This is the second episode recorded at my trip to Airbus in Toulouse and we take a trip down memory lane, covering some of Airbus’ history. The first part of the episode is a recorded presentation (with some Q&A) with Alan Pardo, head of Marketing Communication at Airbus Toulouse. We cover the development of Airbus in general, and the Toulouse factory in particular. The second part is a walk through the Aeroscopia museum in Toulouse with David Bauser. Before his retirement he has worked for Airbus on the A-300 and the Concorde. We discuss those two airplanes, plus some general anecdotes from his time at Airbus.

During his career in the Royal Air Force, Dave Gledhill has been flying as a navigator in the Tornado ADV. After his career he wrote a book about this airplane, and its (not always problem-free) introduction into service with the RAF. In this episode we talk about the airplane, about his flying, about some of the challenges during its development and introduction into service, and how they were overcome to make the F.3 a capable interceptor after all.

This is my report from Farnborough International Airshow 2016. The episode contains 13 short interviews, as listed below. I had an absolute blast in Farnborough, especially because I met the APG crew and participated in the epic live recording of APG 229.

I want to thank all those who donate(d), which helped make this trip possible. Once again, I forgot to do that in the show … sorry for that.

Here are a few of the pictures I took. If you want more, just google; the internet is full of them.

This is the first of several episodes from my trip to Airbus Toulouse: we cover flight testing of the A350. We have two guests. First, we speak with Peter Chandler, a test pilot at Airbus, about envelope expansion, the relationship between simulation and the real airplane, and test flying in general. Our second guest is Pascal Verneau, a test flight engineer. We discuss his role in flight testing, as well as some special equipment installed in (some of) the testing aircraft.

In this episode we get a peek into how OHB System AG in Bremen develops satellites — mostly based on the Galileo navigation satellites. We speak with Christian Pauly about systems engineering, with Mathias Tausche about manufacturing and integration, with Andreas Wortmann about the software on the satellites, and with Ingo Engeln about the company as a whole.

As a background, you may want to listen to omega tau 26 about satellite buses. omega tau 204 on Planet Labs’ small satellites may be interesting as a contrast.