STRUCK: An Aerospace Engineering & Lightning Protection Show

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?

This episode is brought to you by weather guard, lightening tech at weather guard, we support design engineers and make lightening protection easy.

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, I'm looking at these photos of, of Honda. It's like, Who designed like the first bottling plant, these are tremendous machines.

I mean, they don't get, you know, they never reached the public eye hardly, but when you see, you know, Coca-Cola being bottled back in the, in the twenties, just flying through the assembly line, these machines are incredibly complex and they're incredibly precise and they don't. Break all that often. Right.

Um, you know, so when Honda is making a new facility and we talked about, you know, uh, Bombardi A's wing facility, do you, is it within their company? Like, does Honda have their own set of engineers? That's designing the facility, not just the facility, but also just the, the tools in it and the, the processes and the, and the dollies and the things that you're going to clamp a wing onto and wheel it around.

Like those things are. Incredibly complex as complex as probably a lot of the aircraft parts themselves. How does, how does that

all work? Well, so there's a separate group. That'll do that now. I don't know if Honda has that the engineering group within their facilities that does that. Sometimes it's it's outsourced.

I remember when I worked at beach, there was some tooling done inside and some of it done outside depending on what the application was. But it's a whole, it's a whole line of business. That's a whole set of engineering skills that differs from other things, uh, like building an airplane because building airplanes.

So by lightweight keeping the costs down all those little. Little bits and pieces. When you're designing a factory floor, you're making things out of steel and you're making it such that you can keep the, like, like the wing build structure is something that's very accurately designed because you don't want to build in a twist or deformation into the wing.

So all those little fixtures that you have to build are really complicated, and sometimes it's done onsite with the aircraft. Designers or sometimes it's sent off site, but essentially all those, all the, the, um, mechanical tooling, fixturing, all those bits and bobs to know that it goes from fixture a to fixture B to fixture C as you're building the wing and constructing it are really highly engineered pieces of equipment that no one really considers and.

One they're expensive. And two, they're just a lot of engineering time that goes into those things, right? Because you want to repeatedly use this tool and get accurate results out of it. So it's a whole industrial engineering, um, approach that gets overlooked a lot of times, but it is probably one of the most important things in terms of the consistency of the product.

Right? If you have bad tooling, you have a bad product just from Santa's hand. And so, um, the people that do that, uh, Or a special breed because there is a lot that

goes into it. Well, yeah, it would seem really difficult, especially being like an outside group to come in and, and just like say, okay, all right.

You know? Yeah. We specialize in building out these facilities and tools and all this stuff. So tell us what you're building. That seems like a really long process to figure out, you know, all the components that they're building and how they build them. And. To then sit down and say, okay, well here's step one.

It just makes my brain hurt. It's just a super impressive thing. So, yeah,

you're right. Cause I think you're right, because it also depends on how many you intend to shove out the door. How many, how many wings do you tend to shove out the door? That's changed also. True. That changes the way you design the fixturing.

Right. And how, and is it like in the case of some of the Boeing, uh, Boeing lines where it, it went from a sort of a station approach where aircraft in station one that moves to station two and station three, two. The aircraft solid moot, always moving approach, which is similar to what would happen in Detroit.

When they're making automobiles where the assemble line is always moving constantly. And you're putting the parts on as the, as the cars, we went down the line, they were doing that. Or would they have done that at Boeing where the production line is continuously moving and you you're putting. Parts on the aircraft, as of moving down the line, how does that going to do that?

Cause the quantities aren't that high. I don't think so. It's going to be more of a station approach, but it does change the way you design all that tooling and fixturing is, is based on how much you're going to ship out the door. And I know at times when they've had. Large increases in production at some of these aircraft companies.

What do you do? You, you're sort of built into this, uh, mindset or system of typically stationed builds. And if you have to double that production, essentially what you need to do is build another facility and build the same set set up. You already have to increase production. You can't jam or into the system without completely redesigning the system and spending a lot of money to redesign it.

So you kind of have one shot at it. You kind of know. Maximums and minimums are going to be, and you design the tooling around that maximum. Yeah.

That's uh, just like I said, it's like a whole other thing beyond just the complexity of the plane or the automobile or the Coca-Cola bottle itself. So it's just mind blowing stuff.

So let's talk about Virgin. Uh, so Virgin orbit. It's launch or one rocket has finally made it into space. So, Alan, this is a big day, obviously space X has done this. Um, where do you see Virgin orbit fitting into this sort of, uh, you know, the big players, obviously, they're one of the bigger players with blue, blue, blue origin and SpaceX.

Um, but this is exciting for them. How do you feel about it? Well, it it's

similar to technology that, uh, orbital sciences was doing probably mid two thousands, uh, where they had, uh,...

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 livery here, and then it was purchased in Indonesia.So the airplane has a lot of flight history around the United States. Obviously all the mechanical logs go along with the aircraft. So if there was sort of weird structural flight control issue with the aircraft, going back to the maintenance logs would tell you a lot about it. So I think we just got to let the investigators take a look at it.Do their deep dive, try to find the black box. That's the, one of the worst parts about crashing into the ocean is trying to find the black boxes and black boxes have a little beeper on them. There's activated when they. And then there's sea water, water around. And so it'll start making pinging noises that, and I don't remember how long that lasts but it helps helps the crews locate where the aircraft is and try to find the black box because there's that really the one piece of information you really need off the airplane is that black box.And then if they can recover, which theyactually have found them. Good.How deep was that aircraft? Did they say how our cuff was under water? Was it a thousand feet or a hundred feet under the water? Because that'll make a big difference on what the analysis is that they can pull something.Oh, they're only rated.So like a certain pressure level, the black box, like theblack box, the black box is fine. It's but the, the, the wreckage crew, th th th the, the ability to remove that from the sea bottom. This is limited by how deep it is. That's why a lot of aircraft are not recovered and they have the little submarines go down and look at them.But if they can actually pull some of the aircraft back up, then you have a much better sense of recreating the aircraft before itcrashed. Yeah. Yeah. I can't find that that data from any of the articles I've read, but yeah, oddly enough, a fishermen saw it go into the water, which is crazy. Can you imagine seeing something like that, man?So just hit, hit the water, like lightning and just exploded.Well, the, the, having an eyewitness is actually very helpful because you can eliminate a number of things. Was it aircraft on fire? Yes or no? W was the aircraft intact? Like, was it missing a tail or is it missing an engine? Most people will have a hard time discerning that kind of stuff, but if they, if it is something they had seen that it's helpful in the in accident investigation, those eye witnesses, having looked at a lot of.Accident, eye witness accounts. They will vary a lot. If you have a large group of people has seen that accident occur. They'll have a lot of varying opinions of what actually happened in front of, but usually if the aircraft's on fire, they can tell it if the aircraft is missing, an engine is. One thing they can usually tell.So it at least put some parameters about what the possibilities of the crash werein our engineering segment today, we're going to talk about bombard EA and they have a pretty amazing production facility overseas, Alan, you've been there before. Right. And you attest to the fact that this place is. Is just a, a modern Marvel essentially. You know, they, they create wings, they create lots of different parts, but one of their things is they've they assemble their wings with a lot of pre fragmented carbon fiber.And that's just a really. Complicated process in the way that they're made. Right. And obviously everything in the aircraft industry is as incredibly precise. But you said their facility here just seems to just take everything to the, to the next level. Yeah. SoBob already sold the facility at the end of 2020.I think that finally, that transaction finally happened. So spirit aerospace now owns a facility. But it's the same group of people. It's the same facility that I participated in tennis years ago when we were working on the, on the C series, 80 20, and on the leader there jet 85 the technology. The the carbon fiber composite technology in Northern Ireland is amazing.No, no thing can to really describe the capabilities they had in that facility. So he had built a, a brand new facility. At the cause they're right on the water. So if you're ever visit Belfast and go to the now spirit facility, it is right on the water where the ship docks used to be, where they used to make ships like the Titanic was made just down the road from where the wing of some wing manufacturing facility is for now spirit.But they had built a brand new facility. And it's a huge facility and not had opportunity to be in there a couple of times where they're manufacturing the C series, a two 20 wing, and it is amazing. It's like walking inside of a spaceship. There is so much technology and engineering going on in that facility to make these composite wings.And they had to develop a means of what they call a resident transfer infusion. So they're essentially Putting carbon fiber in place. That's sort of tacked together. So stringers and spars kind of get all put together and then they're making and they're let me, let me describe this way. So when they're, when they're, when they're making a wing scan, they're basically laying down what is essentially dry fabric and, and putting in some stringers and things into it, and then injecting a poxy into that mold and then curing it.That leads itself to a lot of efficiencies. So there's, you're not working with a necessarily a prepregs material, which is tacky and there's exposure issues. How much time it can be out. And how's it all clear up and they're making fairly thick assemblies and they were the trick that the RTI process was able to do was really compact all the carbon fiber and get the right amount of resonant to it consistently.And that's hard to do on very, very thick composite structures. And the 80 to 20 wing is very thick relatively speaking. So they were able to do things that I had not seen before. And the consistency of that of it was amazing. The other part about what Belfast technology was at the time is that they were designing the aircraft un

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 technology you know this being five or 10 years away from any kind of viability is is it even worth chasing i don't think so unless there is a huge cost savings like when they sat down and ran through what it would take to do this on an industrial scale could they make it less expensive than hydrogen i doubt it hydrogen will be really simple to make we all know how to make it using electricity just say break the bonds and then you got hydrogen out of water it's it's energy intensity but if you have extra energy to use the system to make it's not very complicated and we all have a lot of history with hydrogen on the engineering side so hydrogen is probably the easier answer uh there's a there's a lot of hurdles and i think the one thing people don't realize is that the certification authorities and the engine manufacturers dictate what fuel you can put in your aircraft right because there's a lot of risk with a fuel that does that it damages the engine in some way like we've seen recently with some of the additives to stop algae growth that too much of that is bad too little that's bad so all the little additives and uh things to make fuel burn properly in jet engines is super critical and is is approved with the engine design so you can't vary that willy-nilly it takes a lot of a lot of engineering time interview time to do it and approve it which adds to the the profitability side of the equation which just makes it even harder to come up with a new new fuel system or a derivative fuel system in this case yeah so cessna is marking a uh really interesting 50th anniversary or anniversary of their cessna model 500 which essentially transformed their companies you know they went from just a general aviation manufacturer to more of a business aviation companies so i mean alan what sticks out to you as being prominent about this 50th anniversary well a lot of the cessna citation line hadn't varied until until the 2000s late 90s 2000s citation 10 probably being that first real deviation from the citation 500 but that's a very simple aircraft in today's terms essentially straight wing simple fuselage simple layout pretty easy to fly uh it's relatively simple to manufacture and that's why cessna makes basically that same airplane at different derivatives today is that they can control the cost and it can be manufactured pretty easily the kicker i think on the 50th anniversary of this on the citation itself the baseline citation is there hasn't been a lot of changes in the aircraft airframe design since then on the business side obviously we have the much larger aircraft with the gulf streams the threes fours fives and plus um the dassau and embraer have have been making airplanes but they're basically the same airplane we haven't seen a lot of changes so that real fundamental citation design in a long time uh we obviously things have gotten bigger engine performance has changed we sweep back the wings now but it's not like we were talking about in the evital market whether it's going to be significant change on the way aircraft fly and handle the basic citation 500 design is still in play today which it is interesting to consider since that first from 1903 to late to the 1970 there was a huge change in the way aircraft were built and designed and then when we get about 1970 it kind of stopped uh materials changed somewhat but there wasn't huge changes in aircraft so i think the 50th anniversary comes with it's little double-edged sword it's great it's been in in production and that baseline design has been around that long but the bad part about it is we haven't really advanced aircraft design all that much so hopefully we will see some more advanced designs coming up in the next couple of years with the with the evtl market all right so in our engineering segment today we're going to talk about a pretty interesting article by michael decourt um this article that he penned uh just last week and or this week in january uh he's worked for lockheed martin uh the u.s state department the navy he's been i.t for a long time with aircraft simulation stuff like that so his uh perspective in this article for urbanairmobilitynews.com was was pretty interesting so obviously with silicon valley a lot of these startup companies and obviously we've talked about the evtl market being heavy on startups who are trying to get their product to market you know if you listen to any of these stories like one of the podcasts i really enjoy is how i built this uh by npr and guy raz and it's this common ideology of like hey we just need to get a prototype out there even if it's not perfect even if it's kind of like a beta you know our first product testers are almost like beta testing it for us in the open market uh you know mr de court here is arguing that that's not gonna work with the evtol uh situation because obviously and alan you know this well if there's one crash where one person's killed one family you know dies um that's gonna really set back the entire industry and of course there's a lot of other implications there and he talks a lot about ground and air just the chaotic nature of communicating between those two types of transportation as we try to introduce you know aircraft into our you know city centers essentially what was your take on this article because it was really interesting it's really well written i thought and brought up a lot of really good points um what's your take on mr de court's article well it first brought up the mvp process of silicon valley companies i don't know if you've heard this term before then i have the minimal minimum viable product oh minimum viable product for right for sure just not the acronym right it's so it's uh it gets tossed around well we just need an mvp to get out the door and then software uh on an app on your iphone it doesn't really make all that much difference right it may the app may not perform as well as you would have intended it to but it's functional it's tha

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.

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 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. I don't think there are any hurdles besides essentially pilot training at this point and what that pilot training looks like.Uh, and how many hours of training that looks like, and, or is it, how is that going to be accomplished? And is there any other, uh, pilot related issue that the EASA or the other certification authorities want to address? As the door is open right now, because once the door closes, everybody goes off and starts to operate in the aircraft.It's gonna be hard to undo that. Um, so we'll see what happens here. I'm just, it's really hard when you have families involved. Um, they don't know a lot about aircraft design probably. And so what really happens? You have lawyers and from. Watching this a couple of times, it's part of a larger strategy, probably unfortunately, um, and lawsuits.So if they get the, if they get this certification authority to, to disagree with the latest update to the seven 37, does that help them in court for lawsuits? Probably. Probably does. Um, so let's see how this one plays out. It's just really unfortunate because both, both things have to happen and you're going to have the lawsuit.You're going to have that play out through the court system. Um, you just going to play through the court system, but at some point some 37 has been around for a long time. Is it really all that safe, unsafe, or is it just this one system? Is it just this one system because of having problems with the angle of attack sensor or pilot training, who knows?But, um, I doubt this is going to push the seven 37 back too far. In Europe. I really doubt it. I think they're pretty much there right now. Yeah. Well, and they also called into question the FAA, the FAA is decision, uh, read the Senate, uh, committee's report. So they're like, Hey, this report just came out and it was pretty ugly.So sure. We want to go ahead and do this, which I guess that's a valid point of view and it is a little strange, you know, considering like, Oh, this smallest plane is back in action and we're all good to go. Like, you know, that phase sort of said. We're fine. And then the FAA is coming in after that angrily a scolding them some more that I do.I do find the order of operations. They're a little strange, obviously, you know, th the Senate report had nothing to do with recertification with the FAA. No, but you know, like I said, it's like, you build a house and you're done, and then someone starts pounding on the door about how unsafe it is. Right.It's like, well, everyone else signed off on it. So what are we doing? But, yeah, I understand. There's a lot of emotions and there's a lot of, there's a lot of complexity to what's going on in the court system with the families. And it's a, it's a tough situation for everybody. I'm sure. Just to say, it's almost like you're, you're releasing this, you know, almost like you're releasing a killer from prison.I don't know if that's really the right way to put it, but that's maybe how it feels a little bit to them like this sure. Family members from us, and you're letting it back in the wild. Like, are you sure? So like I get that. Yeah, I get it. But, but I feel like I'm lately, I'm always on the side of the FAA way too often here, the FAA is doing a very, very difficult job and they're stuck in the middle between politicians who can kick them all the time and the industry, which is trying to satisfy them.So you're kind of in this, at the FAA, you're in this like no win situation or at the same time, your goal is to improve air traffic and air or safety. Right. And no matter what you do, there's always going to be some problem somewhere in this big. Big world of ours and all the airplanes that are flying today.There's always going to be some aspect which isn't going as perfectly as someone else would want it to be. But I think at the end of the day, you know, the FAA has been doing a really good job for a long time. It doesn't mean that they can't make improvements, but gee whiz, um, There's a lot of positive things that are going on in aircraft safety.And if you watch over the last 10, 15 years, there's been really remarkable steps and increases in aircraft safety and performance and all the other things we're gonna talk about today. Those are only possible. Really with having a functional FAA that can work both sides. So, yeah, it's tough. It's really, yeah.Tough. So moving on the EPA is a about to finalize emission standards for commercial aircraft that are either large business jets or. Commercially, uh, you know, commercial airliners, um, and critics are saying that these standards are not soft enough, that they're going to be quickly outdated. Um, and of course these is the first ever, uh, compliance rules.Um, but Alan, your, your take on this is a, I think a little unorthodox because you're, uh, an aerospace insider. Um, does the EPA have business. Regulating airplanes. Now we know that they too cause a lot of emissions, but you're saying that they've been reducing emissions for many, many years now, is that trend going to continue?And is this really necessary? The aircraft industry in general has been reducing emissions and increasing efficiency dramatically since the start of aviation. That's the only thing that they have done consistently is aircraft have gone further. Faster with less fuel burn and taking more passengers, uh, per gallon of fuel than ever.And it's just, it's been a steady progression in that direction. And I know we're going to talk about the geared turbofan from Pratt and Whitney, which is another huge leap of innovation. Why are we kicking the aircraft industry? Because it is set up fundamentally to use less fuel, to get more passengers, moving more miles.That's the ultimate goal. If that's what all the electric, vertical takeoff and landing aircraft are all about. And I know this doesn't obviously don't apply to them, but essentially without the EPA, the industry is moving in direction. You want it to anyway,...

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?

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!

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 people and their intentions.Uh, but at the end of, at the end of it, it doesn't say who wrote it. Right. It's just you by the committee. Well, the committee is made of people and this mostly probably made a staffers and the staffers wrote this report. There's no Senator or sat down and type any part of this thing. So who are the staffers who wrote this?And why is their name not on it? Because if we were willing to call out an FAA employee, or are you willing to call out an airline employee, are you willing to call out a DOD employee or anybody else? Then you got to put your name at the bottom of it. And. And pony up because if you're gonna accuse somebody have some sort of malfeasance or cause of the death of others and you better, better put your name to the bottom of it and explain, explain yourself, right?Because you know, Senate, the Senate and the Congress, um, exclude themselves from lawsuits so they can write whatever they want. And no one gets to say about it. Right. So you're defenseless. So you're really kicking a defenseless person and that's not the way the American system is supposed to be set up.Right. You can make an accusation and then the person can say, Hey, you know, that's, that's slander, let's go to court and find out you can't do that. He gets Congress. They can write whatever they want. So in a sense, you can't punch back. There's no way the FAA is going to punch back. How, how, how, how are they going to do that?Right. And some, and some part of this is like, uh, a Boeing employee told us. Flight test pilot to when they're going to often sort of do a, what I would consider to be like a demo flight on the updated M cast system. Make sure you turn off the horizontal stab switch, uh, quickly. Okay. Fine. But what does that have to do with anything?Did it have anything to do with the recertification of that system? No. Evidently not. Uh, did it affect safety any matter? Obviously not because that system has been approved now by the FAA and Yassa and everybody else in the world for the most part. So what's the accusation. That's just some sort of impropriety by this one employee.Maybe it's an extra or mind reading into this one person in his head. Who knows why he, or she said it. Who knows? I don't know, but why is it in the report?Yeah, and I don't, obviously I've never been an airplane, uh, simulator, but it says here that, you know, some pilots were told to, you know, get right on that pickle switch, um, to help the reaction time.In the simulator. So when they kind of gave them that coaching, it would get them down to below the, hopefully below the four second threshold that they established. Right. Pilots that were not given that typically reacted in 16 seconds. And so it's, uh, this article from airways, uh, areas, mag.com is saying that that clearly demonstrate how tests were manipulated.But like you said, if that's just part of it, I mean, Can't you be in the simulator and just be learning and someone, I mean, isn't coaching someone part of the learning process. I mean, is, is it meant to be when you're in the stimulator, just do it and fail or don't I don't think, and I'm not speaking from any copy experience whatsoever, so I don't know.Well, do you think there's a reasonable chance that this employee, uh, did it so that the aircraft get it certified, uh, knowing that there was going to be crashes involved in the future? Is that, is that what the, what they're implying here? Because I think that's what they are implying. I think they're saying that the employee wanted to coach these pilots because the system was unsafe.So they went so Boeing as a company was trying to push on them. Yeah. It's like system.I get what you're saying. Yeah, you're right. That's just guessing as to whether there is mal-intent and I think right. What's what's the common saying that, you know, you should first assign and competence to something before you, you know, assign malice to it.Like, why would you assume this person is doing it to cover up a scandal? When you could say to, they just like, maybe bad at their job and they're just not doing, you know, they just. Should not coaching them and they just, or they just want them to, Hey, I want this pilot to pass this test. So I'm going to give him a little coaching rather than I want to give this test or this pilot coaching so that it covers up a huge problem that we have, like, yeah, it's, that's a fundamental difference.And like you said, it's trying to read the mind of the person who was giving the coaching itself.And there's no context to the comment, right? It's, it's completely taken out of context. It's it's, it's hearsay. Really. It means somebody. It's heard second hand also. So you don't know what the conversation was before the conversation after was, you know, any context in that conversation at all, but yet somehow it's, it appears to be being, uh, reported that it's some sort of Boeing conspiracy.And I find that that'd be one of the dumbest takes I've ever heard. If there's there's one thing that Boeing does not want is to have an unsafe system. They didn't want to have an unsafe system. Three four years ago, whenever the in-car system was developed, there was no intent to make it an unsafe system.There's no financial benefit to anybody to do that. They're there. Boeing makes $0 on crashes. It costs them a fortune, and clearly they know that and they knew that years ago. So I, this sort of after the fact. Malarkey that goes on is just ridiculous, especially in particular to the pilot reaction time and that little aspect to it, which is, I think is a valid concern of the PA the pilot reaction time to certain things that happen.The cockpit is always a disputed subject. I've been in those meetings. I've heard those comments, it goes back and forth. And flight test pilots will say one thing. Engineers will say another. There's a, just a general disagreement about it, but there were reports written. Year ago,...

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, you can actually see it in exports, which is what they want. Uh, so. Airplane technology wise, probably not so important in terms of setting new frontiers in an aircraft. I think it's more important in terms of just all the technology that's inside of that aircraft that France will now offer.

And they, if Airbus and France want to be a hub of aviation, which they clearly are then technology projects like this do have a, uh, A pay period adamant they will make their money back eventually.

Dan: Yeah. So they said software on, uh, recently finalized their technical configuration of six electric thrusters, um, and will be fitted with 50 kilowatt engine, us electric motors.

So, I mean, are the motors like these electric motors that they're using today? Are these going to be the ones that make it to market in a couple of years, I feel like electric tech is changing so fast

Allen Hall: as this. Well, the Safra and motives we're using right now and on a couple of projects. Uh, in the United States.

So yeah, it, it, it will be used and all this, and I've had a couple of, uh, discussions with soft front on some electric motor proposals that they're making. And the technology is amazing. There's nothing but amazing. The amount of the torque and horsepower they can jam into a motor is so electric motor is surprising.

It's really surprising. So yeah, it's going to pay dividends. No doubt.

Dan: Moving on NASA, supersonic X 59. Uh, the assembly team is plugging along and they've, uh, I guess, gotten to a pretty big milestone in wing design and assembly. So tell us a little bit about the X 59. What do you see from that project?

Allen Hall: Well, the X 59 is the supersonic.

Development aircraft I'll call it. That is going to be testing new approaches to reducing the Sonic boom that you would normally hear on. I feel like I'm not a fighter jet and a lot of the Sonic boom noise has to do with the aircraft shape. Not so much that it's going so fast. I mean, aircraft LV has go fast to get past that sound barrier, but.

The boom that happens is basically a collapsing of the air around the different surfaces, uh, of the aircraft. So if you can shape the aircraft, so it's not so much of a collapse of the air as, as it is a gradual closing of the air, then you can decrease that Sonic boom, because the limitations that are placed on aircraft today, particularly in the United States, because that's market, I know better as you can't.

Create a Sonic boom over land, unless there's certain designated areas for the military. So, but essentially if you had a supersonic aircraft and you're trying to a personal supersonic aircraft today, you really would have to go over the water like the Concorde before he could break the sound barrier.

But if the, if you dropped down that noise level considerably, then you open up. Virtually the whole of the United States in terms of being a fly, something as supersonic aircraft, which would be a boon to the industry because going supersonic, it's not particularly difficult. It's all the noise that it makes that people don't like because it rattles homes and breaks windows and scares the animals and all the other things that it does, because if you've ever been around, uh, a place where they've had a Sonic boom, Don't that outside of the United States.

It's loud.

Dan: Yeah. Give me my next question. Cause I don't have any perspective on this. Like I'm aware of like, kinda what it would sound like. I think from watching history channel or something, but I don't, I don't, like you said, I don't have a, an experience. With a Sonic booms,

Allen Hall: the place you in the United States, you probably would hear the Sonic booms the most.

And this would be several years ago, obviously was when the space shuttle came back to earth. There was two Sonic booms. If I remember correctly, you could hear from the ground. And I remember being in Florida one time. When the space shuttle was coming back and you could hear those Sonic booms and we weren't particularly close to the flight path of the space shuttle.

And you just think to yourself, I can't even see why I could. I see it at the time. I don't think I could see the special all the time. I remember seeing the space shuttle come in. To land, uh, at least one time and hear those Sonic booms and thinking, man, that is really, really loud. Um, but that'd be the only time that you, as a civilian in the United States, you probably actually heard of a Sonic boom was when the space shuttle was coming back down.

Yeah.

Dan: Like fly fighter or a fighter jet Flybuys, anything like that. Like they're never going fast enough to do that. No,

Allen Hall: no, they don't do it at air shows. I don't, at least they didn't. I I've seen the Thunderbirds. I've seen the, well,

Dan: now I'm intrigued. Now I need to make this happen. What can I, what can I get?

Can I like make some sort of system to shoot my toaster at the speed of sound and

Allen Hall: break the sound barrier? Right.

Dan: Whips or break sound barrier gunshots or break the sound

Allen Hall: barrier. Right. Yet there'll be the soundbite, but they're not the size of an airplane.

Dan: Yeah.

Allen Hall: When you have an airplane, uh, collapsing the air behind it, it's loud.

It's really, really loud. Uh, but so the X 59 has been that demonstrator and there's been a lot of discussion in the last five or so years about how to reduce, uh, the Sonic boom noise off an aircraft. The X 59 is going to be that demonstrator. One of the interesting pieces of the article is the expense of that aircraft, which is.

Almost $250 million. Yeah. For one aircraft

Dan: perspective, we just need economies of scale, Alan. All right. Just, just get one done. Then we get a factory, then we'll get them down to one and a quarter million. Everybody can have one.

Allen Hall: Well, the, was it, the B2 bomber was about a billion dollars in airplane,...

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 they're not like uh athletes you see today like an nfl team or a baseball team he's not very tall person but he's sort of built built right for flying and he has tremendous eyesight his eyesight was unbelievably good so the the sort of the lore from chuck yeager um in the aviation community was like he was the fastest hottest test pilot forever and i i think there's a couple of things to remember about chuck yeager and if you had followed chuck yeager on twitter chuck eagle was very active on twitter until literally a couple of months ago and his recollection and things that he would promote or some of the things that he would remember or bring up um were just fascinating and you can go back and look because twitter kind of archives that you can go back and look at some of his discussions about breaking the sound barrier and some of the things that he did but it also came with somewhat of a consequence and and this is the part i don't think you you read a lot about and i thought the news about chuck yeager passing away was actually very quiet

maybe because he's been on around for a long time and people have sort of forgotten about all the things that he had done but you know being being in that life is very difficult being a flight test pilot at the time was extremely serious business because pilots died regularly it isn't like today where an airplane crashing is is uh uh you know a big event it is an airplane crashing today is is a big event at the time when they were you know let's just talk about late 40s just after world war ii through the 1950s into the 60s airplanes crashed all the time because they just they just didn't have the engineering a lot of it was experimental and they would just go out there and get the data and that's what those flight test pilots are there for it was to go out and get the data so that the engineers could figure out how to get the aircraft to the next level and chuck yaeger had a couple of bad accidents in which he was lucky to survive in so it seems like he always had nine lives right now the thing about chuck yeager he's always seemed to have nine lives i think if you haven't if you if if you don't want to read the book watch the movie chuck yeager and in the right stuff he's actually in that movie he's a bartender and poncho's at pancho's uh uh ranch which was a sort of a place where pilots hung out out out in the desert at edwards air force base um and so he's in the movie there you can see him in there he can see him in there it's sort of it's sort of funny if he you know sort of inside baseball there but i think in today's world he just he came out of a different era and my wife was pointing out this morning like how old he was when he broke the sound barrier he's in his early 20s right yeah i was doing the math in my head yeah he hadn't been born in what 1923 because he died at 97. yeah so 47 1947 he's 24 years old right yeah and you know i've been a pilot in in the world war so he was young right and uh he's lucky i mean part of its skill part of he had a lot of skill sets he's smart uh but he could get himself out of bad situations or he could figure out a way not to get into bad situations and he taught a lot of pilots that's other thing he did too he trained a lot of pilots on how to fly airplanes and uh it's just times have evolved in a in an odd sense when you think about the sort of that sort of personality type uh very strong-willed very sort of military base which he was he's in the military for a long time and uh you just don't see a lot of that anymore you just don't and so i think it's really hard for especially kids now to even relate to something like that because who's your hot test pilot today you know we just sent up uh people to the space station a couple of weeks ago and i couldn't name one of them yeah couldn't name one of them right they just don't stick out like that it's it's almost commonplace the things that chuck yaker did back in the 40s and 50s are so uncommon it just set the world on fire uh but today we do them all the time breaking the sound barrier happens hundreds of times a day all around the world easily easily does so you know it's a huge loss i think most of it is for me it's mostly about a loss of that kind of personality style of um get up do the hard work put in you know do do the right stuff and and uh make the world a little bit better and uh you know i think the military has a lot to be proud of there i think that they do and particularly air force totally does one and for me not knowing i actually am interested in reading his book um he seems to just like embody that cowboy mentality like of america like he was just like yep let's do it let's break a sound barrier let's just i mean he like you said he had seemingly had nine lives it says that on a bunch of his flights like you said like in 1953 he was with the uh he hit mach 2.44 and hit inertia coupling and had like the plane went to some violent roll and pitch motions and he cut the engine and then like regained uh control the plane 50 000 feet later it just sounds asinine but he just like like you know like i said it just seems like the modern cowboy just wrangling planes like all these new designs into into control like breaking stallions almost oh yeah i think it is like that i would describe it somewhat like that yeah but the i i think the thing that always sort of stuck out about chuck yeager that he wasn't a cowboy in the sense that he was doing uh obviously he's in a dangerous field there's no doubt about that but he took calculated risks right he wouldn't he wouldn't put himself in a situation where he knew he was going to get killed i don't think that was his way that things ran there i think he had a good sense of how things work mechanically i think he could understand what was happening in an airplane how an airplane responded if you read his twitter feeds um the best airplane ever flew was a p-51 mustang and it's one of the coolest airp

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.

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!

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 Newark New Jersey. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and looking at this Alaska airliners, obviously the seven 37 is not that big of an aircraft, but only seems like so many parts are close enough.

Like I was looking like, what did, what hit this bear? Obviously you said it hit the, uh, you know, the lip of the engine, but you can only hit what the. The wheels and that that's the only let me, it couldn't possibly be tall enough to hit the nose. No, I hope not. Yeah. Maybe, maybe a moose, a moose. Good. Oh, I moved do a lot of damage, right.

That would, that would do a lot of damage. And I bet you, if you go back and look at flights into Alaska, somebody probably hit a moose. That was it. Just, just one of those things that you just can't control, unless you really. Have a good perimeter security and an offense where they can't hop over a crawl underneath.

And if they can, they're going to be out there. It's hard. Yeah. Well, so the, the next article I'd like to discuss is about Australian wasps. So these mud Dobber wasps have apparently been blocking a lot of Pitot tubes. And that seems much more difficult. Like for me, I'm kind of like, well, you know what, just make a better perimeter fence for all the money we spend on security.

That seems relatively controllable bears. Like bears are not small. Uh, but these wasps, and obviously I understand birds are just, you know, you can't, you can't control airspace from birds, but you know, these little wasps are plugging all these tubes. And why is that such a big problem? Well, the Pino tubes.

Tell you your airspeed and it's always, uh, uh, problem, wherever those wasps or Hornets that like to make nests, especially the mud dobbers, because they make their nests out of mud. So they're actually bringing in dirt with them to create, uh, a home. And, uh, if you've been around a wasp nest or a hornet's nest, those little honeycombs slots that they like to live in.

So it, it gets really difficult if they see a nice little opening or a hole. Like if you have one on the edge of your roof, of your house, there's always wassup in there like that. They'll find those little cracks and crevices to go make a home in and pitot tubes are, can be the right size. To make a home inside of, and especially on like on a 737 there, the peanut probes aren't really close to the ground.

So you can't. Put your eyeballs on a look inside of them on a smaller, uh, like a Bonanza or a Cessna, one 82 or something of that sort of smaller aircraft, personal aircraft. You look inside those Pito tube to see if there's critters crawling inside and you have them covered when you're not flying the aircraft to keep the craters out.

But on a 737, it sits out overnight in Australia. You really can't tell. And so you, you may have Hornets and wasps calling up inside there and trying to make a home and. If you don't know what your airspeed is, that's a big problem. Right? Okay. So aircraft, you really need to know what your speed is to fly the airplane properly.

And if it's got some sort of blockage in it, you're you got a world of hurt now. The article was really interesting because it was like a study done over a number of years about that, that, that impact. And was it like more than 50% of the cases were on 737s? Like they don't like the Airbus, so they don't like 56% of them were on the Boeing 737.

Yeah. That's a crazy burn in the, a three 30 after that was about 20% of them. But yeah, it's just gotta be the. Just the right diameter. Like you said, like, obviously they're not going to nest in someone that's huge when they're, you know, the size of a finger. Right. So they just really liked the 737 tubes, but what'd you, what'd you figure that if you're designing those Pitot tubes, that you would take that piece of information back and then do something that would prevent that because it's a serious, it's a serious thing.

Not knowing your speed's a big deal or the whole. AOA, uh, issue with the seven 37 and M cast system, uh, right. Is this a central problem? Well, you got to insects causing sensor problems have to do with airspeed. Those are big problems. And you know, one of the things that has hurt, uh, aircraft over time is when they do put those red sleeves on.

Have you ever seen these things? They say remove before flight. It's got a little tag hanging off it and they, they slide it over the Pitot probe we supposed to be before people forget to take those off. Uh, and have had accidents even though they're red and they're dangling out there and they're noticeable.

Well, you're not really going to notice a hornet's nest up in a Pitot probe on a 737 until it's too late. Right. Wow. Scary. Yeah. Just, just goes back to a, we talked about in multiple shows before, just that checklist, like you just got to go through all, like look inside every pitot tube. You can pull off the red and the red covers, like you said, just little things like that are easy to get missed if you just.

Don't check off every item in your list. Oh yeah. And Australia is just a tough place. They already, right. Like spiders, the size of, you know, just like stalking you in the night. It's terrifying all the creatures in Australia. Oh yeah. Don't they have the highest number of poisonous creatures or at least creatures thinking that sounds right.

Yeah. Right. So just the, the, you gotta be hard. Freddy Krueger lives there too. And Jason, I think now a vacation. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well, right. Uh, this is one of those things about Australia. Like, man, there's, they're pretty tough down there. Right. And, uh, uh, but at the same token, I think we should be taking some of that data back, uh, especially if you're designing a PIDO probes and making it a little more.

Insect resistant would be a good, good thing to go do. Yeah. So lightning strike, uh, prompted a New Zealand air, uh, ATR 72. So this is from simply simple flying.com and, uh, there's a pretty like in-depth article,...

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.

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: 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. And then there's other failures in which, uh, like we had that episode down in Mexico where they had the bulb seal all the way around the radar.

So the radar couldn't breathe essentially and it collapsed the front. Part of the radio man. Uh, it's just another structural failure. So as soon as you open up some sort of hole, there's concern about aerodynamic forces and air just inflating the radar. But from what I can see in some analysis I seen, it's not really an issue so much because there's been a lot of holes from.

By birds going through Ray domes and the rate homes have, I've not seen one self-destruct from that. The, the rate homes are pretty tough because they're typically a fiberglass or Kevlar, a poxy mix with some sort of honeycomb in or foam. Uh, and they're really resilient structures. So even though you damage some part of it, it doesn't.

Necessarily, uh, cause a lot of additional stress elsewhere and it's not a load bearing structure. That's the thing about a radon. It's not carrying a lot of load besides the aerodynamic load. There's not like there's wing forces on it or lift forces on it. It's essentially a fairing. So it's just their load.

So there's not a lot of forces put on it. So when you put a hole in those radomes, it doesn't necessarily. Uh, or on its face, it's not really a significantly serious issue where the FAA has raised flags about it. As you have. I saw a YouTube video of the weekend talking about the, the radon. They got punctured coming out of Europe and the landed, I think it was in Denver a couple of years ago.

And that radar hole was a size about the size of a bowling ball. And they flew for hours like that. And as a seven 57 and it was fine. So if that kind of damage is happening on a secondary structure, which it is, and, and all the life experience we have with those holes would say, it's not really a significant, serious issue for aircraft flight.

It's a costly issue to repair, but in terms of aircraft safety, it's not really aircraft safety issue. . Pretty solid underneath it. Cause I conceptualize it as kind of just like a bowl, like turn upside down, like an empty cereal bowl. Are they getting empty underneath? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, so for the weather radar antennas, uh, there's red alert weather, radar antennas underneath of it, there's a glide slopes and sometimes localizer antennas, but those are much smaller than the main.

Main pieces, the weather radar. And then if you're talking about military aircraft, sometimes there's some other kinds of spooky electronics up front up there, but mainly it's mainly, it's just the weather radar. Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, moving on, uh, too much, much sillier note in, uh, South Korea, they are doing a sort of a sightseeing program where.

I guess people are just so ready to do something and spend a little money and see the sites that you can get an F in a plane. It'll take off, fly over some other countries. So it's technically an international flight will not touch down and we'll just come back to the original airport. Alan, what is happening?

What is happening in 2020 right now, people are getting on airplanes, spending money to be on an airplane, to just circle and come back. Are you getting double miles or triple miles when you fly that way? Or is there champagne and the cabin? What kind of meal service are you getting on this flight?

There's something, there's something I'm missing here. Or they handed out free cigarettes and booze on the flight because otherwise, how would you lock yourself inside of an aluminum can for a couple of hours to go fly over something you can't even see. They really see the ground at 35,000 feet. So why, why are you doing this?

I don't understand it. But yeah, they have a long line of people signed up for it or what? I don't know, but the F so this photo from the Korea, harold.com shows there's a photo inside the cabin, just showing four people all leaning out the out the window or not leaning out their windows, but just at their windows with their, yeah, that'd be, that'd be a hoot, um, with their cameras, just like, but like you said, I don't know if they're going up to normal altitude here, if they could have some sort of different flight path, but.

You're right. Like what are they taking a photo of their 35,000 feet, but people are just, well it's and it sounds like one of the things is the duty free shopping on board. So they're potentially, they can make some money if not make some money back, but save some money on making duty, free purchases while in the air.

I don't know, just seems bizarre to me. Well, is it because, uh, you remember back so several years ago where the, I think it was the Soviets, it could have been the Russians, but I think it was a Soviet shut down that Korean airliner that had entered into their airspace. And they basically, the, the gist of it was that the Soviet union slash Russia.

Uh, thought that Koreans were spying on them. So it also makes you kind of wonder why would do these international flights? Is it just some sort of surveillance flight? Is that what's going on? It's a way to get airplanes in the air so you can watch what's going on on the ground somewhere else. Is that what it's all about?

It is a very odd. Odd thing that happens. So I haven't seen that in the United States. No, one's no one's saying, Hey, let's go fly around and let's go fly over Canada and come back. I haven't seen, seen that one yet, but maybe there is, uh, yeah, I don't know. America is so unpredictable. I mean, people don't want to fly on airplanes, but like a star, large fan of the country is like outrageous.

They have to wear a mask and refuses to do it. It's like, it's, it's. Chaos. I don't know. I can't imagine getting on a plane just to come back, but maybe if you're really bored, you just want to do that. Like it's like a date night spend 500 bucks on flight to nowhere and come back. Like, I don't know,...