STRUCK: An Aerospace Engineering & Lightning Protection Show

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.

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverters and aircraft lightning protection consulting services. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

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?

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverters and aircraft lightning protection consulting services. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

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.

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverters and aircraft lightning protection consulting services. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

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 could fly those particular airplanes has gone up so it's it's not easy just to find people and if they don't want to come back they want to come back and you're kind of stuck because the pool of new entrants is limited it's going to be a problem i really think it's going to be a problem and retirement i assume has also played into this not just uh like lateral moves because the faa is having a problem with you know their senior engineers and all those uh folks also not coming back but retirement is playing into this i think retirement is playing into it i uh i think the covid vaccine mandates played into it on some level i think some people have left their jobs we hear about we don't hear about that much in the press but i know hospital workers people that are sort of working federal jobs have quit that would mean people at the faa are probably quitting and airline pilots would be that other group right that would leave because of coven mandates and you just can't really afford to have three five up to ten percent of your workforce just walk out and the fa has a worse problem right fa they're talking about like 50 of the engineers in retirement age by in the next couple of years that's not good because it does take time i mean there's something about having experience experience tends to lead to better outcomes just because you know all the issues lie right so i i don't know if the airline industry is really accounting for in particular this evital market and what it's going to do on pilots because at least for the initially we're not going to have autonomous flights like they do and like we're talking to talk about in china it's going to be piloted flights so you're going to need a bunch of pilots go do those things and you know if it's a comfortable much more comfortable lifestyle like if you do it in los angeles you're not leaving los angeles and you can go home at night every night that may be a little more desirable than ending up in you know poughkeepsie overnight just saying well do you think evtol piloting would be in the same order because like you said fa's increased hours and it seems like from what we've heard with the joby flight simulator that these will be like a different order of like difficulty in flying like do you need to be a seasoned commercial airline pilot to to be an evt well pilot obviously you go that direction but uh i mean will the entrance standards be a lot easier to be a you know to pilot a joby evtl in the future compared to a commercial airliner i haven't looked at that specifically but i think the answer is yes just because the number of passengers on the airplane it'd be it'd be like flying a charter flight like a cessna citation or a leader jet when you have uh a charter flight they know they operate under diff i think they operate under different rules than the airlines operate under uh and there's different actual codes rules regulations laws that uh different operators work under different size operators work under so i i don't think that the jobies and the archers of the world will have not gone the requirements of a 737 pilot right but a 737 pilot could clearly fly uh a joby right and but i i think it comes to a question of lifestyle and airlines haven't competed with that right airlines have not competed what's what's the alternative you're going to fly cargo you're going to fly sort of these business flights and that's a different it probably doesn't it doesn't have as it doesn't didn't used to have as rich as a pension um some of the french benefits you get you're a captain on a triple seven that's a pretty good gig and i'm not sure the jobies of the world would ever get to that level but there's other factors that play into it like if i want to see my family all the time and come home every night that's it people make lifestyle decisions like that and it will drive where the marketplace goes so airlines may be a little more of a pinch than they think well if standards are are very different which it seems like you said they probably will be then you wonder if a lot of drone hobbyists would you know be able to like hey i'd like to fly one of those and they sort of make the leap from like you know experience drone pilot obviously just you know handheld like very different but also not that different right that would be a logical leap for the the growing pool of people who love flying drones in the us yeah well i think that the neat thing about drones today is that like the drone racing league that you see on espn every once in a while uh it's a 3d experience right it isn't like you're flying a radio control airplane in the in the olden times you actually have a visor on this headset headsets right you get a 3d view of what you're doing so it is like you're flying in the pilot seat and like the joby doesn't have any rudder pedals well neither does the drone pilot right they just got these control sticks and so their experience well if they can meet the medical requirements and the vision obviously vision requirements and health requirements um that transition may be a lot easier than you would think so it's it's it's not out of the realm of possibility i think if you're really interested in flying drones and you have been flying basically virtually all that time yeah it wouldn't be that much of a transition yeah so moving on rolls-royce uh they're excited they've just broken through one megawatt output in testing of their power generation system one uh alan this is a lot of electricity i mean we talk about wind turbines on our other podcast and a megawatt is a significant amount of power and their goal is to reach up to two and a half megawatts at some point in the future um what what engine is going to need to gobble up that much power and what are the implications for for all that like what's the difference between one megawatt and two and a half megawatts is that just more thrust is that more like they can fly at a higher speed or they can jus

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.

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverters and aircraft lightning protection consulting services. 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 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, you got the outer layer of paint, this expanded copper foil and then carbon fiber structure. So the system that's been around a long time, that's a 40 year old kind of design.

00:03:15:01 - 00:03:34:18UnknownAnd one of the issues with any expanded foil. Is paying attention, it can be problematic at times, particularly if you have a repair. And what these photos indicate, like they had some small repairs that happened around the airplane that they tried to fix, and there's their standard repairs, which happened.

00:03:34:18 - 00:03:54:02UnknownSo as you're sanding, grinding away on an airplane to make all the parts fit. It's not unusual that you damage or sand into some of the expanded metal that's on the surface and then get into your repair situation in which the repair is to put more mesh on top of it to add back the connectivity which you've

00:03:54:02 - 00:04:15:00Unknownremoved. When you do that, that secondary process of sticking on metal and it looks like from some of the photos, it looks like it's aluminum mesh, not copper. And it was stuck on there. Secondarily, is that you just don't get it here properly and over time, temperature flexing that kind of thing can cause the mesh to kind

00:04:15:00 - 00:04:24:10Unknownof pop off, and it takes the paint with it. So the paint doesn't like to stick to it, and then the metal doesn't like to stick to the airplane. And that's what the photos indicate that Reuters has put up on the website.

00:04:24:22 - 00:04:41:08UnknownSo that's I would say that's not unusual. It's unusual today in the sense that you don't think you see it coming off a production line. You tend to see it on. Airplanes have been around a lot longer in flight when the Beach Starship came out back in the late eighties early nineties.

00:04:41:16 - 00:05:02:07UnknownThey had an issue very similar to that. Pretty much every composite airplane or composite part with mesh has some sort of issue with paint adhesion because of the mesh that surround it, particularly on the cut edges apart. So like where the mesh can be exposed as you cut along a trim edge that can corrode or cause problems

00:05:02:10 - 00:05:22:01Unknown, it just it's more cosmetic than it is a lightning issue. And these particular cases are the mesh looks to be visually to me to be a just a cosmetic thing, not anything critical in terms of lightning protection. And in the way you know that that's not what's usually critical here is the mesh.

00:05:22:02 - 00:05:34:15UnknownIf the paint, if the paint soft carbon fiber carbon fiber does well with lightning strikes, it's the problem when you paint the carbon fiber that carbon fiber doesn't do so well. And the message there to sort of bridge that gap and what a real quick why is that, Alan?

00:05:35:02 - 00:05:49:09UnknownThe paint, the paint controls and limits the were the lightning will go basically forces into a small area, and the carbon fiber, which is great at handling energy, just can't handle that much focused energy in a small spot.

00:05:50:01 - 00:06:02:14UnknownAnd that just causes the resin to burn off and the carbon fiber to kind of burn off and do all this bad stuff. So once once you paint carbon fiber, the damage gets deeper and just more expensive to repair.

00:06:02:23 - 00:06:15:08UnknownBut the mesh on it keeps a damaged light on the surface, where you can kind of scuff it, fix it, repair it. That's why you use the mesh a lot of times on a non-critical things airplane structures is that it just keeps the cost down on maintenance.

00:06:16:09 - 00:06:39:05UnknownSo this this one is really interesting because it's been seen at some airplane airlines now. And Airbus is trying to address it. But if you're in this really weird spot where I think you've got a brand new A350 and you're already trying to fix on it, and more than likely the maintenance crews at these airlines have been

00:06:39:05 - 00:06:54:19Unknowntrying to repair it and maybe not prepare it the way that it should be repaired. And they're having sort of this continual problem. Go on. Thereby making the problem worse. That's and everybody is like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. Probably like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:06:55:00 - 00:07:10:10UnknownSlow down a minute. We don't have to fix it straight out. It's not like it's not a safety issue. We could come back and address it. But it's expensive. Well, Yasa. He also has proposed an airworthiness directive that the expanded copper foil.

00:07:11:08 - 00:07:29:11UnknownYou know, there could potentially be an issue of a cocktail of factors comes together. You know, adjacent fasteners incorrectly installed, then a big lightning strike. Then they're saying maybe fuel vapor could be ignited. I mean, is that that's obviously aircraft design they have to look to toward those crazy.

00:07:29:17 - 00:07:39:12UnknownWhat if? What if? What if? What if? What if? Right? Kind of scenario is, is that is that realistic? I mean, what's what is the action item here? Is you also going to make them fix this or what's going to go on out?

00:07:39:14 - 00:07:55:03UnknownMaybe the when we talk about fuel tanks, there's obviously there's more criticality and more focus on fuel tanks because of the consequences. If you get a spark in the fuel tank with the right temperature and right fuel air mixture inside of that tank like we saw years ago off the coast of New York there.

00:07:55:11 - 00:08:12:19UnknownThe fuel tank can explode and from the lightning protection side, you do a lot of protection in the fuel tank area. Combination of meshes, foils, fasteners, faster types, all kinds of sealants. On the inside. There's all kinds of layers of protection that go on to a wing.

00:08:13:06 - 00:08:29:00UnknownIf the foil is having trouble on the foils, not a stall properly or the foil has been damaged during manufacture like Boeing. Had some of that happened on the 787 on the wing also, then you're really losing a layer of protection.

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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.

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverters and aircraft lightning protection consulting services. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

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.

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverters and aircraft lightning protection consulting services. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

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?

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverters and aircraft lightning protection consulting services. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

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.

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverters and aircraft lightning protection consulting services. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!