STRUCK: An Aerospace Engineering & Lightning Protection Show

In this episode of the Struck Aerospace Engineering Podcast, we discuss how the GAO is talking with Boeing about their aging workforce - half of Boeing FAA delegates will be of retirement age in just 5 years, which is worrisome. The Eurocopter X3 broke the speed record for a helicopter, and is an impressive machine. We discuss the Beta Technologies EVTOL making an important flight, Eviation getting a new partner on composite doors plus much more on this episode.

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverters. 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: EP35 - Boeing vs GAO, Eviation Partners on Composites; Eurocopter X3 Breaks Helicopter Speed Record

This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightening Tech. At Weather Guard, we support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.

You are listening to the struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett. I'm Allen Hall. And here on struck, we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightening protection.

All right. Welcome back to the struck aerospace engineering podcast on today's episode. In our new segment, we're gonna talk about easy jet. There was a lightning strike that caused that flight to be diverted kind of scary, but everyone was okay. Secondly, we're talking about the FAA did GAO here in the U S has talked about that.

A lot of, uh, engineers are going to be hitting retirement age pretty soon, and there's some key training and competency gaps that need to be addressed. It's a really interesting topic right there. Uh, we're going to chat a little bit about Boeing and some of their UV technology and other technologies they've developed to help clean airplanes.

Obviously COVID is still affecting a lot of the way we travel. And speaking of the way COVID is affecting travel. Australia has some new protocols potentially, uh, in place soon that will keep, uh, honestly passengers pretty happy, but also make screening a lot easier and safer potentially in our engineering segment.

We're going to talk about the, uh, the Eurocopter X3, which has set a new speed record for a helicopter and also the supersonic business jet that just went through wind tunnel testing. And then lastly, in our EVTOL segment, we're going to talk about Eviation, uh, getting a partner for composite doors and lastly, the Beta Technologies EVTOL and a flight test they recently completed.

So Allen let's talk first with some lightning news, easy jet. They think they got struck by lightning. But take us through that scenario. What happened? Well, there's, there's, there's a lot happening in this particular one. So it's flying from, uh, essentially Scotland down to Southern England. And there was a lightning strike on the communication tower down and in Bristol.

And what happens in a lot of cases, this is not a normal, but when lightning strikes the airport, you can lose airport lighting, which is a big deal, or you can lose communication tower. And when you lose communication to the aircraft that are coming in to the airport, uh, you. You lose control of traffic.

So you, you probably will end up diverting somewhere, which is what happened. They ended up diverting to Birmingham and then being bust the bus down at night time to where they needed to go. So a lot of the airports though have lightning protection because this is not infrequent and a lot of the gear.

Uh, communications gear and, uh, anything that may be susceptible to lightning strike has protection in it. So it makes you think something happened, uh, loss of power loss piece of damaged equipment, which just makes for a fun flight because you're not expecting that to happen. If you know, usually aircraft gets struck not, not the airport, but the airport gets struck in this case.

It made it for a little bit of an adventure. So bigger story here. The FAA has said that while they're going to work to address some gaps, but the GAO is sort of a wag, their finger in, and this is the government accountability office is recommending the FAA, really address some, some issues that are going to be upcoming.

So in 2025, According to the GAO between 52 and 62% of FAA inspectors and engineers will be retirement eligible. So, Alan, why is that a scary scenario? And why does that require this, uh, this need to be addressed? Well, the FAA is involved in all parts of aviation in the United States and across the world.

And, and if you're losing half of your. Staff, so to speak, you can't operate things, just school grind to a halt, which is what will happen. And it's hard to replace that sort of, that level of expertise that has developed at the FAA over 30 years, probably. Maybe 40 somewhere in there. And so to take those key knowledgeable people that have been, uh, working with the aircraft industry for such a long period of time off the table, you're just left with this void.

And, and the problem comes about because it's very S the aircraft industry is very cyclical. And so there's booms and busts. It's kind of like the oil industry, there's booms and busts. And during those bus period, people don't get hired. And so you get these, this, uh, wide span of several years where the aircraft finished, she wasn't hiring.

If they're not hiring engineers and inspectors, that's where lolly FAA gets their people from us, from the aviation industry. So if the, of age innovation industry, isn't hiring people in that, in that span of time, then there's just like this, this, this void of people that exist. So for the next wave of. Of engineers and inspectors.

It could be, that could be a 10 to 15 year gap in terms of, if you look at the statistics and the age distribution, you're going to see this separation that occurs between them and it occurs. They are car companies too. You can see it. So this, this, if it's happening in the FAA, it's happening at the aircraft companies too, which is you just got this, this sort of knowledge that's walking away and retiring and going down to sunny, Florida or wherever they're headed to.

And then what are you going to do? Right? You can't backfill 20 years of knowledge tomorrow. There just aren't people that to fill it in because once those, once they had that dip in aviation, Th th those engineers, when somebody else and those inspectors went somewhere else to have a nice life and that you just can't bring them back.

And it's really hard, especially in disciplines like mine, uh, and, and some stress and mechanical systems that are very, very, very narrowly focused in the sense of they're. They know a lot about this particular aspect of aircraft design to certification. Those people are hard to find. So you just, you just can't pick them up off the street anywhere.

It's going to be a real, real problem. It's because 50% is a huge number. Holy moly. Wow. Well, and so there'll be eligible for retirement at that point, but does that mean that they all will? I mean, do you, are you engine engineer, folk who, you know, you're good at what you do and you're passionate about all the, the design and tinkering like engineers or certain types of people.

I mean, Do engineers just like want to run into retirement, right? When they're first eligible or are you sort of more of the demographic that's maybe going to work a little bit longer? Again, it's a, it's a demographic, uh, profile, I think just based on my anecdotal information. If, if you put your time in government service, by the time you reach retirement age, the benefits are really good.

Uh, because you put all that, like the time it's like being a police officer, a fireman, and at the end, there is significant benefits to staying on that job for a certain length of time. So when you get to retirement age, you pretty much want to take that if you can. It's not like, um, You know, slept like me that are off doing their own independent engineering thing, where if you like it, you stay because you can sort of control your destiny, you know, coming into an office, so to speak, uh, or somebody else's the boss, I'm the boss of the thing.

So, you know, a lot of people in my situation that are DER's. Stick around until 75, 80 a lot of times because they enjoy it, you know, and, and it's, they can come and come and go as they please work when you right. They can come and go as they please, what you can't really do that if you're coming to the FAA office, you know, you're, you're, it's an eight to five, Monday through Friday kind of job.

And, and a lot of people when they get to the early sixties, decided to retire. And, uh, and so if they're projecting out 50 percentile at 2025, it's going to be roughly that it won't be 10%. It'll be closer to 50, so they're not hanging, they're not hanging. Right. They did their time. And rightly so they can.

Part of the, part of the agreement they made

moving on Boeing is talking about some of their new technology, which this obviously very relevant, just trying to keep planes as, uh, as clean as possible. So their engineers have created a device and ultraviolet wand that they just basically like scan your carrier all through the plane and yeah. Zaps everything out of the nooks and crannies.

And, um, it's pretty interesting. I mean, I guess my bigger question here is not whether this stuff works. It seems like it clearly does. Uh, but is this going to hang around in three years, like in three years still going to be doing this or, or not? That is a great question. And I was having this discussion over the weekend with somebody about all the cleanliness activities that are happening on the airplanes today.

And how, at least in the United States, there's a lot of discussion how the, the general flu hasn't propagated, like it normally would at this time of year. So they've seen a real big drop in and flu related interest issues....

Joby Aviation has released numerous patents, giving a glimpse into their technology. Bye Aerospace partners with Korean company Aerospace9 in what looks like a very lucrative deal. Spirit Aerosystems revealed Q3 results, and we discuss the future of the Airbus A380, which one airline recently has phased out of commercial use.

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 EP34 - Is the Airbus A380 Going Away? Bye Aerospace Gets Key Partnership & Joby Aviation Releases Patents

You're listening to the struck podcast i'm Dan Blewett i'm Allen Hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection all right welcome back to the struck podcast this is episode 34 and on today's show we've got some news some engineering and some evtol action for you today so number one we're gonna chat about the A380 one of airbus's largest offerings uh kind of being phased out it sounds like a recent incident with an a320 that was not down per se not almost down i don't think it was really almost down but it sounds like the pilots were very heavily effective which put them in a really scary situation uh by fumes coming in the cockpit which is crazy also we're going to chat a little bit about spirit era systems third quarter results and some optimism from their leadership in our engineering segment we're going to talk about by aerospace they've got an investment from a Korean company which sounds promising and lastly in the evtol segment we'll chat about Joby who has recently filed a bunch of patents which is starting to shed some light on some other technology so Allen first let's start with the a380 so Hi-fly which is one of only apparently 15 companies that ever leased or operated uh the a380 because they're such a darn big aircraft but they said they're planning to phase this out they've done three years of of leasing it and now they're gonna kind of move forward and swap their a380s for more a330s so is this a trend that you expect to continue yeah that's why the 747 has gone away also and that in the triple 7's having a little bit of struggle on the new development side is four engine airplanes and large uh multi-aisle airplanes are going away because international travel has gone to zero and it doesn't make any sense to have four engines anymore and as we there's some huge consolidation in the industry the a380 is is and it seems hard to believe because it hasn't been around all that long but the a380 it's going away and it'd be in a couple of years you won't be able to see it really maybe besides the museum and it's hard to think about the evolution of aircraft because we there's some aircraft that have been around so long that you just come ubiquitous that you could say 747 to pretty much anybody in the planet and they even know what you're talking about but they're in that same cycle there's been all kinds of airplanes that have come and gone and it takes a very unique aircraft to last tens and twenties and thirty year spans it just doesn't happen all that often so uh it is special that some of these airplanes have lived as long as they have and been in service as long as they have the a380 really wasn't one of them it was pushing a particular segment of the aircraft market the the large volume traffic market the upper end of the marketplace for the most part uh because you're burning a bunch of fuel and it just never and long haul too so it just didn't really make any sense after a while and and even though fuel prices are low right now it just there's just not a customer base for it it just really isn't and i think you'll see a lot of other airplanes kind of get stuck in that same mold anything that is really dedicated international travel routes is going to have problems for the next year or two until things settle out from coven and there's nothing to do about it which is the sad part because you know there's been a ton of work and engineering time to go into a380 and all the other airplanes that serve the international marketplaces and it's just being idled essentially which is never good because we need to have the ability to move across the planet and right right now we've essentially shut it all down uh which is just not good you see that in the employment numbers for like boeing and airbus and a bunch of other aircraft manufacturers mitsubishi sounds like they've they're mop balling their space jet that that is you know sort of expected in sort of economic conditions we're in today but the trouble is is that you start losing a lot of the engineers and the talent that you had to develop those projects and they wander off and do something else and when you have to get to the next a380 type project they're not coming back because the turbulence in the aircraft market is for a certain segment of society it just is it's a it's a hard life and it doesn't necessarily seem like it seems like a glamorous life you get to drink coffee and sit in conference rooms all day but it's actually a pretty difficult life and once you lose the engineers from what i've seen 50 of them will come back maybe maybe they'll find some other places more stable and that's the trouble yeah so this isn't that old of an airplane either especially compared to the 747 i mean this is 2005 the first prototype was revealed yeah and uh so i mean who's going to take the loss on this i mean is it the leasing companies or it's airbus is airbus leasing well yeah well it depends on you know when you have a lease situation ever it's just like a rental car every mile that you it's in use you're making money on someone's paying you for that opportunity to fly the aircraft so the leasing companies don't tend to do too poorly in those transactions as long as the aircraft is being leased and flown you're happy it just comes about when they you own this aircraft and it's parked that you start to take it uh in on the negative column you start to go into the red on the economics of it and on an air a380 i'm sure the thought process was this aircraft could fly 40 50 years we can be making money we can be making money 30 40 years out with the same aircraft possibly that's a remarkable feat if you can pull it off and a lot of aircraft after the 20 years span kind of tend to go away but you know something that large you tend to want to keep it around and treat it nicely so you can make big dollars because everything's paid for essentially once you get past about years six or seven on that on as the owner hopefully you paid it off and the rest is just cash but yeah so it's hard you know i think probably the the the companies have lease a380s have made their money and have a little bit of income but that's going to stop now well speaking of airbus an a320 and this such a striking such a weird story that basically a a cessna citation owned by netjets uh took off like a minute before an airbus a320 operated by vueling probably pronouncing that wrong um and basically like the cabin filled with fumes and the pilots were reported fumes from the cessna they basically told on them and uh so but they had some real real were really affected by it i mean one of them went to the to the to the toilet to uh i don't know i mean they were so nauseous that both of them were very heavily affected and uh i mean this creates a really serious situation and i mean you wonder like if what if it's the cabin door was closed and they both just passed out you just didn't know i mean i guess that could potentially happen obviously but i said seven minutes after taking off that you know the uh the crew was really monitoring the cabin and or the the pilots and just a really strange hazardous situation and they're not exactly sure why this went down like that but i mean is this is this really that abnormal or this strikes me as pretty weird i think it's abnormal usually the the airbus and the boeing airplanes their air inlets are well they suck in air for to provide pressurization tends to be under the wing or in that fairing underneath the wing there's packs in there that bring in the fresh air so i kind of wonder if it's a just the size of the citation versus the a320 because the citation's relatively low to the ground but is it on the same level as the incoming air inlets for the airbus and if they if usually i don't know if you ever stood behind a jet airplane it smells you can see you can smell the burnt kerosene coming off the back side of that thing it is can be overpowering and that's why you don't stand there but if they happen to suck that in into their environmental control system on the airbus you may not really notice you may not really notice it i always think kerosene has a kind of a sweet smell to it now and you know you're around an airport because you can smell that jet fuel that kerosene burning and i'm surprised that pilots didn't think wow that's weird i'm smelling kerosene but along with that kerosene smell are the byproducts of combustion which one is carbon monoxide so if you're sucking in a bunch of carbon monoxide into the environmental control system for the airbus you would get really sick i think because the filtration system wouldn't remove the carbon monoxide and you know carbon monoxide poisoning kills a lot of people uh a year and the the symptoms are one of the early symptoms are is that uh like your features get red like your lips start to get bright red right and then you start to get this nauseous feeling again they get light headed and dizzy and those are always the markers like hey i got to get some fresh air well in an airbus cockpit you can't just i don't think you can well you can't roll down the window for sure i'm not sure if you can pop the windows out somewhere if you kind of pop the windows out get some fresh air in but you woul

In this episode, we discuss some of the interesting ways airlines are hustling to make a dollar, including selling bar carts...Volocopter announced an interesting partnership with Japan Airlines--will it make sense for the EVTOL company? We talk about Hexcel PEKK composite, an electrically conductive material that has some fascinating technology behind it. Plus Jaunt Air Mobility 's road to certification and is the F-117 Nighthawk back in business!? and many more topics on this wide-ranging episode.

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!

EP33 - Airlines Hustle to Make a Buck; Volocopter Partners with Japan Airlines; Hexcel PEKK Composite Tech; F-117s Back in Service?

Weather Guard Lightning Tech Lightning Diverter Strips

Boeing is discussing selling off their Seattle HQ as the company ponders what the workplace looks like in the future. We discuss more lessons learned from the flight of the Barn Owl and the Airbus Albatross project, a new demonstrator with flapping wings. FedEx is testing drones in Memphis to help workers become more efficient, and Ampaire makes a long flight in their all-electric aircraft. Check out the video of FedEx's drones here and the Airbus Albatross here.

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 EP32 - Will Boeing Sell Their Seattle HQ? Airbus Albatross Project; FedEx Tests Drones at the Airport & Ampaire Makes Important Flight

Welcome back to the Struck podcast, episode 32. And in today's episode, in our new segment, we're going to chat about this potential Jetpack person flying at 6,000 feet above a LA, which is seemingly unconfirmed and also terrifying. Uh, and also we're going to talk a little bit about Boeing, uh, potentially selling one of their HQs and considering some mobile.

Options. So as you know, as everyone is rethinking what office life looks like in our engineering segment, we are going to talk a lot about birds. There's an interesting study on bird flight with the barn owl, also the air, uh, the Airbus albatross, which has actually, uh, segmented wings, if that's the right term for it, but they sort of flap.

So really interesting demonstrators technology there. And then lastly, in our electric tech segment, we're going to chat about drones being used at the airport, which is a pretty cool idea. And then the Ampaire. So their EEL, uh, aircraft has made some pretty impressive, uh, long haul flights. Well, maybe not a long haul, but some pretty impressive distance flights recently, uh, as in what they call the most, maybe commercially relevant, uh, electric aircraft at the moment.

So. Allen, let's start with what is the deal with this? A jet pack. Yeah, I don't know. Isn't it crazy that we've had now two sightings from airplanes from multiple aircraft coming into lax, where they see what looks or appears to be a guy on it and a Jetpack cause the, the, the, the feedback to the control towers and the ground crews are.

It looks like a guy in a jet pack. So in a pilot's eyes, you know, think about pilots is they usually have pretty good eyes. That's one of the criteria to fly an airplane. So, uh, I would say that they're probably telling you the truth that they actually seen this guy on a jet pack. Now, uh, the, uh, in this, uh, mobile phone dominated world where we're taking video of.

All kinds of things. It's weird that nobody has posted any video, or I haven't seen any video on TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat. And you know, there's just no video of this thing occurring. And it seems like if it's, if it's some sort of prank, there'll be a ton of video online about it that, uh, would get picked up somewhere.

But we don't have that either. So there's a lot of curiosity about it because. If it ever got to a situation where it ran into an airplane, uh, that result would not be good. And if it is a real person, now there's been conjecture that it's a dummy attached to a jet pack or some sort of, um, I've even heard some discussion about being a helium filled thing that just floats around.

Maybe it is maybe it isn't who knows, but it just don't. Want to be playing around airports. That's one of the sort of basic fundamental rules around airports is don't put things in the air where an airplane can run into them because you're risking a lot of people's lives for some nonsense that you want to go pull off.

Uh, but do you think it's a real jet pack? Dan D well, you're reading this article from NBC news. Uh, so David May, may man is the CEO of Jetpack Aviation in LA. And he said, it's kind of funny that they have five jet packs. They're all under lock and key only he and his chief engineer have those keys. So they're like, no, one's taking these out, you know, under our nose.

And, uh, and he also said, I mean, he had a lot of really good reasons that this is probably not a one of his packs for sure, but a B S you know, some, so he said basically their model holds 12 gallons of fuel. Which is about 10 minutes worth of flight time. And it would take about seven minutes to climb to 6,000 feet, which is where the recent sighting was.

Right. So he said to get up there and come back down, he said, it's pretty unlikely. Like you probably just wouldn't make it fuel wise. And then when it does come down, it uses like a, a large pan or shoot, essentially. So he said these things are so loud. They're super interesting. Obviously they calm down with a parachute.

He was like, why wouldn't you, you know, this was actually happening. Someone would have taken a cell phone video, see this, see going on. Like, there would be evidence that someone's doing this, but nothing's surfaced so far. So he thinks it's just a drone. Like some kid just like made some crazy drone and I don't know, maybe attached to the dummy to it.

You don't know who knows, but what it does seem, it does seem pretty implausible the way he describes it. Well, okay. So let's get back to the, to the real interesting part of this, which is the David Blaine balloon stunt. Did you see that David Blaine? Magician? I watched some of the, I think he's an interesting dude.

I watched some of it, but it was like a three hour long, like YouTube video, a watch. I watched a little bit of it. Yeah. Well I think I skipped, but I think I skimmed enough where I didn't like get the point. So the little that I watched, I like screwed it up for myself. I should have skimmed more effectively.

Well, do you think that this may be a follow on a copycat to what Blaine was doing? Because he basically took a whole bunch of, of helium balloons and titled onto a lawn chair. Isn't that what happened? Or he was holding onto them. He was physically holding onto them for a long time. Wow. Holding onto it.

But it clear like that. Wasn't what was keeping him attached to it. Right. And he was just holding it, holding on there for a stability for life. Cause I was looking at that. I'm like, there's no way you're only suspended by your forearms right now. That just wouldn't be realistic, but no, but yeah, so, I mean, I wouldn't, you know, you never know something could surface, this is actually like Batman or Ironman or something, you know, David Blaine, who's probably the closest to being probably Batman, you know?

I think one of the things, yeah, that's true. But one of the Blaine. Uh, problems or what they were trying to prove, I guess, is that he went up like 23,000 feet, 24,000 feet. Something like that. Isn't the air gets really thin. It gets really difficult to breathe it at 6,000 feet. It's not really all that difficult to breathe.

So Blaine was going to another level, but I just wonder if this is a copycat of what he was doing. It's starting to starting to feel like that. So Boeing is considering selling their commercial headquarters. Um, Alan, you, have you been to their, uh, Seattle headquarters? Yes, I have. A couple of different times.

Uh, it's a really interesting building. It's a very modern building. And one of the, as you throw out your drive through the Boeing complex, it's one of the buildings that stands out to you. So it, it, um, how has the Boeing hierarchy for a long time, until they all moved to Chicago to make their new headquarters and.

Uh, I still don't really understand the whole Chicago move, I guess it was just to say, Hey, we're a, uh, an international company and we're not just a Seattle company. Okay. Whatever, but it, at some point, uh, when that. Hi quarters did really move. There was a big concern about whether Seattle was going to continue to be the, the landmark location for Boeing in terms of aircraft production.

And now with the South Carolina, seven, eight, seven manufacturing just gonna occur. Down in South Carolina and they're gonna stop all production up in the Seattle area and they want to sell off the old headquarters building is starting to feel a little ominous, uh, in I'm sure, uh, with the seven 37 pressure with COVID-19 and not a lot of people flying.

And now, uh, the re sort of realignment of Boeing and the stock price. It hasn't been doing all that. Great. There's gotta be a ton of concern from the employees. And the surrounding community is how long is Boeing planning on staying and, and what are we doing, uh, as, uh, an, from a state government, local government thing.

I know that they've, they've given Boeing, uh, a number of, uh, tax incentives to hang around the area, but I'm not sure that's working anymore. Uh, it's just not, not what you want to see, because this goes back to our. Discussion a couple of episodes ago about the EBTL market and how the EVT all market is occurring in Silicon Valley and Europe.

In Vermont, but it's not happening in normally located aerospace center like Seattle or Wichita, or even Oklahoma city or some parts of North Carolina or, or even some, some of the Florida things like there's some sort of weird wheel alignment going on in the aerospace industry. And, and Boeing is it's too large of a company to make drastic changes quickly.

But. We're seeing relatively massive reorganizational changes in geography where aerospace occurs. Obviously, during world war two, there was a lot of manufacturing. And after world war two, there was a lot of manufacturing in California for, um, aircraft production. Pre-war post-war uh, but boy, Oh boy, you just start to wonder how long Boeing's going to be really tied to Seattle area, because it would be a real shame.

There's there's just so much. Talent and skill in that area that has developed over such a

The Kittyhawk Heaviside EVTOL aircraft is impressive, and has been flying recently and making headlines. But with an engineering team that is very small, will they actually have the staff to get it to market? Blue Force Technologies is a leader in carbon fiber, and they have some techniques that seem to be pushing the industry to new limits. We also discuss the VoltAero Cassio hybrid electric aircraft, Airbus deliveries surging and a commercial airliner caught in a terrible hailstorm that shattered the windshield.

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: EP31 - Will the Kittyhawk Heaviside EVTOL Actually Reach the Market? Plus Blue Force Composites New Carbon Fiber Molding Techniques

You're listening to the struck podcast I'm Dan Blewett I'm Allen hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection all right welcome back to the struck podcast this is episode 31. on today's show in our news segment we're going to chat a little bit about airbus so they've got uh an increase in deliveries this past month month which is uh great to see number two a really scary moment a hail storm uh cracked a windshield of a recent flight and we're gonna talk a little bit about covet and the odds of getting it uh on a flight so it seems like it's actually quite low which i think all of us or a few of us would have predicted many many months ago when we're you know still in the grips of the uncertainty of it all but some new data is pretty interesting suggesting that you're pretty unlikely to catch on a flight in our engineering segment we'll talk about blue force composites some of the interesting work that blue force technologies is doing and we're going to talk about the VoltAero Cassio which is a quirky hybrid electric aircraft and then lastly in our EVTOL segment we're going to talk about the Kittyhawk Heaviside which is flying and they're kind of making some waves recently but I think Allen's got some strong views here on the overall scope of the EVTOL certification process and whether some of these companies are actually going to make it to the finish line so Allen let's start with airbus deliveries are up this makes you excited i'm sure yeah it's good to see some airplanes being delivered for once uh airbus sold about 57 airplanes in september uh i'm sure exactly 57 - 57 it's an easy number to remember uh that they're probably clinking the shame champagne glasses and toulouse because that is a decent number that's the highest number it's been all year and i think they're hoping that it continues to rise uh that's in comparison to Boeing's 11 aircraft sold in september so there's a five to one difference between Boeing and airbus which i'm sure makes Toulouse excited to hear that uh but it does i think that the bigger picture here is that aircraft sales and deliveries are not so much sales but deliveries are starting to happen and there's a small but growing demand for aircraft i think that will continue as we start to come on the back side of COVID even though it doesn't feel like it i think uh for the most part there is a big uh positive change in covet and with vaccines coming relatively soon i think we're gonna be looking forward and hopefully some of these airlines are looking forward to and start picking up some airplanes because when the demand hits people will gonna go on vacation i i don't know how they're not gonna go on vacation after being stuck in their homes for literally a year i think there's gonna be a lot of travel once everybody feels comfortable they're gonna get out and they're gonna spend some money and the airlines want to be ready for that yeah well it says the bulk of the delivery so 43 of the 57 were a320s which is narrow body yep but question for you i know very little about airplane deliveries but why is anyone buying new aircraft right now i mean couldn't they delay i mean is this really such an urgent need like who's buying who's buying planes right now well airplanes go out of service for a multitude of reasons because a lifetime has expired because they burn too much fuel because it's just not worth putting more money into them that's most likely the case if you can save enough money on fuel because you're using the the newer a320 which has better engines on it then you will make that change because a lot of and some of these aircraft may be going out to lease which is another uh valid marketplace in these tumultuous times that leasing an aircraft probably makes a lot of sense so the leasing companies are being able to to uh you know leash an aircraft for a while and if if you don't need it you can return it sort of thing uh just like a car yeah so i i think there's that sort of uh weird marketplace that's happening now but you do swap airplanes quite frequently if you go look at the aircraft bone yards though the aircraft graveyards they're full of airplanes and and there's a cycling through even a company like southwest which is all 737s they do take those older 737s out of service and put the newer ones in because they're much more efficient they have all the the fancy upgrades you got the uh more amenities to them they have they're much more efficient so it makes sense to to take the old ones out of service so speaking of a320s there was a flight out of chicago recently united airlines flight that had to make an emergency landing i mean they just right off right out of uh the gate pretty much i mean they made a loop over lake michigan after leaving chicago came back but this photo is crazy they had a shattered windshield from hail which i've never heard of that before i mean you think of you know planes being insulated from all this stuff i know we've talked about bird strikes a bunch on the show but yeah some passenger i guess they're just walking out or maybe there's a crew member but i mean the windshield looks shattered just like you know if you took a huge rock to your car windshield like it just looks the same which surprises me i think it surprised me for two reasons one i kind of assume they're made of like a polycarbonate that just could not possibly be shattered but then i guess the you know with hail or just with the particulate in the air and the high speeds that would probably make them very cloudy to see through is that is that right well they're made of multiple layers if you actually uh were to see an aircraft windshield especially a jet windshield that there there are multiple layers involved there they're combination of glass and what i would consider like a bonding agent between the layers such that you can break the outer layer and the the remaining layers can handle the pressurization loads and aircraft loads which are minimal but i mean the pressurization loads are the big one without bursting right your worst case scenario is it lets go and the airplane depressurizes and bad stuff happens so they're designed to take that and birds also right so they have to also take birds running into them which happens quite often and keep on flying so the hail to me the hail thing is more of an issue of what were the pilots doing flying into a hail storm you have weather radar on those airplanes which should be able to discern for the most part discern where severe weather patterns are and you want to avoid those if you see red on the weather radar screen those are places which may have hail and you probably want to stay away from those why you fly into that i don't know i know it seems to happen most of you don't take off a landing right where they're trying to get out of someplace or get into some place a little bit of a rush to get in and out they think and squirt between two two parts of a storm and get between these two red cells which is what typically it looks like on the screen uh so you're trying to split the difference and get through there before the aircraft get things up but it's dan it's just like if you're in kansas in uh april and you there's hail big hail storms out there you don't go driving towards a thunderstorm man you can see that thing out there and it's just going to dent the heck out of you it's not just going to break the windshield it's going to damage the leading edges it can and severely damage the engines which are all designed to take some level of hail but structurally man you just dent the heck out of that airplane and composite panels anything that's a carbon fiber panel a fiberglass panel a fairing and whatnot man that the impact damage to those can be really a pain in the backside to go find and and to evaluate so for that 30 second excursion a lot of repairs man a lot of repairs so speaking of commercial flights man everything in the show is just really flowing together right now alan uh kovid is not really much of an issue on planes which again i think is probably you know if we were to say that we go go back in time and tell people this back in april or may they'd be like you're crazy but some interesting data um so i guess uh dr powell of the iata uh you know he's got some peer-reviewed literature says 1.2 billion passengers have flown and 44 people have been confirmed to have caught covet from another flyer so that essentially means one case out of every 27 and change million travelers and that's actually higher than being struck by lightning which your risk in the us's one in every 1.2 million people so pretty interesting definitely counterintuitive and in this article from simpleflying.com they have a nice little graphic that kind of explains the difference and this was i guess some stuff from airbus but as we've talked about before cabin air is fully renewed and you know sent out every two to three minutes there's a constant injection of fresh air they have great filters and there's there's air fl

We talked about Southwest CEO Gary Kelly's letter to employees and the Cyclogyro EVTOL's Crazy Design - can it work? We also discussed Boeing 747 fuel tank ignition problems, the Airbus ACJ TwoTwenty, Learjet 75 Liberty and much more.

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Full Transcript: EP30 - Cyclogyro EVTOL's Crazy Design; Boeing 747 Fuel Tank Ignition Warning; Airbus ACJ TwoTwenty vs Learjet 75 Liberty & More

you're listening to the struck podcast i'm Dan Blewett i'm Allen hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection all right welcome back this is the struck podcast episode 3-0 the big 30. so moving right along here in today's episode we've got a bunch of different topics number one we're gonna talk a little bit about southwest airlines Gary Kelly the ceo released a letter to his employees recently just talking about the trouble that the company is in so we'll chat a little bit about that lots of boeing news this week uh first uh we'll talk about how boeing's consolidating dreamliner production in south carolina we're also going to chat a little bit about a bird strike actually in a chinese jet fighter which caused the plane to crash and he had to eject so we'll chat a little bit about that uh we'll also talk go back to boeing with the 747 and 767 receiving an faa warning about fuel tank ignition and what the implications might be there lastly we're going to talk about two different business jets the learjet liberty 75 and the airbus acj220 uh pretty interesting to kind of compare and contrast some of the the uh marketing ideas i guess uh in the upgrades of these two jets and then lastly in our evtol segment we'll chat about the cyclogyro one of the more bizarre designs that we've talked about here on the show and uh we'll chat also a little bit about volocopter and some other plans for the olympics so alan let's talk about southwest probably your favorite airline right i it is i would say it's mine but i had some i had a period of rough flights with them not physically rough but just delays delays and like they were telling me that my flight was delayed and then they undelayed it and it was like physically impossible to make the flight this happened three times something like that so anyway but i do respect southwest they've always had good leadership it seems like they are still doing great things as far as you know their leadership Gary Kelly is reducing his own salary to zero through the end of next year and he's asked for a 10 to 20 pay cut from many in leadership and he's trying to avoid layoffs so does this come as a surprise to you in general i mean do you think things are getting better or what's what's your take here well i don't think airline flights have really increased in terms of number of passengers very much over the last couple of months and with the prognosis that we are probably three months out right now between two and three months out from vaccinations and really protecting the most vulnerable not you know people like us which are pretty healthy for the most part are not going to get vaccinated first we're going to be probably last in line so it's going to you know drag out the airline thing i everybody is still there's still a lot of contention about whether it's safe to travel on an airplane and i think it's all about risk and reward and there everything we do today and everything you do every day is full of risk and we have to evaluate risk i do think one of the features of americans in general not to say we're not much different than other countries but i think there's this part of america which is uh we take risks and we do we risk freedoms larger than we do uh health consequences you see it all the time america america yeah well it just it just sort of sort of built into the nature of americans it's sort of how you grow up and i i don't know if you can really put your finger on about what part of that happens but i think that it's true it's just sort of built into the the way culture the culture is yeah well and one opinion from scott galloway over at the pivot podcast with him and kara swishers he said look maybe the airlines are just not going to be as big in the future like do they need to be as big as they were who's to say they did you know and so that's also potentially another long-term implication i mean southwest is what a third of the size quarter quarter the size of the other airlines maybe maybe all those airlines are just similar to in size the southwest and there's just less flights in the second tier city that was kind of his his thesis you know if you live if you live in chattanooga like you have a little less mobility now it's compared to you know a place like dc or you know bigger city well there's inefficiencies in any system that's easy to point to the to the one or two inefficiencies in any system the thing is is that if left up to choice people were flying and it would the the airlines were full southwest carry rate was like in the 80 range they were mostly full almost all the time so yeah people are willing to travel and i think they're going to still be willing to travel it's just finding that that sort of happy medium of of where risk and reward are do i want to go visit my family for thanksgiving or do i not want to do that i think this is going to be a really interesting test because in november it's a large thanksgiving in the united states is the most traveled day of the year bigger than christmas bigger than any other holiday thanksgiving is that one especially for airline travel and i was noticing i was checking yesterday a little bit to see if airline travel is starting to pick up for thanksgiving not really people are not really booking tickets for thanksgiving yet on southwest that's really odd so people are waiting a little bit to see what happens over the next couple of weeks probably realizing they can probably still book tickets but if you have a really uh down time around thanksgiving it's going to hurt these airlines to the point where yeah they're going to be hurt for a couple years all right so moving on let's talk about boeing they're pulling their 787 dreamliner production from seattle and moving it to north charleston south carolina south carolina then they said basically they're going to make six 787 planes next year per month down from 10 so 40 cut how big of a deal is this it's a big deal i think from boeing's perspective it's a just from the operational side it is a big deal because they've always delivered airplanes out of the seattle area so this would be the first time that they have it in a long time during world war ii and for a long time uh the airplanes were delivered out of wichita kansas they had a huge assembly factory in wichita kansas so it isn't like the first time that boeing as a company and has delivered product outside of the seattle area especially when they bought um mcdonald douglas they had a place down at long beach that was making airplanes also so they had a bunch of places that were making airplanes i think the the thought process and what you hear a lot right now about this transaction is it's all about the unions i don't think it's about the unions so much as just efficiency the plant in south carolina if i remember correctly was purchased by boeing it was owned by somebody else and i don't want to call them out by name but essentially they were making parts in uh the south carolina area if i remember correctly and it didn't go right and so boeing acquired the company took over the production so a lot of the production of like the tail sections and large sections of the airplane are made in south carolina and then they're flown to washington state to be assembled into airplanes there also so if the if a lot of the peace parts of big sub-assemblies are made in south carolina flying them to washington state doesn't make any sense at that point if you don't need the production space so it makes a lot more sense to keep it in south carolina just make the whole aircraft there and be done with it which is what the decision they made i don't think it has a lot to do with union i think it has a lot to do with just efficiency of the system gotcha yeah no that makes sense going from one corner of the country to the other which seems just logistically like a nightmare so moving on the uh there was a chinese fighter jet that was downed they took a bird just shortly after takeoff couldn't restore thrust uh the pilot dejected and the plane crashed so you don't hear about this too often with fighters i don't feel like but i mean what's the difference obviously if you're in a commercial airliner you can take a bird in one engine right and you still plenty of rustic to carry on if need be or at least get to a safe landing but right how is that different in a fighter jet well fighter jets tend to be single engine just the way that they built to become more agile uh unless they're sea based and which a lot of times they're twin engine but even today a lot of them are single engine the f-16 was is sort of similar to that just one big engine and if you take a bird in that i think they're made to handle some amount of bird but wrong bird wrong time sticking on takeoff you don't have any altitude what are you going to do there's not many places to go you have no thrust you don't have a lot of lift on those aircraft because they're not designed for a lift they're like rocket ships like you just point in the right direction and aim at it and so the there's very little lift you're not going to glide very far you better get out of it as fast you can and the same thing happened if you remember with the canadian snowbirds a couple of months ago they were going back to canada or go back to thei

In this episode we discussed the GE9X jet engine and its increased power output and status as the largest jet turbine engine in the world. Boeing announced publicly that they thing hydrogen powered commercial airliners will be much more difficult than previously thought, and Allen weighs in on why this is probably correct. Lastly, we touch on some lightning strike news and discuss at length the future of EVTOLs - are they really as viable as many think, and who will win the race to the market (and profitability). Is there enough room for so many companies?

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

Full Transcript: EP29 - The New GE9X Jet Engine, Boeing's Take on Hydrogen Power & The Future of EVTOL Air Taxis

Welcome back to the struck podcast. On today's episode, we've got a bunch of topics. First. We're going to talk about Boeing. And their assessment of hydrogen power, which they think it's going to be a pretty difficult task to get up to speed there by 2035, where it talks about the 737 max and FAA administrator has, um, committed to flying that plane coming up soon.

So we'll chat a little bit about the implications there. There's also another hydrogen powered passenger plane from Piper that took its maiden flight and a recent, uh,  was struck by lighting in New Zealand. So we'll chat about that in our engineering segment, we're going to talk about the GE9X jet turbine engine.

It's going to be used on the 777X, the triple seven, um, such a big engine, the biggest in the world. So we're going to talk about that. Also incredibly fuel efficient. And lastly, in our EVTOL segment, we're going to talk a little bit about the Embraer X concept, but overall, we're going to chat about the state of the industry in general.

So Allen let's jump into it. Boeing thinks hydrogen is going to be difficult. Why?

Allen Hall: Because you have to redesign everything. And when, I mean, redesign everything, I mean, redesign everything. You're going to probably start with a different looking airframe. Uh, so you're probably talking a blended wing type of design, which NASA was working on for years ago and Boeing was involved with, and some of those and which Airbus is also talking about now go figure.

And every other piece of a fuel system. On that aircraft will have to change. And that, that includes the engines cause the fuel burns hotter. Uh, all the plumbing and all the safety features that go into, uh, making sure a fuel system works properly and doesn't endanger, the aircraft will have to change and that, and that means plumbing, clamps, brackets, uh, valves, or working at way different colder temperatures.

Uh, you gotta worry about condensation and frost and, and, and Bredell elements and all the things that come along with working with a very cold fuel you'll have to. Does it redesign the system? So what Boeing is saying is guys industry, do we realize that it's not as easy as like flicking a switch and we can just basically plumb in hydrogen into this existing architecture because it won't work and we have to start over.

And starting over on engine development, which is tremendously expensive to fuel system design and structural components and leak detection. And all those things that we do are, have to be start, are starting over. And we don't have a lot of history with any of those systems and the companies that would make those systems like a Parker.

Uh, you named one of the fuel companies that, you know, Parker being one of the bigger ones, is that how they gotta, they gotta learn how to do that. So every part of the industry, no matter what tier you are in the aviation world, from Boeing being the, you know, the tier one and then narrow the suppliers down to little companies like our company will have to rethink how they do everything.

And that just costs. Billions and billions of dollars and the timeframe just gets thrown out the window. What Airbus was talking about was by 2035 that's 15 years. I'm not sure if you started today and started putting the billions of dollars. So you could do it in 15 years to the, to the safety level that our passengers and our flying public expects today.

So I think Boeing is, is being a little more realistic about it and saying, yeah, We gotta take this with, you know, we will definitely try to improve the, the, uh, reduce the amount of emissions are coming from aviation. Boeing's 100% on board with that. So those are bus, so is everybody. But I think what Boeing is trying to say, is there other ways that we can address this, that don't involve dumping all the knowledge and the safety we've already developed over the last 60, 80 years and starting over.

That's a pretty good take. And I think Boeing's taken a more staged response to it. Uh, it would be similar to an I'm going to use an analogy here, but as similar to the electric vehicles, where now it seems like, well, Tesla is making all these electric cars and general motors is going to make electric cars.

Everybody's going to make electric cars, but you gotta remember all the other companies that were making electric cars. That failed from the 1960s and seventies and eighties, till today, there were multiple generations of cars that never made it. And what Boeing is sorta saying is that we don't have that in aviation.

We all have that sort of build up over time so we can work out the details. That's on a smaller level, on a smaller scale. We're just going to go for the winter. Start making equivalent to triple seven airplanes out of hydrogen. That is. Historic history would say that that is not a successful way to go about it.

The best way to go about it is to start off small and single engine aircraft, figure out how to do it there, scale it up, get the architecture figured out, do that sort of development work, which is going to probably take 20 years or more, and then get out to that next level. That's why hydrogen is going to be a struggle for aviation, I think is that who's kind of, who's going to write the check for that.

I don't know.

Dan: Yeah. The incrementalization is, seems like that's the key. Cause like you said, I mean, I mean, even an aircraft. I mean, to get here with jet fuel, you know, been using that for what, 70 years. And, uh, there's been a lot of learning over that time. And then, like you said, to throw it all out, just on the biggest scale at the commercial airline or level, that seems like you said, I mean, it's like a bath.

I mean, how many parts are in a commercial airliner when you're talking about every one of them, every one of them having to be newly certified for hydrogen that's. Seems terrifying. Yeah, that's crazy.

Allen Hall: Yeah, it is. And when Airbus took on the challenge, I thought that was really aggressive. And, and okay. We know we're all up for a good engineering discussion and fight, and I think you challenge engineers with a goal of I'm going to try to get to it.

But that challenge comes with a cost and how much, how many bodies and how much time we're going to have to devote to this, to get to something that's even remotely as safe or liable as what we have today. 30 feet, 30 years, 40 years track records would say, that's going to be that kind of timeframe.

We're not going to do it pretty quickly.

Dan: Gotcha. Well, speaking of which the, uh, the Piper M-Class aircraft made its maiden flight recently, this is a hydrogen fuel cell plane. And, uh, I mean, is this the incrementalization that you've talked about? I mean, is this. Basically the start of all that.

Allen Hall: Yes, because they've, they've had a Piper, Malibu is a concert.

Piper is a turbo prop airplane. So it's got to go to this longer snows on the thing. And what they've done is first, they. Took out the, uh, G fuel system and taken out all the, all the stuff that involves, uh, the standard turboprop engine put in batteries, put in an electric motor, and then they had this sort of like this empty space behind electric motor up in the nose.

Well, so they'd been flying around with the electric motor for awhile. No sweat. What they have done now is they've taken an, basically a hydrogen fuel cell. And just drop that into the space where the turbo prop engine was. So they have hydrogen fuel tanks on there and assist them to convert the hydrogen and the oxygen from the atmosphere into electricity, which then powers the rest of the system.

So that is an incremental step to do it. What we haven't heard yet is what the weight of that the system is the cost of that system. Is, and is it scalable and what does it look like up scalable? Because that's the only thing that matters. If you can do it on a Piper Malibu, that's, that's great. And I think it's a big step forward, honestly, for the engineering side.

But when we're talking about demanding that Airbus produces hydrogen airplanes, there's a huge leap from. A single engine, aircraft, electric aircraft to an Airbus, a three 20 type airplane. Yeah. So he can just see the progression in your head where all right, we get this hydrogen thing working. We're going to try to reduce its weight and reduces costs and make it more efficient.

All those things have to happen. First, you go from a single engine turbo prop type airplane to a twin engine to something bigger, like a dash eight or an ATR 42 72. And, or Q 400. And that's your next level up in terms of turbo prop airplanes, try to get those up and running and then what, what's your next leap?

Right? I don't know, because in the way that, that that system is set up, it's an electric system. And the only way that system works is with the propeller. It doesn't burn fuel like a jet engine does. So it's only gonna go so fast. So you're kind of stuck into the turboprop world....

In this episode we discuss the Airbus Vahana EVTOL, Gogo challenging SmartSky's patents, hydrogen tech, Airbus ZeroE, and more.

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Full Transcript: EP28 - GoGo Challenges SmarkSky Patents; What Did we Learn From the Airbus Vahana EVTOL? Plus Airbus ZeroE & Hydrogen Tech

Welcome back to the Struck podcast. On today's episode, we've got a wide range of topics. Number one, we're going to chat about smart sky prevailing in a. A patent dispute with Gogo. We're going to talk a little bit about Airbus and potential unsafe condition. They got a warning from both the, EASA and FAA this past week.

And we're going to chat a little bit more about Boeing, specifically this week, suspending work at their futuristic next innovation unit. So that unit covers drones, futuristic aircraft, potentially EVT, a Wells air taxi market, stuff like that. We're going to chat a bunch about hydrogen today in our engineering segment.

So some potential planes being converted to it, and as well as a Airbus concept of zero E. So we'll chat about those. And the lastly in our electric tech segment, we're going to talk about Airbus a little bit about Tesla battery day and some of the potential, electric changes upcoming in the future.

So Alan let's get started. Tell us about this patent dispute, between smart sky and Gogo. So obviously there's lots of, intellectual property that you know, is, pretty easy, to dispute. I've heard that up to 40% of patent, Patent claims are thrown out when they finally actually get disputed in court.

but what is this smart sky company? What does this mean to the industry here?

Allen Hall: [00:01:49] Smart sky and Gogo are in the air to ground ATG. They call it, data, transmission networks. essentially cell towers are located across the country. And as you. Fly above them. It works like a cell phone. Does where you hand off between different cell towers is how it works.

the, real interesting thing about all these systems is that you're moving at such high speeds and at altitude that the logic to switch between a tower to tower and where to be looking at, to know where the next one is. Is really key to that function of the system, much like the way your, mobile phone works.

and Gogo has been doing that forever and they've got thousands of installations on all kinds of business aircraft, and they've been the leader in that market for a long time. So smart sky. it has a patent out which sort of overlaps and they're going to smart sky is saying that they have some IP, they have a patent and Gogo feels like it infringes on things they're already doing.

And smart sky says Gogo is infringing on their intellectual property. And the patent office, basically stepped out of it. And so when you apply for a patent, the, all the patents are go through like a, pre-publication thing. So the there's a, process of which the patent office published the application.

And then there's a list of claims there, and the world could see it. And if I'm, if I have a similar idea or I already have the idea and I've put it into practice, I can tell the patent office like, Hey, I, whatever. Company B is doing is, not patent. And here are the 20 reasons why I'm already making and it's already for sale.

it's obvious. those prior those knowledgeable in the art would have intuitively come to this conclusion, those kind of arguments that were made there. but I don't know. A lot of times the patent office like Dan, you were saying the patent office will not want to get involved in those disputes because they are not a court system.

and the patent offices can get in some cases in a pinch there. And so what they tend to do sometimes is Hey, there's too much of a squabble, let the course decided, and I let them hammer it out, which I'm not sure is a great solution for anybody. But that's what it seems like has happened here was that the patent office said, Hey boys, you guys fight it out somewhere else we're out because we think we have just vacation initiatives, patent.

If there was some sort of infringement, you guys have to fight it out, which should I will do because they will clearly do. Now both sides are saying that, go, with saying that they don't need a smart sky stuff. Smart sky saying Gogo is infringed on their patent. Go saying that three don't. so maybe it is headed to the courts, because the, real loser would be in the theories.

Smart sky has nothing to lose here because they're not really in service. They're in the startup phase in some level. Okay. Go is the big player and has all the money, right? it'd be like a, new, it's not like the white Knight now, but it would be like when Tesla, was a tiny company suing general motors, a lot of lawyers and a lot of time, and probably not even an equitable outcome, that's where this, lawsuit is, but it is fascinating that there's so much competitive playground there.

And I think because Gogo has been Successful in that air to ground market, that everybody is nibbling at their heels because it's a profitable marketplace to be in. And it's a system that Gogo has developed over the years, from, I believe it was air cell, and then they've developed over the time, but essentially, Google has been there for a while, so they, I think they have, something to say about a newcomer, which is what's going on.

So it's just turf, horse a little bit, but it's interesting to see it play out now. in the middle of a pants, hammock that's the weird thing.

Dan Blewett: [00:05:58] Yeah, that makes sense. So let's talk about this. A there's a warning. So the Airbus, a three 20 Neo family of aircraft, they got a warning from both the FAA and EASA, and they also basically said that there's been a bunch of instances where engine perturbation was noted when fuel was mixed with cath on FP 1.5 biocide.

So Allen. Can you interpret that for us here? What is an engine for innovation and what is, what is the substance that we're mixing fuel with?

Allen Hall: [00:06:31] Okay. So engine perturbations always mean, or almost always mean change and thrust on command to change and thrust. Which are usually on the less thrust case.

so if you're flying along and all of a sudden your engine throttles back with uncommanded because of a fuel quality issue or whatever, it's sucking through the fuel system that doesn't want to burn properly, or is contaminating the system. That's. Big problem, because it can happen on both engines simultaneously, on an a three 20 or Boeing airplane on the 20th jets or so it is a concerning thing, cause it's like a common point failure or something's wrong with the fuel.

And you can forget about flying. And a biocide is a, basically a chemical additive to fuel that helps kill mold and mildew and Growing things. So if you think about, I know it's hard to think about cause you, don't really think about this in your car, but anytime you've got a fuel system that's enclosed and you add some water to it and a little bit of contaminants air, which has all kinds of stuff floating around at all the time.

so you can get things growing because moisture enough in the tank to get. Mold mildew and all kinds of funky things crawling in these tanks. So if you ever open up a, a big aircraft tank, there's stuff in it. And especially if there's don't have any additives. so what is done is they basically put in, a fungus killer.

Much like you used to, it's not the same stuff. like you're using your bathroom to clean the bathroom or something of that sort when you want to get a fungus and mold. something's water-related and so there's an additive place in it. The issue is, that additive, obviously it gets burned and pushed to the engine.

And if that engine is, doesn't like that additive, then it may come ups the system and not. Perform as well. If it gummed up the injectors to the engine where it's spraying fuel into the jet engine, that would be a problem. If it's certain to gum up some of the control system components, that would be a problem.

So they, it sounds like they found that they've had some actual incidents, not accidents, but incidents where that they've determined that fuel additive is affecting the performance of the engines, which is really, serious.

Dan Blewett: [00:09:02] Yeah, back in February of this year, it says the Titan airways, Airbus three 28, three 21.

The, it looks like an engineer accidentally poured in almost 40 times the amount of the permitted dosage. And, yeah, they said there was one the left end and had some surges and the right engine stalled.

Allen Hall: [00:09:21] wow.

Dan Blewett: [00:09:22] Yeah, not ideal.

Allen Hall: [00:09:25] So that was an engineer,

Dan Blewett: [00:09:27] human error. Less engineer. Okay.

Allen Hall: [00:09:33] yeah, I, saw the little article talking about the amount of time to clean that up.

So basically they were forced to drain all the fuel out of the. Fuel tanks and get in there and clean out that additive to make sure it's not there anymore. And it was about a couple thousand dollars per airplane, which sounds like it's not enough money, but draining fuel tanks is never really new fun, because if you're trying to get all the fuel out, you got these collector cans and you've got these drain vowels that you're pushing open the fuel spot down.

It smells. Awful. and you're trying to collect all that fuel cause you don't want Atlanta on the ground, obviously you want to be able to reuse it. So it's just the whole thing smells. And once you get it that far, how are you going to clean it out? more than likely. Yes. Someone's going to get in there, pop up on one of the wing.

Tank access panels and crawl up in there and take a flashlight and look around and see

In this episode we discuss the folding wing tips of the Boeing 777x airplane, and what this engineering feat means for the plane's versatility. We revisit 737 Max troubles and discuss engineering testimony, plus dive back into the Otto Aviation Celera 500L and talk more about laminar flow and its claims of fuel efficiency. Lastly, we look at the AutoFlight V400 and talk through this EVTOL's possibilities in the market.

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: EP27 - Boeing 777x Wing Tips, 737 Max Troubles, More Otto Celera 500L and AutoFlight V400 News

Dan: You're listening to the struck podcast.

Dan: And here on struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightning protection for aircraft radomes.

All right. Welcome back to the struck podcast. In today's episode, we are going to cover a bunch of interesting topics. Number one. There was a recent, uh, engine fire causing a emergency landing with an . We're going to chat a little bit about that. Uh, and our engineering segment, the 777X. So obviously Boeing's had a lot of press recently, most of it bad, but we're going to talk a little bit about the engineering and the 777X and they're folding wind wingtips, which is pretty cool technology.

Uh, we're going to chat more about the Boeing 737 max. Obviously the congressional report just came out today. We're not going to touch on that in this episode, but we are going to talk a little bit about some of the executives and the D the D design process and their defense of it. And then we're going to chat a little more about the Otto Celera.

500L - So the Otto aviation, they're one of their really unique jets, um, uh, planes. Uh, they have some crazy efficiency claims. We touched on it last time. We're going to chat a little bit more about it today. And then lastly, in our EVTOL segment, we're going to talk about the Autoflight V400. Uh, which is a unique cargo, um, you know, electric vehicle that's coming out of, and it looks like China and we will chat about it.

And as well as maybe the, some of the bigger models that auto flight is going to be spring off of that one. So, Allen, how are you, sir? Let's jump right in the,  had an engine fire this weekend. Uh, I was at American airlines or this week and American airlines, Airbus, a three 20. They landed safely, but how common is this?

How scary is this? I mean, what's your take here.

Allen Hall: It's not common. And to have engine fires, obviously it usually raises some red flags with all the certification authorities when that happens and all the mechanics that are associated with it in the pilots too. So there'll be paperwork filed. Uh, it'll get reported, uh, and you, if you actually follow the aviation safety, Databases.

You'll see those lists of incidences pop up. So you can actually scan, uh, how many times they've had brake problems, landing gear problems. Don't deploy flaps, don't work. It's actually pretty common. Now the engine fires a different level, right? Fire's bad on any airplane, but things that break are, are pretty common.

So the driver here is that. Um, there's been a lot of, uh, engine related issues lately. Um, just because of the newer designs that are trying to drive efficiency way, way up. Uh, and when you do that, you can have some funky things happening. Remember all these engines today are all electrical, electronically controlled.

There's a lot of hi Lee efficient, um, highly refined stuff going on inside that engine. So, and top of it, they're made not to catch fire. Right? So something has gone really wrong here and it'll the engine be pulled off, tore down, looked at right. And. Try to find a root cause to it and then alert everybody if it's related to some other issue that is going on it's, but it's a, it's a serious issue, you know, it clearly is.

So

Dan: one question here I've got for you. So I've been reading a book called the black Swan, go at my guy on the seam Nicholas to lab. And he talks about these black Swan events that essentially you couldn't predict from the day prior. Right? So. As I'm reading this. And of course, this is, there's so many examples of stuff like this, you know, the Boeing seven 37, it's clearly like a black Swan event for them.

Um, but yeah, here with an engine like these engines are super cool and there final Monday final on Tuesday, catches fire on Wednesday. I mean, is there, is there a way that we can know that this engine's gonna fly and take off six, you know, six flights a day, but tomorrow is going to catch fire. Is there any way that engineers, I mean, obviously there's a lot of what we know when the oil gets low.

Like we know when there's indicator lights, there's lots and lots of sensors, but how does, how does this get missed or is this just like something broke off? Something like catastrophic failed. And is there a better way to. To catch these things.

Allen Hall: It could be a catastrophic failure inside the engine and that's, what's going to set all of the engineering groups on edge with it.

There's a catastrophic, but remember that engines and pretty much anything on aircraft today are data logged. There's a flight data recorder recording a lot of parameters about the aircraft and engines and cells tend to have some sort of data logging ability. So they're monitoring. You can actually download what has happened, transpired with that engine before the.

The catastrophic event has happened and try to back up engineer what the engine was going through. So maybe there's something that they didn't pick up go up or didn't flag soon enough, typically a vibration of some sort. Um, that would be unusual. Well, I, I, you know, engine catching fires, he's huge things.

So all the, all the monitoring systems that are on an engine are all there and some parts went to too great. To get great fuel efficiency, but to, but to make sure the engine performs correctly, it doesn't have a fire. Uh, but you know, there are fire suppression systems on engines, uh, to extinguish those things because you there's actually firewalls there.

And I know it's hard to think about it. An airplane extra is a firewall. There is a physical firewall between the engine and the rest of the aircraft to stop that fire from propagating further on to the aircraft. So there's, there's actually burned. Tests are involved that, um, I think it's a five minute at 2000 degrees burn tests that I've seen in action.

And it's amazing to watch because there's all kinds of. Components like that pass through this firewall as well, connectors and plumbing and all this stuff. And yet it has to stand these, the high temperatures for a really long time. So, you know, there are safety systems built into the aircraft to contain fire, stop fire.

But on the other side, the preventative monitoring systems you would think, well, we'll be, uh, looked at Dallas, evaluated by engineers to see if they could pick up anything ahead of time. And. Diagnose it and then pass that along if need to be to the right. Oh, the airline operators, excuse me. Other airline operators that, um, They can detect this soon enough.

There's cause there's been a couple of, of engine issues in general, lately. Uh, and most related to the sort of newer technology where it tends to be the issue, right? Cause we're getting, everybody's getting pushed and pushed and pushed to more of higher, higher fuel efficiency. You know, you're with the new technology, it doesn't have them in a flout hours.

So this is when things like this popup

All right.

Dan: So in our engineering segment today, we're going to cover a bunch of things. The first one is the Boeing seven 77 X. This one has folding wingtips. So Allen right off the bat, what is, why do we need 40 wingtips,

Allen Hall: triple seven? And then some of the larger aircraft, uh, and they're on their drawing boards today have fold-up wingtips so they can fit into the existing slots at the airports.

Cause the jet ways are. Kind of set at the airports, especially the United States. The jet ways are kind of set up for like, you know, seven 30, seven, eight, three, 20 type airplanes at, with certain wingspans. And if you start stacking the airplanes in closer, uh, and if you actually watch and different airports around the world, you'll see where they've.

Collided wingtips, uh, as they're getting tugged around or move around. So you want to kind of give yourself a little more space, so yeah, you'll pull it up the wing tips that gives you the ability to slide into those parking spots. That's essentially what it is. And the automotive world has been things over time that allow us to get into smaller, smaller spaces, but on airplanes as the airplanes get.

Um, longer flights, the winks have gotten longer, like 77 has really long wings for us fuselage, relatively speaking set. And the triple seven will also the actual house also. So, um, we've been pulling folding of wind tips is not a new thing. Right. We, any type of aircraft carrier. Eric, Eric plane has followup up wingtips so they can stack more aircraft on the carrier closer together and get them down below deck also.

Right? So that the technology, Boeing, Airbus, all those major aircraft companies have been doing the full up wing techs on the military side for ever. So it's not a huge leap. To, to do those things now on a civilian aircraft, it's just unusual to see it. I think, uh, it will become well, if you ever get back to international flying again, you're going to see more and more of the folding wing tips because of the efficiency of the aircraft needs to be.

Dan: Gottto it. So let's jump to the Otto Celera 500L and we're going to finish here with Boeing seven 37....

In this episode we discuss Boeing 787 tail fin safety issues that appear to be related to shimming. The Boeing 737 Max also went through EASA testing, and a bit of it is beginning to feel politically charged...the Pipistrel Nuuva V300 is a potentially game-changing cargo EVTOL aircraft that could be delivering cargo to remote locations that were previously accessible only by helicopter. Lastly, we dive into the technology behind Chevrons, serrations cut into the trailing edges of jet engine nacelles and nozzles that reduce noise.

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

Full Transcript: EP26 Boeing 787 Tail Fin Problems; Pipistrel Nuuva V300 & Chevrons on Jet Engines; Boeing 737 EASA Testing

Dan: And here on struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightening protection.

All right, welcome back. This is the struck podcast episode 26. I am your cohost Dan Blewett and I'm joined here. Remotely with our lighting protection expert. Allen Hall, Allen, how are you?

Allen Hall: Hey, great. Dan, boy--another troubling week for Boeing with the seven 87 on the engineering side of all things, uh, is just the hits.

Keep on coming there. It's gotta stop at some point. Don't you think?

Dan: You think so it's like spreading amongst their fleet now. So in today's show, we're going to start with some of the 737 max testing. So Yas has been testing them and we'll talk about. What they, uh, what they're doing and how it's going.

Um, and our engineering segment where we're talking about Boeing 787 issues. So the Dreamliners got some vertical fin safety issues. Uh, it sounds like shim problems, so yikes and other potential nightmare, I guess, for right now. Um, also we're going to chat a little bit about chevrons and their use in reducing, uh, engine noise.

Cause obviously jet engines are like the. Most intensely loud things on the planet. So every effort to reduce that as important, even a couple of decibels. And then lastly, in our electric tech session, we'll talk about, uh, PIPA stroll. And one of their new cargo planes that they're hoping can really take off.

Uh, no pun intended. The Nuuva V300 is they're hoping can tackle, uh, the helicopter market and replace them where, you know, we've got to ship cargo out to an oil rig, or we got to ship it out. So some other place where helicopters traditionally, the only place that can get there, but these EVTOLs are going to be coming for that market.

So I know you, um, Are a proponent of getting away from helicopters, which are many respects. Do you think more difficult to maintain and have some pretty spectacular failures when they do fail? Which is scary. So, anyway, so let's talk with, uh, let's talk first about the 737 max. So Yas has been testing it.

How has it been going?

Allen Hall: 737 flight testing concluded up in Vancouver, British Columbia, uh, just recently with, um, looked like there was multiple certification authorities, uh, participating in that, uh, EASA, obviously transport Canada would have been there and it sounds like the Brazilians were there too.

So there is. A lot of eyeballs on the 737, the, the flight Teske, uh, would be a low risk thing at this point. So there has been at least listened to the news. Reports has been no unexpected outcome of that. Boeing would have had been flying at any way. And check in to make sure that the angle of attack sensors and all the, um, all the sort of the flight management, uh, difficulties that they had would have, would have been taken care of.

So it's, it's a check in the box, but also to, to, uh, have some external eyes watching what happens in the cockpit and see how pilots respond to stuff. So, um, that's a good checkpoint to have done. The next step though, is probably the most important, and I always get frustrated when I see this, when. I think it was in the EASA representative, said, well, we're going to make sure that it's safe.

Well, the FAA is the prime certification authority. It'd be like if a Airbus's certifying a new Airbus, a three, whatever that he also would be the lead on it. And, uh, the FAA would just be sort of in a verification mode, not a recertification mode. So when we see things in the press that sound like EASA is taking a recertification mode that they're going to.

Take the FAA data as something nice to have, but they're going to do their own little, um, certification approval in a sense. That's frustrating. That's really frustrating because then it's just left up to opinion. There are rules, the rules between the United States and all the other certification authorities in the world are pretty closely aligned.

I doubt there was any differences between EASA and the FAA in these particular areas. So what's the holdup once the FAA has signed it off and blessed it, and you also can do the review of it, like they should. Rightly so, but now, now we're in some sort of negotiation phase. So they're going to be meeting at Gatwick airport in London, Boeing EASA, transport, Canada sounded like the pretty much anybody you want to show up to the, to the party and, uh, talk about things like pilot training issues.

What is involved with that? Um, Any sort of flight manual adjustments that are proposed would be discussed in there and hammer out those details. And I would assume the FAA is going to be there also. So you like to be a fly on the wall in that place. Cause it's probably a little bit of loud talking will happen.

Uh, and we're an election year in the United States, of course, which adds to the level of intensity to what's happening. I, you know, Dan, I just. Really struggled with some of these things. It isn't like the FAA made a horrendous mistake. I think there was just a lot of complexity to what had happened originally.

And he also didn't catch it either, um, in their review and they had a chance to review it too. And I think it just, the complexity caught up everybody because systems were coming more and more complex. And particularly as we add them onto older generation aircraft, after now, we're in this sort of, I don't trust you.

Um, Scenario, which is, is doesn't get bill doesn't build good bilateral relationships. And the FAA has been trying to do that for the last several years. And it's just not good for the industry. And hopefully the FAA doesn't do it to Airbus. Right. That's the point is that we don't hold it up because we can, we're holding up because there's some real risk and, um, None of the accidents happen in European flight territory.

So we'll see. Right. Don't you get don't you get the feeling like this, unless it's political at this point.

Dan: Yeah. It feels a little strange, like they're not necessarily working together and that they're trying to. Go their own way. It's yeah. It's it seems strange.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Dan: Engineering segment here. We've got some more Boeing seven or some more Boeing aircraft stuff. So this is the 787. The Dreamliner. Um, and they've got some vertical tailfin issues. So it sounds like at the end of last year, this was starting to be addressed. It was found. And, um, I guess like shimmed gaps, uh, weren't quite where they needed to be.

And you said shimming is actually a really. Difficult task as far as making certain parts that have to get a very, exactly line up like it's. And it sounds really, really tough cause obviously like I used to work on cars and high school into college, and sometimes you have to be extremely precise trying to slide the right one in there.

So I can imagine aviation and aerospace. It's just way, way more at stake. So tell us a little bit about this, this problem.

Allen Hall: So shimming is a commonly used techniques to made up to usually larger parts. And as you get as parts get larger and you try to have very exact interfaces between large part A and large part B.

What you'll find is that they don't exactly fit. And when you try to put fasteners bolts and things of that sort. Yeah. Through those structures to tighten them together, basically holding together slight variations, uh, between the two can cause issues on those fasteners. Um, so if the parts aren't exactly flat flush made it together, then you need to fill those voids.

With something so that you do get flat flush loaded joints, uh, because you can break the, you can break the bolts of the fasteners off where he can break in the case of composite structure, you start breaking up, breaking apart to composite structure. So if you think about in the one that I first remember on the 777, when it sound like they had an app fuselage to fuselage joint, so you get these two round.

Things that are heavy and gravity kind of makes them oblong. So you have to actually make them round again with fixturing and you kind of stick them together and then, uh, add shims were needed. Now there's really, there's three ways to shim something. So you can put what we call it, liquid Shem. So it's like an epoxy essentially that you fill that void up with.

So you actually make the two together, fill that void up, pull them apart. And, um, inspect them and then put it back together with that poxy in place, and then put the bolts in that's the liquid Shem, there is a solid Shem. So typically a piece of carbon fiber or fiber glass, or in matter of a place should be like peelable shims, aluminum shims, but anyhow, uh, you would put a solid piece between them.

So you'd actually look at the parts. Go in there and measure them. If they're too wide apart, you'd actually stick in a piece of plastic or metal. And then when the bolt comes through, everything's flush and then there's some things that are just like, sort of in between. So it's sort of like liquid solid combination of the two.

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