STRUCK: An Aerospace Engineering & Lightning Protection Show

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 like machining. So they're all probably learning lots of useless little things that are just so there are useful things like what if you stuck in the woods and you need to Willie yourself a canoe to swim downstream.

You know what else you going to learn that ad side YouTube. Exactly. Exactly. So. You've got some news, you're in a new, a new studio as well. So tell me about your new space. So we're moving into a new manufacturing space. Uh, everybody's frantically, uh, putting the space up. Uh, we got contractors coming in.

Individually, so they're kind of coming one at a time because of the Corona virus situation. Um, power's in, uh, plumbing is in, uh, we're working on carpeting. Uh, equipment's coming its way, so everything's coming in. It just delays because of ways things are getting shipped and everybody's just tied up on all the truckers are all tied up so.

It's, it's taken a little longer than we thought it was going to take, but it's actually coming together quite nicely. Again, as part of the move, I actually have a podcast space, which is super because they have been wanting to do that for the last couple of months. I've been waiting to get in here, so we're going to make some changes too, and we'll probably have your setup quite honestly. We'll have your set up of equipment in here and yeah, that'd be nice. Finally.

Dan:  Yeah, it's, it's, it takes some doing, but it's definitely nice to just be able to kind of like hit a couple buttons and just reach from where you're sitting and just be ready to go. Yeah. It's, uh, it's every, every little kid's podcasting dream, of course, which is, which is funny that I say that because podcasting is such a ubiquitous thing now that. There might be a little kids that want to be podcasters when they grow up. Isn't that a weird thing to think about, but I mean, a lot of them, yeah, it's right. 

Allen: It's radio now. It's exactly. Radio. Radio has died. A slow death and everything is either gone to satellite or gone on to podcasting. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't listened to radio in so long.

Dan: I mean like why would I, who would listen to radio? I mean. Yeah. You don't feel some merits, but yeah, so through commercials, they're curating music for you.

Allen:  It's sort of civilization. You're in a big, you're in a big area where there's a lot of radio stations, Washington, D C there's a plethora of radio stations where we are.

There's one that's close by. You can actually get, and you can only get it if you're in the Valley, which the antenna is. So there's not a lot of, just not a lot of radio stations to choose from. And even that. That one is struggling because people don't listen to it anymore. Yeah. Podcast. Yeah. The way to go. That's the way to go.

Dan:  So in today's episode, we're going to talk about a bunch of different things. We're gonna talk about inheriting systems a little bit, um, some of the things that Parker aerospace is doing. Um, and we're also gonna talk about a little bit lighter aircraft. So some of the things that Cirrus and Platas are doing, so they've got some interesting stuff, and I'm curious about some of their lightening protection.

And how, how it changes from jet to turboprop and also largely commercial aircraft to small, um, you know, more of the personal, private jet kind of aircraft. So, um, let's start with Parker. So obviously, you know, we've mentioned in past episodes, and I'm sure we'll continue to talk about this, but the, uh, the fascinating in earning system, which is not fascinating maybe to you because this is like things you've been doing for many, many years.

But I don't think most people as they fly in a commercial airline are realized that. There's this system that's pumping inert gas into the, uh, fuel tanks as they empty to keep them safe. Like, that's a crazy, that's like a kind of a mind blowing thing, um, for someone on the outside. But tell us a little bit about Parker, what they're doing and how some of those alerting systems work.

Allen: Yeah. So Parker, uh, has had developed an earning systems a long time ago for military aircraft back in the 1970s, early eighties, is when I think that was first developed. And the, if you think about, um, a wing as being a fuel tank in your car, it's exactly how it is and how it's, it's sort of integral with the structure.

So the wing structure is the tank. There's no separate structure inside the wing to hold fuel. For the most part. Uh, so the, the, the rivets you see on the outside of the wing penetrate into the inside, and then there's this fuel right behind it. So they're just the lightest solution to low fuel. Well, as you burn off fuel, you have this, this airspace.

Uh, above the fuel and as you slosh around fuel and depending on temperature, you've got fuel vapor up in there. And if the conditions are just right, tends to be above 75, 80 degrees and certain pressure thresholds that vapor is flammable. So any kind of small spark could in theory lead off that that fuel vapor, and when you ignite any sort of gas as fuel like that, it wants to expand rapidly.

So what in theory would happen if it did ignite it, but it over pressure. The wing structure and break the wing structure, and that would be catastrophic. Uh, so the, the Parker aerospace system, which is really ingenious, quite honestly, what it does is it takes bleed air from the engine. So as the engine, the jet engines spool, that there's compressed air, that's.

Forced them to the engines, essentially. Um, it's the same air that pressurizes of the cabin. So as you're sitting in and you're a three 20 or seven 37 or bigger aircraft, what you'll see, and you know, you're flying it at a theoretical, I think it's 8,000 feet, is what it feels like inside the cabin.

They're actually taking air from the engines and pushing that into the cabin to pressurize the cabin. Will they take some of that air and they shove it through a filter?...

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. That's putting them at risk and huge to kind of keep everything going. Yeah why no. Here got chilled. There's a little bit of a tussle on a local town where the post office stopped delivering to the particular apartment complex because it had the possibility of Coronavirus from one of the renters there until they stopped delivering to that to that place Because the postal workers were really concerned about Just the interactions with the people there and even just handling packages so you can kind of see that. I'm not sure how that all played out. I know that just been some news articles about it but yeah you can see both sides of it though because obviously there are people on the in the apartment complex which have been fine had been sequestered for four weeks now and clearly not At-risk but as a postal worker you never really sure. Don't run across hundreds of people a day. I'm sure yeah. Yeah especially if you're older you now I'm not going. They're like no. I don't WanNa Diet like it's a reasonable stance to take so. Yeah it's ardent as I was listening to another podcast weekend and it was by this entrepreneur and his co-host has also been in tech. And he's like you know what though he's like I haven't opened a piece of my male and he said in ten years he's in ten years. I'm like what's any got questioned by co-hosts and he's like he's like yeah he's like. I just don't have important male. He's like the male the physical mail that I get and it's been this wavy said for a long time. It just doesn't have any value to me. He's like I'm in business-like things that are valuable are Docu. You signed electronically their email there to message. He's like I just haven't gotten important mail in a really long time unless he was not including packages. Obviously Okay Okay. Your paper mail letter. Yeah Paper Mail that fits in your mailbox. He's like I just don't get the postal. The Postal Service right now. He said to me like if they don't want delivered to my house. That's okay I'm fine with that is just. It's not essential to me packages separate issue episode right. Wasn't this fine. Fill where Kramer decided? He didn't want to have any male anymore. Too much to deal with and you tell post office started liver isn't it wasn't that Seinfield. I don't remember it but that that sounds like a luminous post Minnie's keystone. No you have to take the male you have to take the male and Kramer put Vinci puts bricks in his mailbox.

00:05:02 - 00:10:03

Couldn't deliver the mail and tussle back and forth. It sounds very similar to that Kramer or with With what was just Newman Newman? Yeah that's that. Sounds like a golden episode. I gotTA look that up. That's the goal. Yeah how appropriate. That Seinfeld applies directly to life. Yeah I I yeah. I can just picture those two bickering. I don't want the yeah. You could write for that shows exactly. That's exactly I went. Actually I said today. We're talking about Parts Manufacturers a little bit and we're GonNa talk about yeah Which we've covered both those in just like on the surface in previous episodes but so one company that is pretty interesting stuff out of Israel Canvas so they on their website a bunch of the day doing a lot of research for the show and yeah it seems like they have a unique niche where they can make really high quality metal parts. They can also make high quality composite parts. Yes also seems like their specialties. That they can also make really high quality metal and composite parts whereas other For other I guess suppliers you might have to go to composites person. Anna metal person kind of combine them like it's true them together but they can kinda threw it all in house and get a unique part so tell us a little more about about can fit. Well can't fit is based in Israel and Forget how long did around? But they're well established company and they they're involved in a variety of different aerospace markets From making parts for aircraft to Making drones they make Ray Tomes So they're they're involved in a lot of different areas but there it's one of those unique businesses in places where they have basically skilled aerospace workers. They can do the gamut and that's unique today. I'll give you the example In the states in the United States tend to be either you make composite parts because your hip and cool or make metal parts because it makes money and so rarely do the two shall meet So it's a different skill set clearly. It's a different skill set so you you have to have a pretty highly educated workforce to do that composite parts take a lot of Layer layers of material. You're putting on your dealing with the policies resin systems. It's complicated you. Have you have an autoclave in there. checking temperatures and that kind of stuff. The metalwork I think is just as important though even though we just because we've we've done it for a number of years now making metal parts has gotten easier and a sense but to no less critical so having a company that can actually make both ends of that is in today's world really unique And I I don't know if it's just a fact that that they're in a smaller country and they just need to be very versatile and that's what drives it also could drive just because of the The skilled labor labor forced to go ahead and do that But we've been working with them for a for a number of years and The things we see come from there are exceptional. They really are so you look at some. I was listening to a Jeff bezos interview Sometime last week in hitter really insightful. Thing to say he was talking about His company blue origin and in the context of You Know Elon. Musk's company SPACEX and he was being and this was the tall from I think two thousand eighteen but he was explaining why he's putting his money into that and he basically said that when Amazon started he was able to start that company with a million dollars in his garage because there was already this massive infrastructure already existing for him to tap int

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. And as the economy went bad and the oil prices shot up, those industries collapsed. And so there's a lot of those smaller aircraft companies that got consolidated and some of the big ones merged over time. It's a common occurrence. The thing that we're looking for now is that some of the other players that were sort of mid-sized, do they become bigger? Do the Embraer's become bigger? Or do the you know...Bombardier has become smaller recently because of their financial restructuring. Hopefully they can make it through this bad period. And that's one of the companies that's probably on the bubble right now, unfortunately. So it's sometimes just bad timing that plays into this. There's really not a lot of predictability in this particular case. It isn't like you could see a World War 1 or World War 2 coming about and prepare for it. This is something that has been unexpected. So if your company was shaky to begin with, it may be a struggle to get back out. Hopefully the governments step in a little bit. Hopefully the Canadian government steps in with Bombardier, they have already, and really kind of provide some security around that. This is thousands of thousands of highly technical jobs. You really don't want to lose them because it's gonna be hard to recreate them. 

Dan: Yeah. So I've got another article here pulled up and it's about parts manufacturers. And there's an interesting quote where one of these executives says "We don't earn money on the first installation on a new plane, but on the life of our products over 20 years. If planes don't fly, we don't sell spare parts and our products don't create a need for maintenance". So speak a little bit on the parts. 'Cause everyone's talked about airliners right now. Everyone's thinking about Boeing and Airbus, the manufacturers, but also Southwest and United and American, the big airlines. But talk about the parts. 'Cause how many parts are in an aircraft? Like a million?

Allen: Thousands

Dan: Some crazy huge number. So how is that affecting that industry?

Allen: The parts manufacturers have, a lot of them,have shut down and closed. They did that about a week or so ago where there was just no demand for product. And they had stocked the shelves enough where they had enough of a buffer. I think there's just sort of two plays into that right now. First is that the number of airplanes that are going to be coming back online is going to be as many as when they shut down. So we're gonna be probably at 50%, 75% for a while in terms of number of airplanes that are flying. So the repair mark it's going to be slower also. You're gonna be selling 50 to 75% of what you were usually selling in terms of repair parts. It has a real trickle down, people don't like that term, but it is what it is in aircraft. There's a trickle-down economy in aircraft which is how Boeing goes, how Airbus goes, how some of the big players go. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of people behind that that are providing parts not only to Boeing and Airbus but also in the aftermarket side. That really hurts. And obviously Boeing and Airbus also have strong aftermarket sales where they're selling parts to repair their aircraft. And so do the powerplant makers, the Pratt & Whitney's that are Rolls Royces of the world. They also are selling parts like that on the aftermarket. It really hurts because it's true. A lot of their profitability comes from selling parts and support after the sale of the aircraft. It's very similar to the way you bought a car back in the 1970s or 80s. There was a real connection between you and the automotive manufacturer. So if I purchased a Ford, I was probably going to-- a lot of people did--probably went to go buy Ford repair parts. Authorized Ford repair parts, not just generic parts for it. Aircraft tend to be more in that model still. So there's a big profit margin center there that needs to be fed to keep the airlines running and also to keep the aircraft manufacturers profitable.

Dan: Gotcha. That makes sense and you wonder sometimes what the economics is. Prices over the years keep getting pushed lower and lower as there's more and more competition. And that's where you think like yeah a lot of these companies are probably making it up on the back end. Again like over the life of a car that maybe they're trying to make a little more affordable but they know they'll sell more radiators or whatever down the road. So that makes sense.

Allen: It was very common, having worked for a number of aircraft and business aircraft manufacturers, that when they contracted out for a supplier to provide a component for the aircraft, that the aircraft manufacturer wasn't paying full price for that part in a sense. The aircraft manufacturers would really push down on pricing and make the aircraft component supplier participate as a "partner" even if it wasn't a great financial partnership. Because the aircraft manufacturers tended to pay for all the non-recurring expenses, which means the engineers that are at the supplier... they used to basically pay for engineers to design the thing and cover all the testing costs. That seemed to be part of it. But the actual purchase of the component was driven down a lot in the thought that a supplier would make it up on quantity. That this product would be going on for 30 years, they'd be building replacement parts for the next 50 years. So they were looking way down the line and becoming profitable. And it's really hard to do that. If there's an aircraft program that exists right now that's going through certification, it can be hard for them to conceptually say--with the downturn--I'm gonna delay my payment period. It's gonna get shoved off to the right a year or more. The economics get really funky when that happens. And a lot of suppliers will go back to the aircraft manufacturer to say hey look this is no longer an even remotely profitable thing for us....

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 the kids online at the same time so you got 20 kids coming into a quote-unquote Zoom classroom whatever that would look like. But we're telling our kids hey it's something that we're gonna have to just work through. It may not be the best situation but at least you're getting some learning in and taking it for what it is. It's better than then in the alternate right now so have a positive attitude about it. 

Dan:Yeah absolutely I mean so many layoffs. So speaking of which, the aviation industry is struggling right now. So it sounds like based on a couple of news reports they're serving they're down about 80% you know typical traffic. So what's your take on the current state of the airline industry? 

Allen: Well I've been reaching out to some of my acquaintances that are in the airline industry and support the airline industry. Roughly what it sounds like now is, in at least the United States, 75 to 80 percent of the flights are essentially either shut down or empty depending on the airline. International flights have essentially stopped for the most part. A lot of airplanes have been parked across the country. I saw a list this morning of all the different places and it has a long list. I think was in the Washington Post where they had listed all the places that airplanes have been parked at. The the consensus right now is that they haven't really... In 2001, I'll give you the comparison, in 2001 and 9/11 when that happened obviously they shut down all flights for several days in the United States. No airplanes. Everybody had just immediately land. So wherever they were is where they landed. And then when it picked back up again, there was a hesitancy for people to go traveling again and the airlines really suffered and they started putting airplanes in the desert. Basically mothballing them. Permanently mothballing them or selling them for scrap. That happened just because it took a longer time for the airlines to recover. In this case it looks like airplanes are pretty much in flying shape. They're just parked somewhere. There's going to be some changes though. A week ago it would seem like all the airplanes are going to be back online pretty quickly. And then this week the attitude changed somewhat which is disappointing. But I think what they're talking about is that the domestic flights, at least in the United States. are gonna pick up relatively quickly. It's gonna be the international routes which means the bigger airplanes, I'm gonna use Boeing as an example here, but like the triple 7 and the 67 and the 787, which do a lot of the long-haul carrying and are the bigger airplanes, are not going to be as popular. Just because there's gonna be fewer international routes. So those airplanes may get parked and the older ones may get parked permanently, which is disappointing really disappointing.

Dan: So as far as Boeing's fleet goes because you know for me as sort of someone new to this industry, how do they break down as far as you know all the call numbers: 727, 737. Which ones are the ones that are mostly for domestic flights? 

Allen: 737. 

Dan: 737. So yeah the max was gonna be the big new workhorse if it hadn't had all of its issues 

Allen: It still will be. Yeah it'll be the workhorse. It's mostly driven by I think Southwest Airlines is probably the largest purchaser maybe Ryanair over in the UK there's a largest purchaser of 737s but it's such a workhorse. It's like the 8319 8320. They're such workhorse airplanes. They're great domestic airplanes. You can pack them pretty full. They're about the right size to get in and out of a lot of different airports. The engines have been upgraded over time so they're really fuel-efficient. Those airplanes gonna be hard to replace with anything else. Those are the right planes for the right time. You're gonna see a little more I think, based on fuel prices being so low, hopefully the airlines that have cash reserves are buying options on fuel. So they're buying fuel at probably a 75% discount right now with all the oil prices as low as they are. So what you do is you say hey I'm gonna buy a bunch of fuel at this price and it just saves you buying fuel when it's right back at normal normal prices. So Southwest Airlines was notorious for doing that probably 10-15 years ago. They had bought a ton of fuel options when prices were right and it saved them hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars a quarter. The numbers were astounding because fuel prices are such a big driver in the airline's profitability so when if they can gamble correctly on fuel prices, it just is a huge revenue source for them. And Southwest had done a good job many years ago. Now I wonder if other airlines have learned from that original Southwest experience. If they have cash sitting around, they going to start picking up some of those options and make themselves a little more profitable as they go forward. Obviously it sounds like a lot of the European countries are going to be providing some funds to the airlines. British Airways is probably one, obviously in the United States it's going to be American Airlines maybe United. We're all gonna be looking. Southwest sounds like they're going to be asking for some money to try to tide them over and keep the employees quasi-paid. There's a lot of furloughs right now in the aviation industry. Hopefully they're short-lived that's the goal. Or if everybody can come back to work in a couple of weeks there and get going. But we'll see how it plays out. The next couple of weeks are going to be crucial to see how long the financial people can keep the airlines running. 

Dan: Yeah. Well it's an interesting problem because as you hear some of the out cries here in the US about you know you're bailing out these companies but like we need money in our pocket. And yes that's true but if you don't bail out some of these companies you don't get your job back. And then you don't have long-term money....

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 cases up here than we thought there was. But I think it's smart to wear the mask if you have it I suppose. All the doctors and nurses are obviously in need of those first, but some of the face coverings are interesting. You kind of wonder if it's going to become more acceptable, particularly in the States because it's not acceptable in the States. It’s a cultural thing I think when you especially see it on an airplane. People do not wear masks. I think people take it as a sign that you're really sick, so everybody kind of scoots away from someone who's wearing a mask. It's kind of a weird dynamic. I kind of wonder if that's going to change over time because we're all interconnected. We're all traveling across the world all the time anymore. It doesn't take any time for any disease to travel. 

Dan: To answer the question, I'd say most people are not wearing them, but there's a good amount where you notice them consistently. I mean if I'm walking in an area where there's a bunch of people around, which I'm not in areas like that often, but if I'm walking down the sidewalk and I see people across the street or at the grocery store there's a good percentage of masks. I couldn't tell you what it is. It's probably less than you'd think, but you notice them all so you pick up on them. But it's maybe 10 to 20 percent, but in the grocery store that's 30-40 people. 

Allen: Don't you think that's had an American cultural thing not to wear it? It seems unusual because I think in some countries it’s more accepted.

Dan: I don't know if it was this year or in the past I noticed some Asian Americans--or just Asians whether they're tourists or whatever-- wearing masks before this epidemic or this pandemic. At various times, whether it’s flu season, the only person you would ever see wearing a mask would be an Asian person. With the SARS outbreak I mean it was a very serious problem so that made a lot of sense. DC is a very diverse city, and there's no difference here of who's wearing them. If you're white, black, Asian it doesn't matter. There's no difference and I  thought about that. I'm like should I wear a mask? How would I feel about wearing a mask? And I felt weird about it, but at the same time, you're just trying to protect yourself. Of course I have no access to anything. I was super excited - I bought bleach last night.

Allen: Oh wow! You actually found bleach.

Dan: There were two jugs tucked away in the bottom shelf of Target. I went there because I needed a piece of hardware for the podcast for some sound proofing. Target’s big and I expected it to be pretty busy. It was like 7:45. It was a ghost town, and they have a full grocery store in this one. I figured Target was going to be much busier than the local grocery store, but it was the exact opposite. It was very sparse which was surprising to me. I hadn’t gone to Target since, and this has been a big thing for me. 

Allen: Well I guess it's good that people are staying home. If you don't need to be out, don't be out, that's what we're being told right now. Until things calm down that's probably a good choice.

Dan: I mean every store is different in their protocols, so I personally think a lot of people have their personal brands. Brands that you would choose whether it's your brand of cottage cheese, or the type of shirts you buy, whether you wear Nike or Adidas shoes, whatever. But Costco, I really respect their company and their leadership. The way they price things, the quality of their foods, it seems like they take care of our employees. I jumped on the Metro a week and a half ago and went to Costco and everyone's like you're going to go to Costco? But of all the places I could get groceries in this pandemic, I really trust Costco more than other places to do things right and like keep their customers safe. And put good systems in place and really clean things. When I showed up there was a really long line outside, and it was for that exact reason. They were limiting how many customers could go inside, They were meticulous. If a person gave you a cart, they wiped it off for you, then you're on your way in the store. They were curating the lines. They did a really impressive job of exactly what you should be doing. I think their leadership made a plan and said this is how we make our stores safer and have less employee interaction because they don't want their employees being too close to you either for everyone's safety. They're one of those companies that I think that--I'm not saying other companies aren’t doing this too--but it was very organized, very systematic, very well-thought-out I felt. I went to Costco and people were like don't go there, but you had enough space. They had a really good stock of things. And another thing, they had a big whiteboard outside and it said here's things we don't have in stock and here's what we do have in stock. You don't have to go in there if you need toilet paper and they don't have it. You're going to see it right outside.

Allen: They're not wasting your time. 

Dan: I was really impressed with them. I think a lot of companies are really working hard to try to help customers with what they need as safely as possible. 

Allen: I saw that today with some of the airline things that are going on, because there are some airlines that are still flying and on limited capacity. The effort they’re going through to make sure the airplanes are clean, and the pilots and the crew are in safe conditions. So they've established procedures to keep everybody distanced. They're doing cleaning techniques to clean the airplanes and that kind of thing. I was surprised at the level of detail there, at least in this one in particular I saw. They were taking everything into consideration. It is similar to things I've seen happen on subways actually. You don't think about how much effort it takes to clean an airplane, but it takes a lot of effort. There’s a lot of services there obviously....

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 annihilated right there in front of a lot of people and I said wow I guess you know aviation was new at that point and so like okay that's a thing that happens so where to kind of go from there?

Allen: So we sort of evolved over time especially as the aircraft's evolved over time right so the first generation of aircraft or just because of power plant issues and not having enough thrust is that the airplanes are made out of wood and it's available material we knew a lot about it we were building homes out of wood we built a lot of things out of wood, we're building cars out of wood! So we had an industry that was focused on making things out of wood and even up until well all the way to the 1930s through the Great Depression and into the early 1940s I mean most of those airplanes are made out of wood significant portions and they're making out of wood. And then we were learning that the aircraft were getting struck and they were getting struck enough where the aircraft crashes or a regular current so it wasn't surprising when an airplane went down they think of all the famous people :Will Rogers, Knute Rockne, all the people that had died in airplane crashes. So it wasn't surprising when there was an airplane crash because they were still in the sort of the infancy of the industry there was the pilot skills all those kind of things but over time as airplanes became metal, we started to realize that "Man, maybe their craft were causing the lightning strikes maybe they're involved more than we think that they are and maybe we should be doing something about it" and that's when the shift started it was when we realized that we could do something about it.

Dan: So that all kind of kicked off with not actually a

commercial airliner but the Space Shuttle, right? That's where they started to

really kind of get wind that maybe these planes were causing the lightning

strikes which is a really I don’t think that's the way anyone in just the

general population thinks about lightning. They kind of think about it as I was

in a field and it started to rain there's a thunderstorm I got unlucky in it

and it struck me right, but the planes actually caused it.

Allen: Yeah so the one strike that I think it's mostly because that the whole world was focused on at the time was the Apollo 12 launch where they were headed and just leaving the Cape Canaveral and they were I don't know 15 30 seconds into flight and the spacecraft got struck, well the rocket got struck, and it got struck again a couple of seconds later so it got struck twice! A lot of the systems and the spacecraft went haywire while the guidance stuff in the capsule itself the rocket, the rocket has its own guidance systems thank goodness in the Saturn fives and so the Saturn 5 rocket continued to do what it was going to do because all of its instrumentation things are kind of buried deep down inside of the big metal structure but the capsule and the in the control systems in the capsule and that power distribution systems in the capsule went crazy and shut down. So you know if you're seen about a big alarm that's a sort of a worldwide broadcast of sort of American ingenuity just going hey wire there on launch and it's sort of a started a chain reaction in the United States and around the world quite honestly of "hey we need to understand what's going on here" because in the Apollo 12 thing there wasn't any indication that lightning was going to strike. There hadn't been any lightning strikes in the area and until they launched that rocket and then it happened. So you know it got " wow aircraft could trigger lightning" and then it started a whole chain of engineering evaluations and flight tests and NASA's evolving a bunch and there's a lot of other countries involved and figuring out like "Hey lightning is not sort of a random event. Aircraft are actually triggering it and the bigger they get the more likely they're going to trigger all these lightning events" and "what do they look like, how much energy are in them, can they effects systems". Obviously in the Apollo 12 incident it affected a bunch of systems and you know the next generation, once the Apollo's got started they new they were going to shut them down pretty quickly and you start with a space shuttle so now now we're making this big flying spacecraft thing that looks like an airplane they're gonna have to land it somewhere. What happens if it gets struck by lightning? So there's there's a lot of emphasis by a lot of government agencies to go figure out what was going on and you know if there had been tragedies from the 40s and 50s into the 60s in 1960 there's a 63 as a big accident there even into the 70s there are some big accidents happening on aircraft and we as an industry didn't do all that much about them. It's kind of an assumed thing like you know it's a risky business. And we got out of that sort of test pilot it's a risky business thing too like we need this to be safer than it is and it's not rocket science so to speak it's not a rocket science thing it's just gonna take a lot of work and development and that's where the changes really happened.

Dan:Yeah well and what's really interesting is you know there were still crashes I mean and last year there was a Russian jet that got struck by lightning just after takeoff and the pilot said he felt lost a loss of control yeah circle back was you know way too heavy with fuel. They bounced on their landing and the back half the plane caught on fire and half of the passengers died the ones in the back half the plane unfortunately. And the front half got out, but I mean even now there's still very isolated incidences but it still happens which is crazy.

Allen: Yeah it's crazy that it happens and a lot of it not naming specific incidences but a lot of it is that they didn't think about it obviously in any modern aircraft today there's been a lot of work done to make sure that a lightning strike doesn't take the airpl