flight control actuators, and then our EVT O L of the week. We're going to talk about the connect air, uh, the volt Aero Casio, which is a four Cedar, um, actually maybe larger pass, uh, passenger capacity.
So pretty interesting little pusher, plane Allen, what is going on?
Allen: Well, it it's really strange aircraft news over the last week or two. I know it, it seems like airlines are struggling and they are, uh, but I got to say that the aircraft industry in terms of projects has been relatively busy and that's a good positive sign because it's all those little projects that get rolling that turn into larger products later on.
So. I think so.
Dan: Well, you said you've gotten some new, some new projects recently, right?
Allen: Yeah. Several. Uh, and that always comes and sometimes it just comes just because everybody's sort of back from vacation, August early August, people like to take off and then they come back and, you know, mid August, September and things start rolling again.
It's just kind of like the shutdown around Christmas and January is always chaos. Mid January is so positive. Some positive things going on out there.
Dan: Well, that's, that's good. That's good news for sure. Everyone wants to get back to work and you see good people get rehired and the industry get back to normal.
That's for sure. So let's on that note, let's start first with Boeing and how many jets they've delivered. So in July, 2018, and this is an article from Barron's. They deliver 39 jets, uh, this past July, they delivered four. So what do you think about these numbers? Obviously, this isn't surprising anyone given how insane this year has been.
Again, my prediction is still, we still have four months to go to see if the crackin comes out of the deep sea. Um, just to cap off this crazy year. But, I mean, what is your sentiment about four planes being delivered?
Allen: Well, the, the issue really for Boeing is the seven 37 max. And because of COVID, there's not a lot of international flights going on.
In this episode we discuss the AVX/L3 compound coaxial helicopter (CCH) and its unique design, Delta CEO Ed Bastian's letter on the company's future, new tiltwing EVTOL designs and more.
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Full Transcript: EP21 AVX L3 Compound Coaxial Helicopter, Delta CEO's Letter on the Future; Tilt Wing EVTOL - Will it Fly?
All right, welcome back. This is the Struck podcast. This is episode 21. And on today's show, we've got a bunch of really interesting topics. First we're in our new segment, we're going to cover, um, a couple of different things about the coronavirus downturn. So number one, Delta CEO, Ed Bastian, just released a letter announcing some of their outlook going forward.
They just had a, uh, a tough period of laying off a lot of people. And also they just had a bunch of employees except early retirement. So we'll chat about that a little bit in his outlook. Uh, also an interesting article at the BBC on. How jet planes are getting sent to boneyards essentially, I'm also a little bit of lightening strike news because we are a lightning first show.
A couple of people injured at the DHL hub. When a lightning strikes a lightning struck a ramp, it sounds like. So a couple of workers injured. We'll talk a little bit about that, which apparently happens more than people realize. Um, as we get into our engineering segment, we were talking a little bit about Honeywell, their UV cabin disinfection system.
It's really interesting how all of the world is changing as far as cleanliness and disinfection. And obviously the air air aircraft is no different. We'll also talk about the AVX aircraft, which is a really fascinating looking vehicle with a tilt rotor it's and they're developing, I guess, that for the U S army.
And then lastly, as we jumped to some electric tech, the do for. Tilt wing O L so a lot of discussion on that really interesting design. Very complex design. So Alan, let's start with news. We both just read, uh, ed bastion, the Delta CEO's letter. What are some of your thoughts? They got to stop the cash burn.
That's there. That's the thought? Yeah. 20 down to 27 million down from a hundred million, a port per day. Which is staggering $3 billion a month. They used, they were burning back in March, April leash. Wow. Money, a lot of cash burn the industry and what Delta jet blue, Southwest American United are all trying to do is.
Get the customer satisfaction numbers up so they can increase the ridership so they can fill some airplanes. Cause I think the issue right now is consumer confidence that they aircraft are in the airports themselves for that matter are clean. And that they're taking the precautions that were being told about every 30 seconds that.
Uh, th that we're maintaining a social distance that we're wiping down the airplanes or cleaning the airplanes and that, um, everybody on the airplanes or we're in math and it seems to be okay, a very effective way of dealing with it. But the problem is, is that I think people who are traveling at least haven't seen any indication that there's been any sort of COVID transmission.
Via airline flights and we've been flying it. We ain't never shut down the airlines they've been flying since this all started. So we have several months of data and thousands of flights, tens of thousands of flights at this point. Uh, it doesn't seem like there's a connection between COBIT transmissions and flying in airplanes.
That doesn't seem to be a thing let's let's shift forward here. So speaking of Delta, um, well speaking of just the industry in general, These planes are ending up in bone yards now. So what does that mean? Exactly? Well, there's a couple of places across the United States, mostly in the desert, uh, in the U S where,
In this episode we chat about the scary ransomware attack that sent Garmin scrambling to get their systems back up. Airbus announced successful autonomous takeoffs and landings; the Sabrewing EVTOL that will haul cargo is getting some press; And Lilium explains why they're no longer going after the short-range air taxi market--is it perhaps not a viable market?
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Full Transcript: EP20 - The Garmin Ransomware Attack; Airbus Makes Autonomous Takeoff & Landing; Sabrewing EVTOL for Cargo
Dan: This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard, Lightning Tech. At Weather Guard, we support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.
You are listening to the Struck Podcast. I'm Dan Blewett.
Allen Hall: I'm Allen hall.
Dan: And here on Struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightning protection.
All right, welcome back. This is the struck podcast. This is the big 2-0 Alan--episode 20. How you doing?
Allen Hall: Great, Dan sighting, another great week of news and aviation, you know, it seems slow out there and not literal airplanes are flying. Their aviation business is busy.
Dan: Yeah. So today, uh, we're going to cover a bunch of different topics.
So in our new section, um, what seems to be a ransomware attack at Garmin? Pretty scary stuff. Uh, we're gonna chat a little bit about Airbus. Um, They're autonomous taxi, takeoff done some landing tests, really interesting stuff there, and a little bit of a scary storm incident out of Russia with a quite old AN-24 aircraft.
Uh, we're gonna talk a little bit about the EPA and some potential, um, environmental limits. They're going to set on aircraft. It seems like so much missions testing. And lastly, a couple different, uh, EVTOL's, uh, so Sabrewing, they've got some interesting stuff going along with cargo transport, and lastly, a pretty interesting letter from Lilium about their view on really short trip, uh, flights.
So how let's get started with Garmin. So they haven't said the words ransom, but this seems textbook ransomware, which is really scary for any business owner. When you start to hear these, especially with bigger companies, but what's your take here with the garments situation.
Allen Hall: We've been seeing a lot more ransomware attacks in aerospace in the last six months to a year.
And it's not surprising that Garmin was the focus of one of those ransomware attacks, just because they're one of the more prominent electronic, uh, highly integrated aviation AVN X companies, but a lot of technology and probably a lot information. On servers. And so it's not surprising that, that they would be a, an attack point and plus they're just a kind of a global company now.
So there'd be a lot of ways to infiltrate them. And it kind of sounds like there's listening, just watching some of the news reports that it was via. Um, You know, some sort of email that triggered the, the system to go haywire, but when those events happen, what's what, what I'm hearing from the engineers from different companies, not, not just garment specific is that everything gets shut down.
So they lose all the internet phones, internet. Connectivity, all access to drawings and everything that an engineer would need are basically taken offline. So it shuts down the company. And if there's any, if it is a true ransomware where they're asking for money, it has to be a big trade off, obviously.
And then what, what seems to be happening at most of these places is a companies are calling the FBI. They're not playing. They bring in the federal investigators immediately. To one, try to help them figure out what they need to do next, but to. Stop it from happening to somebody else because this sort of nonsense has got to stop.
...
The eHang EVTOL took its first commercial flight in China - how important is this milestone? Boeing 737 MAX re-certification has entered its public comment period, and other 737 models have had an emergency airworthiness directive recently sent out. And, the big four airlines (United, Delta, American and Southwest) have had a rough Q2 in 2020 - how does it compare to a year ago?
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Full Transcript: EP19 eHANG EVTOL First Flight; Boeing 737 Woes; Are the Big Four Airlines in Trouble?
Dan: This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech - at Weather Guard, we support design engineers and make lightening protection easy.
You are listening to the Struck Podcast. I'm Dan Blewett.
Allen Hall: I'm Allen hall.
Dan: And here on Struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection.
Hey, welcome back to the Struck Podcast is episode 19. I'm your cohost, Dan Blewett and in today's episode, got a bunch of really good topics, actually. So we're going to cover a bunch of things with the Boeing seven 37, their public comment period has begun. Uh, we're also gonna talk about. Jet time, which is an interesting, quick little story of Danish company.
Um, we're going to chat about some of the big four airlines as their losses this year have come to light and we're starting to compare to, you know, Q2 last year to Q2 this year. So we're going to chat about that. Uh, there's been some really interesting conversion, the, uh, Embraer prey tour legacy for fifties, actually have a conversion kit now to go into the parade tour 500.
We're gonna talk a bit, a little bit about the engineering that goes into a conversion of a, of a business jet, which is really fascinating thing to think about. And then we're also going to chat some more about a seven 37 or eight homes. Um, a airworthiness directive, just put out on the Boeing seven 37.
And lastly, we'll chat in our electric tech - the ehang EVTOL. Which just made the first passenger trip around a yang. Tell China. So let's jump in here with, uh, some of the seven 37 max stuff. So the public now has 45 days as of July 21st to comment on the proposed changes. So tell us, what does this, what does this mean?
Allen Hall: Well, for any sort of major, uh, changes, uh, special conditions, uh, it was all rural changes. That's always a public comment period because these changes end up being, having the, the rule of law essentially applied against them. And so when you make new regulations or laws, you want to have a public period to discuss those, to see what the public feedback is in this particular case.
I'm not sure what the public feedback is going to be. Uh, but the FAA has to respond to all the comments. And so they may get thousands of comments back on this, whether they're valid comments or not, you still have to respond to them and situations where we've seen a lot of public responses in, uh, sort of critical or controversial areas.
You kind of get this wide range of responses. And then as the FAA, I don't know how they must lock a couple of people in a room to go through almost responses. It sounds terrible, right? Because you can write as much as you want for and as a response. So you could have 50 different comments in response.
So the FAS go through those and sort them out and put them into groups and title respond to each one of them. So it takes a long time, right? Which is why they keep, keep saying like the seven 37 is not going to be flying at a couple other minor reasons, but it seems like the certification open public comment forum thing is going to shove it out to December of this year, before those airplanes get going again.
Plus they have to qualify all the, all the pilots,
In this episode of the Struck aerospace engineering podcast, we discuss Jaunt Air Mobility's gyrocopter EVTOL design and talk about it's future. We discuss NXTCOMM's new flat satcom radome antenna design, Airbus' white paper on hydrogen-powered planes and the EU's plan to become carbon-neutral. We cover Embraer's new foray into Turboprop planes, antimicrobial tech in cabins, and the toxic, costly nature of fire-suppressing foam.
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Full Transcript: EP18 - Jaunt Air Mobility EVTOL - Will it Fly? Hydrogen-Powered Planes and Is Fire-Suppressing Foam on Its Way Out?
Dan: This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech at weather guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.
You're listening to the Struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett
Allen Hall: I'm Allen hall.
Dan: And here on struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightning protection.
All right, welcome back. This is struck episode 18, Allen. What's going on?
Allen Hall: Hey, it's been a great week, Dan, pretty busy things. Just starting to pick up. Looks like air. Aviation's getting a little, a little more busy. Flights are ticking up a little bit. So it's
Dan: gonna be, yeah, you got another trip this week.
Don't you?
Allen Hall: I want, so this is my second trip outside of Massachusetts. Uh, we're a little curious to see if the. Any changes have occurred in the, uh, airport experience and on the aircraft, it seems like the Southwest airlines was what were travel on. It is still blocking out the middle seats. And there was a report by MIT I saw yesterday or day before that was talking about how that reduced.
Um, exposure to COVID by like roughly 50%, which, which was interesting. But the last time we traveled through the airports, airports seem busy. They were really busy, but the parking lots were empty. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but that's what it was. Um, so yeah, it can be a busy week.
Dan: Well, I heard, yeah, I heard Delta's gonna keep, uh, their middle seats blocked off until September, but then again, other.
Uh, companies hadn't really followed suit. And of course, with American airlines, they didn't even seem to enforce, uh, one of our United States senators wearing a mask, the whole flight, apparently. So
Allen Hall: it's not
Dan: still spotty regulation across the industry.
Allen Hall: Well, it's not regulation, right? Uh, the FAA can't oppose company
Dan: policy, company policies,
Allen Hall: right.
And the companies can remove you from an aircraft for whatever reason they want it's denial of service. That's what it is. So, yeah. Uh, when we traveled, uh, on the, on the last flight, it was, I think there was one or to people who weren't wearing a mask, but you notice what happens is it kind of get shuttled to the back corner of the airplane.
What seems to be part of the approach that at least Southwest was taking at the time. And I've heard that from other airlines that they try to take people who decided not to wear a mask for whatever that could be medical conditions, that dissolve variety of reasons why that would occur.
Dan: Oh. So they know ahead of time.
So it was just thinking to myself, I'm like, well, how would they know if they're not on the plane yet? Yeah. But I guess some people.
Allen Hall: Some people with breathing problems, you know, it's, it's, it's a big deal. They have a mask on it. Doesn't make it easier to breathe.
Dan: Sure. And this is true. This is true. So in today's show, we're going to cover, I've got a good, good smattering of topics.
We're going to cover Jaunt Air Mobility's aircraft which uses ROSA technology, which is a slow rotor, uh, just really interesting, uh,
In this episode, Allen and Dan discuss the idea of applying undue pressure to engineers as they moved to certification of the 737 MAX. They also explore some of Honeywell's new UAS tech and their autonomous landing technology. Lastly, they cover Vertical Aerospace's Seraph aircraft and discuss it's path to market and potential engineering missteps.
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Full Transcript: Struck Podcast EP17 - Did Boeing Apply Undue Pressure re: 737 MAX? We discuss Honeywell's UAS tech and Vertical Aerospace's Seraph aircraft.
Dan: This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. At Weather Guard, we support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.
You're listening to the Struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett
Allen Hall: I'm Allen hall.
Dan: And here on Struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightning protection.
Alright. Welcome back to another episode of the struck podcast, Allen. Well, it's going on this week. Well,
Allen Hall: uh, Boeing's under some pressure again, to get max deliveries go on. It sounds like the factories up and running, which is a good sign, but there's a lot of FAA in department of transportation pressure for undue pressure on the delegated, uh, engineers that help sign off on the design, which is just another bad thing for Boeing to be going through.
So, you know, better week in terms of flights, did you notice that the number of people flying this week is up another couple of ticks? It's not 20% up, but we're in the low thirties look like in terms of number of flights versus last year, which is a good sign and alongside numbers still, still goes up and that's a positive sign for the world economy and the U S economy and aviation overall.
And, uh, It also looks like the business community. The number of flights in the, on the business side is still pretty stable. It's down, it's down. I thought I heard 20 to 30% versus last year. That means we're still in the 70 percentile range in terms of business flight and the lease market. That's not bad in the lease market's doing really well.
Uh, the partial ownership market, uh, I listened to a podcast this past week with Honda jet deal with HondaJet, a lease program from his that wasn't a Honda. Own program, but as a Honda, they're using Honda jets to shuttle people around. And it sounds like they were doing pretty well there. They had five airplanes in their fleet and we're going to take delivery of another one here shortly.
And they're going to add a total of 10 new ones. So to get to 15 odd digits in their fleet. And you have to have a pretty, uh, rosy economic forecast to bring hot to basically triple your size of your company. Joe's airplane fleet. So I thought that was a, a good positive sign too. So some green shoots, right?
Dan: Yeah, a lot going on. Uh, so in today's in today's episode, we're going to cover, uh, what Allen just mentioned. So belling and, uh, this undue pressure idea as far as some of their delegates, which is a really interesting, and, um, I know Alan has some pretty deep insight on this. We're going to, in our engineering segment, we're going to talk about Honeywell doing a bunch of stuff on the UAS and the urban air mobility side.
So they've got a couple of different pieces of new tech we're gonna, we're going to chat about. And then our third segment, we're gonna cover, um, some vertical takeoff and landing, uh, news in the electric sector. So, uh, we'll talk a little bit about vertical aerospace and their Saraf, uh, aircraft, which, uh, Honeywell is a, is a partner with that new development.
So interesting design. I know you've got some thoughts, so excited to get to that later, but let's, let's start first with, with Boeing.
Dr. Ana Vukovic joined us to talk about radome design testing using her computer modeling techniques at the University of Nottingham's George Green Institute for Electromagnetics Research lab. Testing radomes complete with lightning diverter strips is a game-changer. Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube.
Her team can test radomes complete with lightning diverter strips to get accurate modeling before physical parts are created. Her team at the University of Nottingham, including Dr. Trevor Benson (trevor.benson@nottingham.ac.uk) and Dr. Phillip Sewell (phillip.sewell@nottingham.ac.uk), are doing incredible work to push the limits of computational modeling in the aerospace and other industries. Contact Dr. Ana Vukovic at ana.vukovic@nottingham.ac.uk or visit the University of Nottingham at https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/ggiemr/index.aspx
Transcript - Dr. Ana Vukovic on Computer Modeling for Radome Design Testing with Lightning Diverter Strips
https://youtu.be/l9o7BwL4dc8
Dan: And here on struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightning protection. All right, welcome back. We've got another great episode of struck actually a special episode today.
so Allen, we've got another, really good segment with Dr. Ana Vukovich out of the George Green, Center for Electromagnetics Research out of the University of Nottingham. And, what are we, what are we talking about today?
Allen Hall: We're talking about a paper that is being published this summer. That. They at the University of Nottingham had put together, which looks like the performance of radar homes installed sort of on aircraft with the lightning protection on the radar.
And so usually when we model, we're just looking at the, our performance of itself of the radar, basically the thickness and the dielectric constant of the radar and whatever the antenna is behind it. That's basically the basics of trying to get an antenna pattern out of that. Cause you can model the antenna and you can model the radon and then you can kind of combine the two together to simulate.
What that would look like RF wise, the real key to the University of Nottingham's approach is that they can actually install lightning protection on the radar, which is the next level up, because the RF performance of the radar is not just, or the radar itself, but everything else that's on it, including paint coatings and diverted strips and whatever else is going to be on the radar, erosion boots, things of that sort.
That's been very difficult to model in the past, but Nottingham has broken through that barrier. And is able to not only simulate, the effects of diverted stress, but like accurately do it. So their, their modeling has very F really, really capable meshing of small objects, but it also does larger object too.
So you can get to the fine detail, a diverter strip, like a segment, a diverter strip--like StrikeTape--on top of a larger radome, like on an Airbus A380 radome and get performance numbers, which is unheard of.
Dan: So this paper, Impact of In-situ Radome on Lighting Diverter Strips on Antenna Performance was written by dr. Ana Vukovic, Dr. Phillip Sewell and Dr. Trevor Benson. So I mean, a pretty impressive group. And what they're doing with computer modeling is, is pretty special.
Allen Hall: It's way off the charts special right now. And this is sort of your dream as an RF designer to have this kind of capability at your fingertips.
And. We really haven't had that much power to do things like this without having essentially a supercomputer now, because of the way that a Nottingham is broken up their mesh and able to handle some of those more discrete problems. Now we have the capability of actually modeling an antenna and a radar come in in an aircraft without having all the pieces there.
So we don't have to build it and test it. We just model it, try it. And if you don't like it,
Allen and Dan discuss further cuts in the airline industry, with Airbus announcing 15,000 job cuts. The 737 MAX completing flight testing this week and future prospects are perhaps improving. Lastly, Pakistan has a huge scandal on their hands--is it really possible that up to 40% of pilots there have fake licenses?
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Full Transcript: EP16 - Airbus Cuts Jobs; 737 MAX Testing and the Pakistan Pilot License Scandal
Alan, how you doing
Allen Hall: right boy, busy week aviation. Huh? A lot. A lot of things are changing. Yeah, yeah,
Dan: yeah. A lot of stuff's going on. So, um, let's jump right into that. So Airbus. It's cutting 15,000 jobs. How, and that's a big deal.
Allen Hall: It's a big deal because in America I was thinking about European companies never laying off anybody or, or just letting people retire out of, out of, out of the industry.
But at Airbus needs to make cut backs pretty quickly. Uh, they got to maintain their financial stability here and with the, uh, the market in the airline industry where a lot of airlines in the United States are only flying at about half, half, or maybe three quarters is what they're thinking going forward.
Like Delta is thinking about getting to basically a three quarters aircraft level. There's just not going to be huge demand for new aircraft. Immediately. So whatever they've been building in the last couple of months is probably going to be it until the airline industry catches up. So they're talking about by the sometime next year, 5,000 employees in France, 5,100 in Germany, 1700 in Britain, 900 in Spain and 13 others.
Elsewhere. There is a, obviously a factory and Airbus factory down in Alabama and out of state. There's also a Airbus, um, engineering office in Wichita, Kansas, and maybe a couple others, but, um, this is a far reaching kind of lay off and it's, it's going to be hard for Airbus once he let those people go to sort of get them back.
So if the industry does pick up pretty quickly, It's going to be hard to find those people. It seems like the American economy is going to pick up relatively quickly compared to some others. So in the engineering world, once you lose those engineers, they're going to find some other place to go. It's more stable and it's going to be really difficult, really difficult to get those people back.
Dan: Uh, so yeah, air, air buses, shedding, a lot of workers. Um, I mean, do you see this being. I mean, Boeing is doing similar things. Like we just heard that Dave, they have a lot of their orders are getting canceled. They are also cutting production of the 747. So right before we get back to Airbus, uh, how do you, what's the story of the 747?
Why, why do they need to get rid of that airplane? Just laying it did not do what it was supposed to do.
Allen Hall: The aircraft is built in the seventies and it's been around about 50 years. And at this point with the reduction of international travel, Which is what it's going to be. Uh, so Europe's going to open up to Europe.
United States is pretty much open to United States where you can fly internally in the United States anywhere you want to go. For the most part, uh, you don't need large aircraft like that going international because it's not all international flights. Uh, and it's also a combination to that. The seven 47 is a four engine.
Aircraft and the fuel burns not great. So the triple seven and the triple seven X, whatever they're calling that, that version is going to be the replacement and Airbus has done the same thing with a three 80, because they have the a three 50, which is a 20 hour airplane, which will take over for whatever.
A three 80 had left. Um, so smaller airplanes is going to be a little more profitable.
In this episode we dig into more layoffs in the aviation industry, including Spirit Aerosystems, who is slowing down their work for Boeing. The final Airbus A380s were delivered, marking the end of an era. In our aerospace engineering fails segment, we discuss United Flight 811 and how a cargo door lock nearly took down the entire plane...Lastly, we touched on Joby Aviation and others, discussing some new VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) technology.
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Full Transcript: EP15 - Spirit Aerosystems Stops Work; Final Airbus A380; Crash of United Flight 811; Electric VTOL Tech
https://youtu.be/RRJLYtCpRVk
Dan: This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard, Lightning Tech. At Weather Guard we support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.
You're listening to the Struck Podcast. I'm Dan Blewett.
Allen Hall: I'm Allen hall.
Dan: And here on struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightening protection.
All right on. So another week, another episode, how's everything out there in Massachusetts
Allen Hall: Fine! Dan, you know, it's weird. We were seen to be coming out of the coronavirus thing just fine, but now we're in a drought. And I know last week we're talking about a, was it locus or Cicada? What's the crazy
Dan: books that we had.
Allen Hall: Yeah. So we've gone to from Corona to drought, insect infestations. So it's crazy right now, in a still. Mid June, you know, it's, it's supposed to be, it is nice outside.
Dan: It'll start raining snakes probably any day. So raining Cobra, dogs,
Allen Hall: any kind of small animal
Dan: snakes will come out of the toilet. That's what all, that's what it'll be.
Allen Hall: It's like that movie Snakes on a Plane, right? What's not
Dan: a big, which was, which was funny. It was legitimately funny. Cause people like laughed at it because they thought. That it was ridiculous, but it knew it was one of those movies that it was satire. Like they knew it were that it was ridiculous. And I thought it was really funny.
I really enjoyed it. I got a lot of, a lot of acclaim at the time. A lot of fanfare.
Allen Hall: We finally, we finally hit bare season here. So we had bear in the yard this past week with some colleagues. So it's a mama bear and a couple of Cubs gotta be careful around that.
Dan: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Spring, spring in the mountains.
Dan: Yeah, for sure.
So in today's episode, in our first segment or in our new segment, we've got, about spirit, you know, they're one of the big, part suppliers for Boeing. So some news there, the last . you know, end of an era is, as on our list here, we're going to talk about some of the new developments and cabins and specifically seats.
Obviously this is big time re Corona virus. we're also gonna talk a little bit about, United airlines flight eight 11. Which this is kind of in our learn from failure segment, which, obviously aviation has evolved a lot over the years and we're going to talk about just how cargo doors have changed, in part, because of that incident, which is really, really fascinating, I mean, tragic, but a really interesting story.
And the investigation took some twists and turns. And then we're gonna talk a little bit about. Airbus's new drone copter and this potential flying car model. that's after the Israeli Cormorant, which is, I guess not, it's like a prototype vehicle, but it's actually flown. She hasn't had any passengers in it yet.
So, so Allen what's, what's the deal with spirit spirit
Allen Hall: is a big supplier to Boeing. It has been that way for a long time. They also supply parts to Airbus. And I think that you should have Gulf stream too, but there are big seven 37,
Dr. Ana Vukovic from the University of Nottingham's George Green Institute for Electromagnetics Research joined us to talk about her incredible computational modeling work. She shared examples of how their computer modeling technology can greatly reduce the time and expense involved in testing the electromagnetic properties of new parts, including lightning protection, HIRF and RF designs.
Her team at the University of Nottingham, including Dr. Trevor Benson and Dr. Phil Sewell, are doing amazing things to improve efficiency of parts engineering in the aerospace industry, among others. What previously might take weeks and months to develop and test can now be tested in as a little as a day using their unique computational modeling techniques.
Contact Dr. Vukovic via email or visit the George Green Institute page at the University of Nottingham.
Watch the video version of this podcast on YouTube.
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Struck Podcast EP14: Dr. Ana Vukovic from the University of Nottingham on Computer Modeling
https://youtu.be/q_3hn0dbdcM
Here on Struck, we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection.
Alright, Allen, we got a guest today from across the pond. So who are we talking to today?
Allen Hall: It's Ana Vukovic with the University of Nottingham. She is in computation modeling. And they have developed some really interesting software and technology over the last couple of years so that we can now.
Really simulate aircraft, uh, installations, even on wind turbines, we can do some of the complex geometries we couldn't do before, because we didn't have the techniques. So on I and our group over there have developed these techniques and, uh, [00:01:00] surely gonna open a whole number of doors in aerospace. And obviously is we're all coming out of COVID.
Uh, one of the things that's really trying to save costs and move programs forward. Well, this is one way to do it.
Dan: Yeah. So it was interesting conversation. Obviously I'm not an engineer, so me being the outsider, it, it still boils down and it makes a lot of sense. So obviously when you're trying to engineer new parts for an aircraft, it's incredibly expensive, takes incredibly expensive people to do so it takes a lot of time.
And when you're ready to test these systems together, so not just like an antenna, but the whole radon with antenna inside and diverter strips on the outside of this whole complex thing currently, you guys have to actually build it. And then in most of this is actually put on the plane just to test it, to maybe see if, if there's an effect at all, or if there's like an incremental effect, which seems like a terrible waste of time and money.
And so it is it's can do this on a computer modeling or on computer modeling. Yeah. And just be done with it, which [00:02:00] sounds like, I mean, just makes a ton of sense.
Allen Hall: It makes a lot more sense. You're going to get better products at the end of the day and less expensive products, uh, in the computational world.
We've been trying to get here for since the 1970s, mid 1970s. So it's been a long haul and obviously the computational power we have now. Helps because we doing a lot of computations, but a lot of this is trying to cut down the computations. And then the techniques that have been developed at the university of Nottingham reduce the amount of computational time it takes to do some of these complex problems.
So not only do we have the horsepower now, but we're also smarter about the way we use the horsepower, which cuts down on cost.
Dan: And so she, they have more capabilities then. So in the industry, COMSOL is the software that. You can have a computer at your desktop, you know,
John Redman of Viper Aviation is a former Air Force mechanic Crew Chief who worked on F-15 and F-117 fighter jets. Now, he'll build you your own experimental Rans S20 or Rans S21 plane. Listen in as he tells his story as one of the best USAF mechanics in history, and how he helps those wanting to build their own Rans S20 or S21 aircraft.
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Watch the video version of this podcast here.
Get in touch with John Redman right here via the Viper Aviation website.
Full Transcript - Struck Podcast EP13 with John Redman of Viper Aviation
https://youtu.be/7p0eYhNzE_I
Dan: Alright. So we have an awesome guest today. John Redmond, a real aviation lifer is joining us on the show today. I'm having already recorded our conversation with John Allen. What were your, some of your takeaways?
Allen Hall: Well, John's been in aviation forever and he's one of those guys you meet Wehrli that has been an aircraft mechanic in the air force.
And then once coming out of the air force has been in aviation ever since. And so he knows the ins and outs of pretty much everything. Aircraft related. It's hard to find those people anymore because they're just so [00:01:00] rare. But when you do run across them, it's always a really good, interesting conversation.
Dan: Yeah. So John started his career off, working on, uh, in the air force, worked on F sixteens and F one 17. So he knows those, those two jets, like the back of his hand. And as also clearly, which he didn't really go into depth, uh, on he's worked on some of the, is sort of like. Secret aircraft too, which is pretty cool.
So we'll just have to imagine. Uh, but he mentioned that a little bit about how he was part of some kind of elite teams there. Um, and then he's also been the, uh, after his time in the military, uh, was in the model jet engine business, which is also crazy. So these models, um, with. Really powerful jet engines.
Let me think. What do you say? 130, 2000 RPMs and some of these jet turbines?
Allen Hall: Yeah. That's the full RPM speed and 125 pounds of thrust per engine. That's all ton of thrust for such a little device.
Dan: Amazing. Yeah, pretty intense. And then he, [00:02:00] uh, he and his son, uh, fly drones for the military now as contractors and.
There's some really interesting stuff there. A lot of which he also doesn't doesn't talk about, but he really gave us a really cool in depth, uh, into an all of his career. And so now he's, uh, has a new company, Viper aviation. Uh, you can visit them at Viper aviation, usa.com or on Facebook. At Viper aviation and a he's helping people build their own experimental aircraft.
So tell me, Allen, a little bit about the experimental aircraft industry. Well, the light
Allen Hall: sport aircraft industry is probably 15. Maybe, maybe not that old, but it's relative, relatively new in aviation world. And it allows you to build your own airplane. You have to build 51% of it. So a lot of it's, uh, kits that are.
Halfway built roughly. And then, uh, you end up building the rest of yourself and it becomes your own personal little airplane. It is very popular because it is an inexpensive way to get into aviation, having on an airplane, kind of putter [00:03:00] around in and visit local airports and do that kind of thing. So it's, it is a very, very, very popular thing to do today.
Dan: So, uh, enjoy the conversation with, uh, with John Redman. So really in depth and covers a lot of different levels in the aviation industry. We're happy to have him. And, uh, without further ado, we're gonna turn to our conversation with John Redmond.
Hey, John, how you been? How are you doing?
John Redman: No. We're good. Dan, how are you doing? Hey, Allen. Doing well.
Dan: You're done. So, uh,
In episode 12 of the Struck Podcast we discussed the SpaceX rocket and its lightning issues, the AC-67 rocket crash from the 1980s, and the Apollo 12 and how lightning protection changed following the two strikes it took upon launch.
Watch the video version of this podcast here.
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Struck Podcast EP 12 Full Transcript - SpaceX Launch, The AC-67 Rocket Disaster & Apollo 12
[00:00:00] Dan: [00:00:00] You're listening to the struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett
[00:00:10] Allen Hall: [00:00:10] I'm Allen hall.
[00:00:11] Dan: [00:00:11] And here on struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection. All right, Alan, we're back here for episode 12. What's going on
[00:00:21] Allen Hall: [00:00:21] the dirty dozen of episodes. Here we go.
[00:00:23] Dan: [00:00:23] Yup. Yup. And the next one's the Baker's dozen.
[00:00:25] So we can just keep using this dozens theme for. Lisa another episode. So
[00:00:30] Allen Hall: [00:00:30] Baker Baker's does this relate it to donuts somehow? So when you say Baker's does, and it always sticks, you think of food?
[00:00:36] Dan: [00:00:36] Well, I think all of these, like extra things are just stupid because he ended up just getting charged for them.
[00:00:41] Like you think they just it's always reflected in the price. Like I learned this when I was a kid, my dad's from Oklahoma and we'd be visiting, you know, my grandparents and we'd be driving around and you'd see this firework stands and it's like, You drive past one, it says, buy one, get six free. I'm like, Oh my God, what a deal?
[00:00:59] We need to stop. And [00:01:00] then the next one's like, buy one, get eight free. And I'm like, this is even better. And it's like, buy one, get 10 free buy one, get 12 free. I'm like mom, like, and the, and my grandma's like, honey, they just, they just increase the price. So you buy one, but it's like 12 times more expensive than a normal what it would normally be.
[00:01:17] I'm like, Oh, Well, that seems deceptive. And I was like, I don't know, 10 or something at the time, but that's what I feel like. That's how I feel about the Baker's dozen. It's like, you're not really giving me a 13th, like, come on, you're building it. You just you're charging a dollar 25 for a bagel and sub a dollar 20, like just a minute, just a minute.
[00:01:35] But I have no, I also have no evidence to prove this. So maybe, maybe I'm wrong here. I don't know why
[00:01:39] Allen Hall: [00:01:39] you don't think the chef's taken a loss on that one, huh? Or the Baker's taken a loss on the 13th?
[00:01:45] Dan: [00:01:45] Well, well, I mean the cost of a bagel or, or a donut is probably only a nickel. If that it's 10 cents probably less.
[00:01:53] Yeah. So maybe they are maybe I'm wrong. But anyway. So in today's episode, we're gonna talk a bunch about, uh, [00:02:00] lighting protection as it pertains to spacecraft and rockets, because that's where a lot of this stuff started. So obviously, uh, space X is a site they're launched late, was recently struck by lightning.
[00:02:12] Their craft itself was not done in Texas. So we're going to cover that. And then, uh, obviously the Apollo 12 was one of the big factors that got all lightening protection, a lot of, a lot of steam because. That was a big deal. And so they were like, Disney's not happening again. And then obviously the, uh, the AC 67 rocket that was hit and then malfunctioned and had a sad ending was another tall tale for today's episode on space.
[00:02:40] First of all, we should probably just talk for just 30 seconds cause we could probably get on a really big tangent. Space force. How do you feel about the space force?
[00:02:49] Allen Hall: [00:02:49] Oh,
In Struck episode 11 we discussed propeller planes and what happens when lightning strikes. Propellers used to be made of wood, then aluminum and now carbon fiber, but leading edge erosion and protection is critical, so how do manufacturers plan for this?
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Watch the YouTube video version here.
Struck Podcast EP11 Transcript: Propeller Technology and Prop Plane Lightning Protection
Dan: This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. At Weather Guard, we support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.
You're listening to the Struck Podcast. I'm Dan Blewett.
Allen: I'm Allen hall
Dan: and here on Sruck we talk about everything aviation, aerospace, engineering, and lightning protection.
Allen, how are you doing? Episode 11 we're really getting up there.
Allen: Yeah. Exciting.
Dan: We're 10% deep. 10% more than we had last week.
Allen: Oh, that's true.
Yeah. That's good. Good math right there.
It's ready to go for a philosophy
major, right?
Dan: Yeah. Gonna be going to continue getting, getting lower and lower as we go.
Well. Oh, that's true too. Right? It's a declining return on investment.
Right. So, yeah, this is rough. This is rough. So today's episode we're going to chat about, um, leading edges on, uh, on prop planes, uh, and some of just the electrical problems that can cause like noise issues and obviously like the lightening implications.
Yeah. Um, cause there's obviously a lot of different types of props. There's different ways of combating that stuff. So that's kind of on our docket today. That's gonna probably. Be a pretty widespread conversation it sounds like. But first things first, what's your favorite airline? Oh, you have to pick one.
Who do you go with?
Allen: American and in America
Dan: In America.
Allen: Southwest.
Dan: Southwest.
Allen: It isn't because I like them either. Uh, because I, I really. The thing about Southwest is so, well, it was so full. Every year, every flight I've been on with Southwest, and probably the last two or three years has been 100% full. Uh, but you got to give them some CRA, a little bit of credit that the.
Flight staff is very amenable, helpful, upfront, cheery, and you do get on off the airplane pretty fast and they fly a lot of different places and it's pretty clean cut. So you can put some luggage on the airplane and they get charged a whole bunch of money. Yeah. Southwest,
Dan: Southwest, I do like their baggage system.
I'll give them that. I had a couple of rough experiences, uh, like the last, within the last two years kind of soured me on it. But I do agree with everything you just said. It's nice when you're on like Delta or American, they'll have power outlets on the seats that someone doesn't have yet.
But Southwest has the free, and I don't know if other airlines do this.
Maybe Delta does, but uh, Southwest has the free live TV and movies that are free and you can, you can buy wifi for about eight bucks, whatever it is. So that's, that's not bad. Yeah. It's
not bad.
No, it's not bad. It's just so full. Where Elisa was, it was so full. It's not full anymore.
No more. Yeah. In the land of coronavirus, that was the before time in the before time.
They had full airplanes. Right after time. Well, I'm not so sure.
Allen: What do you think it's going to change? I don't think it's gonna change all that much.
Dan: I think probably I probably can't. The logistics there just won't make sense to fly half full airplanes.
Allen: No. No, it makes zero sense at all. And I'm kind kinda wondering, based on some of the Twitter traffic I see lately airplanes are pretty fall in some cases.
Uh, you know,
There are more and more electric plane companies popping up, many of them trying to take over the short trip market. Air taxis and planes serving small airstrips and airports can potentially be big business...if these aircraft can get certified. We discuss electric aviation challenges and the difficulty of certifying a new aircraft from the ground up.
Learn more about Weather Guard Lightning Tech's StrikeTape lightning protection systems here: https://weatherguardaero.com/striketape
Struck Podcast EP10 Full Transcript - All About Electric Aircraft, Eviation, Ampaire and Airbus E-Fan X
Watch the video version here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MnTSui6FYbQ
https://youtu.be/MnTSui6FYbQ
All right.
Welcome back. This is struck episode 10 Allen, how are you doing?
Hey, Dan. Good. How are, how's Washington DC doing? Uh,
we're, we're hanging in there starting to get nice 80 82 degrees, I think today. Partly sunny, 85 yesterday. Hm. Interesting. Interesting. Just a sudden jump into summer weather, so it was nice.
Yeah. Well that's cool. Yeah.
So baseball,
no, nothing. There's no nothing, but the national mall is very green. When I go down there today. Mmm. I guess the center cut portion of the, of, of the mall, which I, that's such a weird saying. Mall always sounds strange to me because you just, who doesn't associate the word mall with a little like a shopping mall?
Like going in and out of forever 21, they're like, you don't know? No, that's where I shop. But you know, my little sister, um, it's a park.
It's a park.
Yeah. Like the term is, it's strange. It's just like. Anyway, I digress. But nah, the grass, just like all the wildlife, like are people that talk about wildlife coming back with the crowbar by herself.
The grass has just superb, super green dense. Cause people aren't on it. They kind of like kept us off and there's not that many people in general. So yeah. Um, the parks here in DC or live and well, so, so yeah.
Well, did you see that video yesterday? I think it was yesterday. Uh, I'm just thinking, cause no one's out on the streets right now.
You see that tiger walking down the street of that town of Mexico and the guy's trying to last through the tiger down the street. Do you see that?
That seems like a fool's errand to trying to catch a tiger. That's a good way to get eaten by that tiger. You just gotta let that tiger go to an extent. You got a tranquilizer, dart it and call it.
Call it a day.
They last through this tiger and the street. Unbelievable. Like what's their tiger in the street? Is that somebody's pet that just got out? It's kind of like Florida with the pythons, right? Like people let off their pythons and then they try to go out in the wild and they're 50 feet long and they're,
yeah, I remember seeing this video and it was somewhere in like me, like India or you know, where like Jaguars and like cheetahs are like, and again, I don't know if this exactly works.
I don't know if cheetahs are in India, but. There was like one of these big cats, so it wasn't a tiger, obviously it was like a Jaguar cheetah, like one is a medium size, big cats, but it was like in this little town and it was just like running around like tackles a dude. Then everyone's like chasing it, chasing it around, and it was kind of terrifying how fast the scared.
You know, like five foot long, whatever it was. I think it was, I think it was like a Jaguar, but yeah, it's just, it was just this cat was like trying to get out. Everyone was like trying to shoot out of the little village. It was like jumping up this wall, this building and this building and just like, it was scary because if you're anywhere around.
This cat is like, Oh, I'm going to go punch you in the face, or I'm going to bite you real fast. I'm gonna try to go this way and go that way. I mean, the agility, the agility of these wild animals, it's just impressive. Remarkable, isn't it? Yeah.
The 2019 Russian AeroFlot flight crashed after a lightning strike...why did this happen? We also talked about Bye Aerospace's E-Flyer electric plane, Coronavirus detection technology from Airbus, and more.
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Episode 9 Full Transcript: Bye Aerospace, Airbus Coronavirus Detection & More
Welcome back to the Struck podcast. This is episode nine. Uh, Allen, what's going on?
Well, Hey Dan. Well, we're busily working away and coronavirus season, but enough of coronavirus I'm about done talking about that. What's new and what's new in your neck of the woods?
Uh, I got these really cool plastic handles that you can put grocery bags on, so it's like a real like handle and then you, it's got these weird, I'm going to, I'm going to hold it up for the camera here. It's on my desk. You slipped into the handles. It's a handle for handles. You put the bags in there, so when you're a city dweller, these things make your, I went to Costco like a month ago. Yeah, and I, and I like really loaded up and I put it all into reusable bags and they were like probably 40 pounds he took, they're very heavy. Whoa. It's not that big a deal except those little like canvas or nylon straps or have those, like, they just like dig into your skin after a while. And so it's like not the weight that's killing you. It's just like that. It just really just digs into your fingers and your Palm. So I got those. That's a cool little piece of a. Ingenious plastic that I got from Amazon. So, so that's news in my life. Real exciting, right? I got some groceries, grocery carriers. Well, I like pretty much all my, uh, daily. I mean, you take it for granted when you've lived in the suburbs your whole life, which I, which I have, which I am excited to be a city dweller. But, uh, and I, and I say the word dweller, somebody sarcastically because he says the word dweller, but, um, it's those little things like when you get all your groceries, sometimes you have to get heavier stuff than normal. And sometimes I'll just be like in a place and I'm like, Oh, I'll just get groceries here. Then I have like a 12 block walk home cause I like walking. But that's kind of a long way to carry something heavy that's like digging into your hands. So he's little creature comfort. So you can have in your backpack or your briefcase or whatever can come in handy. So when you need one of those little, uh, little wagons I've seen where they load groceries in the wagon, they call them buggies. But I'm not on the bus. I'm not on the buggy train because number one, it's big. And I don't want, like, if I'm going to. Take something there. I'd rather carry it home personally cause it's exercise. It's good grip strength. Like it's a, yeah, it's a good, good thing to carry groceries home. But just like those straps in my hands, there's not, not gonna be a pleasant thing for longterm. So plus you can belt, you can ball up like five bags in it, you know, when you like put all your groceries on one hand you do the same thing with those handles and it's super convenient. So . Well, is it something that Jeff Bezos put on your Amazon screen? How does that all work? Make that? I've never seen that before. Obviously. Bayzos knows I am not going to be doing that. I figured they existed, so I kind of searched them online, like grocery bag handles or something like that. Um, yeah, I assumed that, but I did have a, uh, a grocery snafu the other day, so I ordered Instacart from Costco. Yeah. Which, uh. You know, the Instacart's a grocery, grocery delivery service. Yup. Yup. And my first order, which was like two or three weeks ago, went fine without a hitch. They had everything that I asked for or whatever. This time, they're out of a couple of products, which no big deal,
Hector Del Aguila is an expert in EMI, Lightning Protection and HIRF, and also serves as a DER (designated engineering representative) for the FAA. In this episode of the Struck Podcast, he shares wisdom from his career as a researcher, his time with Eclipse Aircraft, and how his work on military aircraft helped shape his private sector work in the aviation industry. Hector is also an EME specialist, providing consulting services to numerous government contractors and organizations.
Hector is the president of Golden Aero Consulting and we are very grateful to have him on the show. Watch the YouTube video version of this podcast episode here: https://youtu.be/30kqC-6uwtg
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Show Transcript - Struck Podcast EP8 with Hector Del Aguila, FAA DER
And as part of that education, your focus, and at the time you weren't, were you thinking about being, we're working in the aircraft industry or were you just electromagnetics and you just like the math?
I always have a desire to, to work in our space and, and I think we're on an aircraft. And, for personal reasons because of, my mother died on the, blank crush, when I was, seven or eight years old and, and soil was thought about, when I became, when I was studying engineering.
That's something that the, that it peaked my interest. And I decided to move, to do research on things to do, to protect, Not on the aircraft, but then like electrical and electronic systems in general
and your stuff, like you're originally from Korea.
Yeah. I was wondering through, yeah,
you say it better than I do.
It's such an
awesome, yeah. I came here, you know, in my early twenties and yeah. And, at the study and then that's it.
So after, after you had your, you guys' degree in Texas, you went, where was your next step? Where did you go?
Oh, yeah. Well, after I got the degree at Texas, while I was working on my graduate, degree, I taught in the university.
I thought about the metrics and, and I engineered laboratories about that point a couple of years. Well, I'll say a graduate assistant. And they, after that, I moved to Albuquerque to a, an organization called LaFollette. That's the air force operational test and evaluation center, as an RF engineer.
Not familiar with that place. What did they do? What do they
call that place at that organization? in New Mexico, they do operational testing of, of systems, and, aerospace systems and these stairs, in, in that particular time, it was some satellites and telecommunication systems is what I thought.
And ?
No. Well, what kind of airplanes were you working on at the time?
Well, I thought at that time he was, at that time was not airplanes at the time. It was mostly, telecommunication systems. gotcha. Satellites, satellite, things like that. For example, there was a, there was a system called middle star.
I'll try service.
So after about three years of being on the operational world, I realized that that's not really what my main interest was. So, because I wanted to do some reasons to do research, and after three years, I moved from to. so the air force research laboratory worked there for about 20 years doing research, again, looking at protection of electrical systems, things like that from, from the electromagnetic standpoint.
So, as, as, I mean, doing research over a 20 year span has gotta be pretty incredible to see. A lot of the technology change, just I'm sure the, the resources you had, you know, in just the systems and you, and you could test and I'll just like the different, you know, the technology and, and software I'm sure use it.
How did, how did research change for you over such a long period of time? Well, it, it was, it was very nice because we were able to,
In episode seven of Struck, we discuss Panasonic avionics' white paper about millennial travelers, and whether WiFi should be free on all flights. We also talk about ThinKom's satcom radome technology and how their antennas help make in-flight WiFi a viable solution for travelers.
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Transcript
Dan: Welcome back. This is the Struck podcast,episode seven. I'm your cohost. Dan Blewett. I'm joined here remotely by lightning protection expert. And CEO of weather guard, lightening tech, Allen hall. Allen, how are you doing?
Allen: Great. Dan, how you been?
Dan: I'm doing well. Um, I feel like this has been like a little bit of an easier, slightly more focused week for me.
I don't know why it's rained a lot of the week, but overall pretty good. How about you?
Allen: Uh, we've been getting in and out. You know, we're sitting at this new manufacturing facility, so we've been running around back and forth quite a bit. But, uh, you know, it's still pretty quiet. All the shops are still closed.
All the restaurants are still closed, so there's really no place to go. Have you been over to the Walmarts in D.C lately? Has
Dan: To what? To get pepper sprayed? No, I have not. I have not. Um, and then we talked about that story, although it might've been cut out of this, out of the episode, but. Yeah. Yeah.
What, what your Allen's alluding to for you listening as a, there was a story in DC that he sent me that a woman was getting onto the elevator at a Walmart, which, you know, in cities there's Walmarts with you on the second, third floor, they might occupy a number of vertical floors and have parking beneath them, or loft apartments above or below, whatever.
And a woman was getting into the elevator and other other people were trying to get into the elevator to, you know, like as people do, and she's like, Oh no, you're not coming to my elevator. And she pepper sprayed. So another woman and the cops were called, and then like her, the statements from her were just unbelievable.
She's like, Oh no, you're not going to get in my,
in my elevator gave me that Corona virus.
It was just like straight out of Jerry Springer and it was an amazing story. I showed up my family
Allen: and that hasn't spread has it? I mean, Oh, they nailed the target. Do you guys have Kmart? I guess Kmart is closed or what?
Dan: I mean, Kmart does not exist in Washington D C um, I don't. I have Kmarts have been going out of business for a while. I think they still are a thing, but like kind of not really.
Allen: Just lost a harvest. Yeah. We just lost ours
Dan: North of here. I mean, DC is a pretty affluent little city, so Kmart, I don't know who's going to Kmart, but, but yeah.
But the interesting piece of news on my end is I ordered my groceries for the first time ever the other day ordered Costco did. Yeah. Okay. It was glorious. It was glorious. Sy, my, my sister has been, I mean, rightfully so. My sister's, uh, she's due with her second child in two weeks, and so she earns the family like, Hey, it's a complicated situation because, um, she's afraid that her and her husband are gonna maybe contract something at the hospital right after she goes birth.
So she doesn't want to come home with her new baby greet my parents. You know, everyone wants to see the baby, and then my parents get something from them because they've been in the hospital. So it's kind of like they've been asked, they've asked us to, Hey, can you guys all quarantine for two weeks before, um, the birth?
And then we're really just probably not going to see them for the first two weeks after, so they can sort of quarantine and be their own little family unit in the house. Um, right when they get home with the new baby.
How do we eliminate flammable fuel vapor in transport aircraft fuel tanks? Equipment like the Parker fuel inerting system - OBIGGS - and Air Separation Modules fill the ullage space with inert nitrogen gas. The Pilatus PC12 was a game-changer. Is the PC24 business jet headed for the same level of success?Cirrus Aircraft introduced the airframe parachute system on their SR-20. With the new Vision Jet, Cirrus and Garmin take safety to the next level with the Safe Return System. Check out the Safe Return System in operation via YouTube - https://youtu.be/JvzPpOknjME
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
6:20 Parker Aerospace's inerting systems 17:57 The Pilatus PC12 and PC24 23:58 Lightning and turboprop engines 25:49 Cirrus parachute and Safe Return system 33:13 Garmin makes awesome products
Transcript:
Struck EP6
Dan: Hello, welcome back. This is the Struck podcast, episode six. I'm your cohost Dan Blewett, and here on the Struck podcast we talk about everything, lightning protection, aviation and aerospace tech. And I am here joined remotely by lightning protection expert, Allen Hall. Allen, how are you?
Allen: Great. Dan, how are you doing?
Dan: Doing well, so. A lot of new things going on this week. I got a new mic on the way, so ordered some new parts for my podcasting set up here. I got this huge, like dr octopus, um, like at home set up, which is pretty intense. Um, what's going on with you up there?
Allen: Uh, well, we've been through a couple of snowstorms over the last week. Uh, everybody is still quarantined for the most part. They canceled school for the rest of the year. Uh, how's everyone feel about that? Not happy, not happy at all. Uh, all the, the kids are just missing being with the kids and the teachers are trying to work, uh, classes through zoom and, or other video formats, and it's just not the same. And so the kids. Are really struggling with the lack of sort of one-on-one or a groups with the teacher interactions. I'm just trying to get homework done. The other thing that he announced, it's, it's all pass fail. So the kids don't have grades like they would normally, and my daughter's a junior so. This is sort of like the year you need grades to start applying to schools and no one showed her and the SATs have been shoved off and it's just, everything's in chaos right now. Um, so that's, that's, uh, an unusual twist cause I didn't think the sat would get shoved off like that, but it, it did, it got pushed off until then, until the fall.
And then the other thing that seems like it's happening is a lot of the colleges and universities. Or not worrying about sat scores. So they're just saying, apply with what you have, which is going to be, it's going to be an interesting curve that's just going to be on, uh, for the next couple of years to see how that all plays out.
We're not going to know, obviously for several years to see what happens there, but, um, kids not going to class all the time and, and just know a couple of teachers in different parts of the country. And. They're having trouble with the kids showing up on the, on the video, uh, video links, like someone that just don't show up and what are you going to do?
There's really, you can't force them to show up. Right. So if they're not going to show up, they're not going to show up. Yeah. It's unfortunate because the kids are really missing out on a good opportunity to learn. You know, if you're sitting at home in bounds, we'll be learning something. Yeah, we'll see.
Well, they're probably Googling things, if that's any consolation. Tick tock, tick tock you tubing a, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or learning how to, I mean, there's so much weird stuff on Instagram, like interesting stuff. I watch. Little clips of manufacturing and woodworking and li...
In this episode of Struck we discuss some of the unique parts manufacturers and what they're doing in the aerospace industry. Kanfit--who makes unique composite and metal parts--can create in-house what it often takes multiple parts suppliers to make. We also discuss Niles expanded metal foils and how they protect aircraft; lastly, we discussed Hondajet's unique and game-changing robotic painting system and why it makes a big difference in lightning protection.
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Check out the companies we discuss during this podcast:
Kanfit - www.kanfit.com
Niles - http://www.nilesexpandedmetals.com/lightning-strike-protection/
Hondajet - https://www.hondajet.com
5:48 Kanfit capabilities 9:58 The difficulties of entering the aerospace market 14:03 How Kanfit builds efficient parts with composite and metal technologies 16:10 Niles expanded metal foils 18:44 Copper and aluminum expanded metal foils on composite parts 21:48 Hondajet painting 23:55 Why Hondajet's robotic painting is genius 30:10 Problems with Boeing 787 paint adhesion on the wing
Transcript
EP5 High Tech Composite Parts, Hondajet Robotic Painting and Metal Foils
00:00:08 - 00:05:01
Welcome back this is episode five of the struck podcast. I'm your co-host. Dan Blewett and I'm joined here remotely by lightning protection expert. Allen Hall. Allen, How are you. Great Dan how you doing? I'm doing well here on the struck podcast. We talk about everything. Lightning aviation and just current news in the airspace field. So Allen what is going on today in aviation. What do you got any news for us? Well everything is not flying. That's the news today. So planes are just buses. So Airbus's are literal buses. Right there literally buses or their cargo. Airplanes are seeing a lot of conversions happening making passenger planes cargo planes. Which is the thing to do. FedEx is really busy. There's a think of New York Times article talking about how busy FedEx is and We're on pretty much every FedEx aircraft with our straight product and when you have seen them flying a lot because everybody's things off Amazon and checks is one way to do. That was until recently you know FedEx an Amazon had a parting of the ways there. But there's still a lot of things being mailed around Because you know you stuck at home. So there's a lot of cargo business going on in that at least keeping some portion of the airplanes flying which is beneficial. Yeah and in my apartment building here in DC. They've and God bless all the people that are doing a lot of these tasks like concierge desk and they go get your packages from them and they. They're twenty-four seven which is nice compared to some buildings but yeah they said like hey please come down and get your packages quick when they come because we have way more packages than even like the table Christmas season. Whoa yeah. I mean so when you're you know I'm a pretty good-sized building and when you consider yeah just the people are trying to order literally everything and not leave their house which is good in the pandemic but it's not good for the people who have to handle all these packages and right now. We have to come down. Sign for like you know. That's fine for me. I interact with one person one time. But they're interacting with every every every day. Yeah so all of us have just been obviously trying to abide by whatever rules. They said and give them their distance and take their packaging and be about our way. But you know there's a lot of people doing those jobs you know whether it's your postal worker. You're package delivery man or woman. You're in all these things grocery workers like there's a lot of essential jobs that are just you know. I appreciate everyone. Continue to do those.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, Allen and Dan discuss the impacts on the aircraft industry and the internal workings of aircraft companies. How many aircraft OEMs will survive this world-changing struggle?
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Transcript
Dan: Welcome back! This is episode 4 of the Struck Podcast. I'm your co-host DanBlewett and I'm here joined remotely by lightning protection expert Allen Hall. Allen, how are you doin?
Allen: Great Dan, how are you doin' down in Washington DC?
Dan: I am doing well. It's been beautiful the last couple days. It was almost eighty degrees yesterday. And so it's really nice out now but pretty windy. I think I want to probably get a run in after the podcast is over. But yeah it's still, the ghost town which I think is the right thing to do. But how's
Williamstown doing? Is it warming up there yet?
Allen: No. In fact your wind storm is our snowstorm. It's supposed to snow tonight between one and three inches. So tomorrow would have been a snow day for the kids not to go to school, but obviously, they're home already. So that's out the window. But we have not reached spring yet. We're still a couple good weeks away from real spring.
Dan: Yikes.We're--you know as we talked about-- weeks away from anything right now. There's only one thing we're all wondering how many weeks away it is which is when does this whole thing start to end. Got any predictions?
Allen: I think we're talking about middle May. And just listening to some news last night and some airline talk over the last couple of days, it seems like in at least the United States you may see some activity and some people returning to work and being a little more productive. Starting in May and then it slowly gradually increases where we bring people back and get things going again. I was just at one of our customers' facilities earlier today and there was roughly twenty percent of the people there. And it's been that way for a couple of weeks but they're also thinking maybe next week a couple more people can come back. Not huge percentages. But as things have leveled out, at least around us, they're probably gonna bring some of them back.
Dan: Yeah. So as we check up on the airline industry, there are a couple new news stories just recently. So Boeing and Airbus are both closing some factories down at least temporarily. You know Airbus in Alabama they're not laying off their employees, they're gonna have their jobs back it sounds like. But they're just heading home for right now. So they are furloughed I guess. And then Germanwings which is the low-budget airline from Lufthansa overseas sounds like they're shutting them down for good and just sort of consolidating with their overall bigger brand. Do you expect more of this?
Allen: Too many airplanes
Dan: Yeah. I mean is this a...I was listening to another podcast earlier today and they were talking about auto industry brands. And that at one point there were a hundred ten different auto manufacturers. Brands like Chrysler, Ford, Jeep. And like economic downturns like this can sort of just eliminate some of the ones we don't need necessarily. Do you feel like that's happening here in aviation?
Allen: Yeah. Downturns have predicted winners and losers. If you have enough cash stored away and you have an ability to quickly scale back up, you're gonna be a winner. If you don't you're going to be gone. And you saw that in the aircraft industry in the United States through if you look into the late 60s and the early 70s. There was a lot of small aircraft manufacturing--a lot of more aircraft manufacturing. Douglas Aircraft, McDonnell Douglas is still around. Yeah. There was a lot more aircraft manufacturers. A lot of them were leftover from sort of World War 2 era.
In episode three, we discuss some of the industry standards in testing aircraft lightning protection, SAE documents 5414B, 5412B and 5416A, and much more.
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Transcript:
Dan: Welcome back. This is episode three of the Struck Podcast. I'm your co-host
Dan Blewett and I'm joined here by lightning protection and aviation expert Allen Hall. Allen how are you doing?
Allen: Great dan how are you?
Dan: I'm doing well. The quarantine is in full force. I'm not leaving my home except for a little bit of exercise and some very haphazard shopping. I guess but how are you guys holding up?
Allen: Well everybody's home obviously. So the college is being done online and the local public school should be switching over to some sort of quasi online classroom hopefully next week. So the kids are gonna start some sort of school which would be good because they're definitely not going back until earliest is May 4th. So we're about a month away from that.
Dan: Yeah and I was listening to another podcast this morning and one of the co-hosts she said you know my kids go to expensive private schools and she said it's just it's just not going well with the online learning. She's really not been pleased. She said it's just a poor experience so far and disorganized and granted I mean it's not to point any fingers to anyone, this is a tough situation for teachers to grab all their stuff and suddenly go online, but you know I think it's really just growing pains but she was bringing that up. They were talking about whether college students will get refunded or anyone will get any kind of tuition reimbursement. She said you know like we understand the situation, but at the same time not only are they not getting in person teaching but they're also just not really getting a great experience in general.
Allen: Yeah the thing we noticed was the room and board obviously got waived for in this case my son goes to Union College and they're on a trimester system. So they were just about to start their last trimester and the room aboard has obviously been waived because there's nobody on campus. But the yeah curriculum part we're still paying for and I think at least at the college level it's probably a little bit better at because they've been doing things like that for a while. A lot of things are online there but in the public schools it doesn't tend to be that way. So they've got to change the way they deliver the curriculum and that that's a lot of work to do. You know when you're in front of a board talking in front of 20 odd kids that's one way. But if you're trying to give something audio, visual, presentable via zoom typically it's a much different format to present information. So I can see why schools will be struggling with that. And I know that's here what they've been doing is the teachers have been sending out essentially an email a day saying here are some things you can read or here are some activities you can do here's some research you can do just to keep everybody active. It's not required, no one's getting graded on it, but it seems like the vast majority I would say probably 80% plus of the local kids are actually doing it. And the parents seem to be overseeing a lot of that obviously. But you know at least there's some learning going on. We're not just sitting at home watching YouTube or whatever the kids are doing watching tick tock probably.
Dan: Yeah it's hard. I mean it everyone was just thrown for such a loop and there's gonna be growing pains you know. And teachers work so hard. It's just a lot of transition I'm sure for them. All their curriculum just thrown into chaos.
Allen: Right to change track right now. Well I'm curious to see how this is gonna work - if they're gonna try to bring all th...
In episode two, Allen discusses some of the unique lightning protection technology that's now found on aircraft, including new materials--such as woven wire carbon fiber--that can help protect from lightning strikes.
Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Transcript
Dan: Welcome back! This is episode two of the Struck Podcast. I am your co-host Dan Blewett. I'm here visited remotely by lightning protection expert and CEO of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, Allen Hall. Allen what's going on?
Allen: Hey Dan, how's it going there in Washington DC? Are you guys getting some sunny weather down there finally?
Dan: It was beautiful today. I'm going to go run later. I try to run in straight lines on the sidewalk till I see a human, then take a sharp left into traffic to avoid them breathing on me or me breathing on them.
Allen: What's the etiquette rules there when you approach someone running the opposite way? Does everybody just go to their right? Do they do the opposite in the UK? How does that work?
Dan: I subconsciously hold my breath. I've noticed myself doing it like I don't want to breathe your air in, don't breathe my air. Everyone keep your air to yourself. Also you can see the subtle movements of people starting to get out of your way. Sometimes it's not subtle and that's fine, no one's getting offended. I think people are friendlier. I think I'm giving people a nod, people are making eye contact with me. We're all like “hey, thanks for staying six feet away”. We appreciate each other. There's honestly a vibe from that, which isn't surprising. I feel like most Americans and most people around the world right now know that we are in this together. We understand the rules. I'm going to stay away from you out of respect, and you do the same. There is that kind of feeling here in the city, which I think is kind of nice. There's a little bit of a neighborly feel to it, which is good.
Allen: Well, you're kind of in an epicenter as we keep hearing on the news.
Dan: We’re a very diverse city, the capital of the United States. But we don't have any cases yet, which is good. It seems like it's only in the three hundreds.
Allen: Well that's not bad for a city of that size quite honestly. New York City is really taking the brunt of it right now. The cases there are scary.
Dan: DC--I don't know the population here but--it's not a big city. There's a huge metro area, like it's an epicenter. The traffic is disproportionately large to the population, but I think there's only maybe a 700,000 DC population.
Allen: Officially in the district, is that what it is? It's not a very large area.
Dan: It's a very walkable city. Kind of like a three mile radius, it's nothing like Chicago which was my epicenter living in Illinois the last ten years. Chicago is very big, and of course New York is so much bigger than that. It's been interesting.
Allen: Are people wearing masks down there? Have you seen anybody jogging with a mask? Or is it pretty much keeping your distance. Cause I’ve seen more masks in the last three or four days than I've seen in a long time.
Dan: What about you? You're up in the wilderness. It's beautiful up where you are in Williamstown, but what's your situation? Do you guys have a good amount of masks or a little bit?
Allen: It's weird. We're so sparse out here that people that are running around are mostly without masks. When I saw one the other day I thought “wow that's unusual”. We went to the next town over, getting out of the house and driving somewhere to try and help everybody get through sanity, and people were wearing masks. And I thought well it's probably a smart move, particularly if you're in those vulnerable categories, to throw a mask on. And as we're testing we're finding out there's a lot more...
In episode one, lightning protection expert Allen Hall discusses advances in aircraft lightning protection throughout aviation history. We also dive into Boeing's recent trouble with the 737 Max and what this means for the aviation industry.
Podcast Transcript
Dan: Welcome this is the first episode of the Struck Podcast I'm your co-host Dan Blewett and I am joined here by lightning protection expert Allen Hall. Allen how are you?
Allen: Hey Dan, how are you doing?
Dan: Doing well, doing well So we are here both self isolating in separate cities. I'm here in Washington DC and you're in the on the border of Vermont over on the Massachusetts side. So yeah how's everything going up there?
Allen: It's snowing we're gonna get eight inches of snow today. It's one of those freak March storms. I guess is today the first day of spring? It's got to be close to it right?
Dan: Yeah yeah
Allen: But we're so far north it's still winter time until about mid April so we're sort of self isolating via snowstorm today
Dan: Gotcha. So here on the struck podcast we're gonna talk about everything aviation lightning protection because Allen here is the CEO of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, which is a lightning protection company and you've been in this industry for over twenty plus years
Allen: Yeah
Dan: Lightning protection in both the aviation industry and on wind turbine so you've seen a lot of the evolution of this in the field.
Allen: Oh yeah we've seen a lot of changes in my lifetime and it's one of those things that we've been doing some research on here in our company and kind of going back through some of the history and it's fascinating to see how much has changed in the last 50 years from airplanes falling out of the sky, big airplanes falling out of the sky, to where we are now, which it's a pretty rare event which is where it's way it should be right I mean we should be evolving over time getting smarter and learning you know what's right and what's wrong and we've made huge progress but it doesn't mean there's not a lot more to go and there is.
Dan: Yeah and you know we think of all these different modes of transportation and we think of flying being this big scary thing because we're obviously huge you know so heavy bird up in the sky but yet they're incredibly safe and I think that's owed to all the engineers and the regulations and you know with even just the little things you have swapping out a new part for a plane maybe one that wears out like there's just a lot of steps you have to go to to just make sure the new part that goes in there is as good or better as the previous and you can't just throw anything on there there's no cobbling together an airplane like you could maybe a used car
Allen: Right
Dan: and that's really there's a lot of sense.
Allen: Yeah just because the safety aspects involved and it's a combination of obviously the people who design airplanes getting smarter and having a lot of computational ability helps in that and then just the process has changed over time where we're much more focused on looking at safety and looking at probabilities of safety and in delving deep deep deep into systems and deep deep deep into aircraft structure and to test it and make sure that it's going to do what we think it's going to do as we go forward. So there's tons and tons and thousands and thousands and thousands of man-hours that go into making an airplane anymore and in you know roughly a pretty much any airplane program it's going to be several hundred million dollars to billions of dollars to get developed before it first even really gets out in the field. There's a lot of money, a lot of effort to make those airplane safe, thank goodness.
Dan: Yeah and so for you as a lightning protection expert you know where does this all start? I know that one of the first recorded lightning strikes on aircraft was on a German Zeppelin back in 1915 and the thing just basically just got...