STRUCK: An Aerospace Engineering & Lightning Protection Show

The Otto Aviation Celera 500L makes some big fuel-efficiency and operation cost claims. It can glide 125 miles from 30,000 feet, but can it deliver on these promises? We discuss a jetpack incident at LAX airport, the potential of a supersonic Air Force One, Hyundai’s entrance into the EVTOL market, Gogo’s sale to Intelsat, and Tesla battery technology that could change the aviation industry forever.

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!

EP25 Transcript - Can the Otto Aviation Celera 500L Deliver on Efficiency Promises?

All right, welcome back. This is the struc podcast episode 25. I'm your cohost, Dan blewett and I'm here. Joined remotely by lightning protection expert. Allen hall, Allen, how are you? Great, Dan. Hey, uh, just reading the information about that auto, uh, aircraft design kinda looks like a fish with a propeller on the back.

That's a pretty cool thing. New technology, sort of old technology combination between the two. Super dynamic. Yeah. We've got some interesting things to cover today. So with our, some of our news stuff, um, there was a man in a jet pack reportedly near LA lax airport. So that's terrifying. So we'll talk a little bit about that.

Uh, Gogo has been sold to Intel set, so some movement in the radon because radon business, uh, we are going to talk about the auto aviation. Uh, they have a bullet shaped plane, which. That's some really interesting specs. I mean, it can glide up to 125 miles. They said. So the fuel efficiency is they're proposing is tremendous.

Um, and lastly, we'll also chat a little bit about, uh, potential for a supersonic air force, one, a Hyundai entering the EBTL market. And some battery advances by Tesla that might make a real big difference also in the electric aviation. So first let's talk about this jet pack fellow. Uh, what is your take here?

I, I saw this article. That they're investigating that there might've been a guy very close to the airport, which is obviously big cause for concern. Um, I mean, how do they regulate this stuff at the airport? Can't fly anything near an airport because an aircraft might run into it. So they're super cautious.

Pilots are very aware of, of periphery peripheral things around the airport that could pose a safety risk to the aircraft. So, uh, seeing, uh, somebody in a jet pack suit or something of the sort, probably set off a lot of alarm bells in the cockpit and, uh, because. The sh he shouldn't be doing that, but I don't think they have found who, who, what, when, where this thing is like this, this is still sort of a mystery.

As far as I can tell from the news sources, they haven't identified who was doing this. And is it, it wasn't a real person. Was it a dummy? Was it a drone of some sort who knows? Right. It could have been a high school kid with. So, you know, some sort of who, obviously they're not the kids aren't really at school right now looking to, you know, entertain themselves who knows.

Uh, but it is a real safety risk. Holy moly. Well, just, I mean, we were talking about bird strikes last from last week. Yeah. We'll we'll we don't need to have his human strikes with people. Just stop there. And I mean, that's horrific, so yikes. Yeah. They got to stay, stay away from the airport, right? Yeah. And are the, you know, the iron man movies have.

Uh, have a creative influence on a lot of, uh, people who are sort of quasi scientific and have the skill sets to, to make stuff. Right. So in today's world, it's not very hard to, to buy little jet engines that can propel you that have more thrust. Um, then your body weight and so they can lift you up. And, um, the guys off of, uh, MythBusters, do you ever see that episode or the one of the MythBusters guys built that iron man suit and was flying around in it?

That's the first thing that popped in my head is that a myth Buster sky who was doing that. Um, but if you remember back in the old jeans, Bond movies, where they had James Bond in that jet pack flying around. And part of the movie that that's what also popped to mind is like Holy moly or someone jet packs are a thing.

It is a thing that is not difficult to do in today's world. You just don't want to do it near an airport. That's all. Man. Yeah, that's a really, really bad idea. Get hit by a plane. Come on. Yeah. I mean, I think jet pack technology has enough trouble dealing with hitting the ground. I mean, that seems to be the main hazard.

Like let's not throw extra variables yet. The ground is a major threat and we have planes coming at you. I mean, that's a scary technology, but yeah. Yeah. So Intel set is, has acquired Gogo commercial. So you're obviously super familiar with both of these companies, um, being in the radon protection business.

So what does this, uh, how does this, this transaction strike you? So $400 million was the sales price. Now Intel sat file for chapter 11, bankruptcy in may. Um, and they're going to finance the transaction using cash on hand and some borrowing, but yeah. Um, what do you, what do you see emerging from this? Uh, the steel probably, uh, definitely more stable leftover Gogo, uh, the business side of Gogo, which is the air to ground side.

Not. Air in the aircraft, a satellite business. So they are the commercial sides, the aircraft to satellite, uh, to K U a pizza pie, shaped antennas with the rate them on the backend of the fuselage, uh, design. That's a great product by the way. Uh, that seems to have really, they have really pushed that product pretty hard and have.

Deeply penetrated the marketplace with that product line. Uh, and rightly so, but it is, it is K U so that the, the bandwidth of that system is limited versus the Kia systems, the neuro case systems that are coming about today, but Gogo has been in some financial flux and they S it's sort of, um, it's a tough business to be in because you're, you're.

Selling these kits to install an aircraft and then getting some revenue back on the sales of the data. I think that's how it's all set up. Um, so. It's sort of hand to mouth. Um, it takes a lot of cash to create that business. And then, and then you try and recoup it sort of slowly over time. And, and go, go on that, on that side of the business has had struggled.

In fact, it wasn't probably a year or two ago where you're talking about essentially the same thing, trying to break the company and to keep the business, the business side, business aircraft side up and running and soft, the commercial side to spacecraft. Manufacturer or spacecraft business, satellite business, uh, to them because it's part of their network that would make sense to me.

The business side has always been very profitable for Gogo, so they have, uh, a number of air to ground. And there was a really there an evolution of other companies, but essentially they've always had this sort of network of cell towers they've installed antennas on to, uh, for the aircraft to. Uh, send data up and down to ground stations.

So as you fly across United States, you come across these ground stations that it send data up and down. So it was a sort of a cellular based technology, so to speak. So you put a couple of antennas, you have a transmit and receive and tone on the bottom of the airplanes. And, uh, you have decent data rates doing that.

There's not a hundred people in a, in a global express or gold string, five there's, five or six typically. So you don't have to have a ton of data. And those towers and the air to ground system was sort of the right mix for that marketplace. Plus, you're dealing with, uh, a sort of a, a class of ownership there on which the Casa system is sort of irrelevant because the desire to have internet and data and communication, if you're a CEO of, um, you know, like Bloomberg or someone like that, you want to have that data.

So whatever you're paying from it. Pretty much doesn't matter to you because in the scheme of the wealth of that, or like a Zuckerberg or something like that, it doesn't make any difference. Right. So, so it's a much more profitable business market then sort of charging me eight bucks a to, for wifi on Delta or something.

That's a different, totally different marketplace. So. As the airlines have been pushing for cost savings, obviously go gets Bush and go, go had a couple of issues, technical issues that really set them back, uh, particularly with Delta and that costs and some time and some money. So the Gogo has been letting go of people, um, in the last couple of months, partly due to COVID partly due to some other business issues, but that hasn't been good because those, the engineers, they are at Gogo or.

Bright brilliant people. I mean, the ones I've dealt with have been really smart, um, and doing a fantastic job for the product. And some of them have been let go just because of economic conditions. Aren't right. So I hope that now that they've transferred ownership to it. Satellite company that some of those engineers, you could hire back to support that product line, because it does have a marketplace and have a large market share right now.

And a you'd hate to see it go away. That that's, it's sort of like global Eagle global Eagle went through the same. It's going through the same thing they filed for bankruptcy. A couple of months ago, global Eagle is the, uh, row 44 was the company that installed all the SOUTHCOMs on Southwest airlines, airplanes.

So everybody's running. As soon as the airplane stopped flying the revenue streams from those aircraft stopped too. So if you're relying upon the consumer revenue to pay for all the things you spent money on, all the engineering time and development time and airplanes, aren't flying. You're in trouble.

I'd be like,...

In episode 24, we discuss EVTOL HEXA's first flight and design, DARPA's Ai Dogfight contest between artificial intelligence pilots and real ones, combating bird strikes and the "snarge" they leave behind, Boeing 737 wire harness issues, 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!

Full Transcript: EP24 EVTOL HEXA, DARPA Ai Dogfight, Bird Strike Countermeasures and More

Struck 24 Audio for Podcast

Dan: This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech at weather guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.

You're listening to the struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett

Allen Hall: I'm Allen hall.

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 24, Alln, how are you?

Allen Hall: Great Dan. Boy, uh, aviation just doesn't keep churning. Does it busy weekend?

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. And we have a really interesting show today. We have lots of like very diverse, strange, strange topics from guns. Found it TSA, more Boeing problems, uh, lightening rods, protecting  birds, hitting planes.

Um, Crazy looking EVTOLs, DARPA Ai Dogfight, and drones. So look forward to an interesting show today. So let's get started. So new article shows that right now, TSA is finding guns and carry on bags. 80% of which are loaded at three times the rate compared to last year. So 15.3 guns. Per million passengers compared to 5.1 guns last year.

So, Allen, what's your take? Why do you think this has happened?

Allen Hall: Well, I haven't seen any good reason for it explained, I've seen the articles and TSA has put out some notices about it because they were alarmed about it and trying to make everybody aware, like, Hey. Check your luggage for the, the weapon you left in it.

But I either chalk it up to people. Haven't been driving around a lot and have forgotten about, and we're moving around a lot. And I had forgotten about the handgun they have put in their backpack or a handgun that may be sitting in their duffel bag. And. Load it up and go to the airport, not thinking it's in there and TSA will find it.

They will clearly find it. Yeah. That's the one thing I think the other one is that in this sort of a climate of, of concern, everybody's in. Maybe people are thinking it's a smart thing to take a handgun on an airplane. And that is never a smart idea. A TSA will take you down and it's a, yeah, it is a big problem.

Uh, when you, cause that's, that's basically you breaking federal law, when you do that. So there's no, there's no reason to be carrying a handgun onto an aircraft ever. Uh, there are rules in which you can take care, uh, weapons onto aircraft, obviously unloaded, obviously in a hard case, obviously you're checking that luggage in with the counter so they know what's going on.

Cause you see it around hunting time all the time. You see people traveling out to the Montana, Wyoming, whatever to go deer hunting. But yeah. Yeah. I mean that, and that's totally cool, but we can't. Have something stupid happen on an airplane. So TSA has been really vigilant. I know the times that I have traveled.

I'm surprising one. It still, how few people are actually on aircraft, but to how long it takes to get through the TSA lines. And I kind of wonder if they're not being overly cautious on handguns and generic weapons coming through the security lines and taking slower looks at luggage. Uh, and. Find it. So it's either they're ticking, stolen that luggage and finding more weapons or two thirds.

They get the same rate of weapons coming through there and only catching one third of them, which is hopefully not

Dan: the right. The answer. Yeah. Well, I mean, do you think that it'd be interesting if they could break it down by route? And of course there's probably not. I mean, 15 guns per million, there's probably not enough guns to have a statistically significant difference between routes.

But you wonder if people who are flying to Portland where there's constant unrest are taken more guns, you know, like if you're flying to. I don't know if like a hotbed city for a protest. I just have older folk maybe who are just. You know, they want to be prepared. I don't know. Like you said, there's a, there's a lot of fear right now and there's a lot of conflict.

Allen Hall: yeah, it's

Dan: a dangerous 

Allen Hall: world. And if you happen to be traveling somewhere and something happens, um, otherwise, uh, relatively calm place, it could be chaos. And the next minute from what we've been seeing and. That just, uh, I don't know. The news media is not doing a good job here, so it, it does raise awareness and people start taking actions on their own, uh, to defend themselves rightly or wrongly.

That's shown up in airports and that's not good.

Dan: Yep. Keep your guns out of the airport folks. So moving on Boeing, uh, instructions. So there's some new work that needs to go on with the max Allen. So what's, what's the deal here with the 737 max he had again.

Allen Hall: So when they were doing the seven 37 max reviews and looking at all the changes that had incorporated, one of the things that happened is they noticed that they had some wiring issues where one wire bundles went across another wire bundle.

And I know if you think about it that way, like, Oh, Well, what's the big deal there, right? Well, when wire bundles cross, there is a possibility that could eventually rub. And if they do rub and a, uh, actuator line touches a power wire that actuator could move. So in this particular case, I think it was elevator, but coulda been rudder.

Uh, there's two wire harnesses across one contained power, one contained basically actuation. And, um, they weren't separated properly. And so there could be a failure mode or a series of failure modes because it's, you don't inspect wire harnesses all that often because there tends to be buried in dark places.

Uh, there could be a situation where you have wire harness, uh, interaction and on commandment. Command and movement of a control surface, which can be catastrophic if you lose the aircraft. I don't think the design had that design had been that way for a while. I just don't think anybody's gone back and looked at it over time and, and applied the new regulations, new wire harness regulations to it.

And then when they saw it, um, The notify the FAA and said, Hey guys, we got this, we've got this wire harness issue. We don't think it's. I think the first approach from Boeing was to say, it's probably not a problem, but, uh, you know, and the climate ran right now with the 737 max and other things that are happening at the FFA said, no, you should fix it.

The problem with the fixing part, it's not. It's a major event. When you have to reroute wiring, you have to reroute all the mechanical supports that go along with it, and more than likely change out the wiring for longer wiring or shorter wiring, because the path from a to B has changed. So it's not as easy as like taking that wire bundle, lifting it off and scooting it over or putting some sort of standoffs in it.

It is more of, we're gonna have to replace those harnesses and the number of aircraft. So there's seven maxes that are hanging around out there. And the amount of time it does take to fix them, I think is close to eight hours to fix one wire harness. It's going to take up a lot of time. So it's gonna be a lot of electricians sitting in the back of these airplanes, trying to correct a situation sometimes.

When these wiring situations comes up, uh, in my personal opinion, on the smaller aircraft. So sort of business aircraft, things like Learjets and Sesnas and citations, and those kinds of ESOS, uh, kind of aircraft is anytime you're walking around those backless airplanes and making some sort of repair mod, uh, is a time an opportunity to do other damage because there's not a lot of room to move around in there.

And it wouldn't be unusual to. Bang on a hydraulic line or step on a harness. You weren't supposed to step on or step on a component that was, you know, using it as a step. You can't see it, that kind of stuff. So it's not just the replacement time to fix the harnesses. It's all the other things, all the inspections that have to occur afterwards, all the replacement of things that may have been broken or bent or stepped on as the, the mod is being made.

So it's. It's a lot more intensive than what people think.

Dan: All right. So we're going to move on to our engineering segment. So first up is, and is a really a beautiful photo of these . So an article from, uh, the drive.com. Just showing that a lightning rods have been used to protect  during, uh, exercise Northern lightening. And, um, so you think thought this is a pretty, pretty sleek idea because obviously these jets are being stored outdoors in a pretty lighting intensive area.

Is that right?

Allen Hall: Yeah. Right. And it's very common for aircraft that are stored outside. A ticket struck from little Cessna, one 70 twos, one 50 twos to obviously bigger airplanes, seven 37, seven 47, 83 eighties. You see it all the time. The aircraft on the tarmac, a storm comes through and whammo. There was a lightning strike to the aircraft.

It's not even moving. And as you know what the F five, it's a quote unquote stealthy aircraft. So if it does take a strike on the ground, you have, there's a series of events that are, that have to occur to make sure the aircraft is back in an era where the condition, including all the coatings. Yeah. And, uh, all the special features that may have been damaged when that happens.

So for the cost of throwing up a couple of metal pipes

In this episode, we discuss the odds of catching COVID-19 on a flight, as explained in an interesting new article that explores proximity to other passengers and more. Boeing may be fined $1.25 million in a clear-cut case of undue pressure applied to engineers in their South Carolina plant. And, Allen likes the Volocopter EVTOL design - is it a future winner 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: Struck Podcast EP23 - Odds of Catching COVID on a Plane? Boeing In Trouble for Undue Pressure, Plus: Is Volocopter an EVTOL Leader?

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

You're listening to the Struck Podcast. I'm Dan Blewett 

Allen: I'm Allen hall. 

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

All right. Welcome back. This is the Struck podcast episode 23, I'm your cohost, Dan Blewett. And in today's episode, we've got a lot of good stuff to cover first interesting article about the odds of catching COVID-19 on a flight, which uses some, uh, percentages. And this was actually a really interesting read.

Glad we found this article. Um, we're gonna talk a little bit about the advantages and challenges of electric powered airliners, which are potentially in our future. Maybe allow along with, uh, with hydrogen as well. We know all these, all these technologies are being explored by all these major companies and our engineering segment.

We're going to talk about Boeing in trouble, again, with a undue pressure that they've been applying to some safety reps out of their South Carolina, uh, factory. And. Man, that's been an ongoing thing. We've talked about that before and here we are again, and we're also going to chat a little bit about vertical airspace and Honeywell.

They're doing some interesting stuff together. And lastly, in our electric texts segment, we're going to talk about Vola copter, which. Yeah, Alan, there you are. How are you, sir? You are very outspoken about these designs. And this one in my view is like the most, it looks like a toy plastic helicopter of all of them, but you're digging it.

So why? 

Allen: Yeah, I think it's cool. I think it's cool. A bit of flying a human in it. So that puts him ahead of everybody else on my scale. 

Dan: Yeah. Well, your proof's in the pudding, I guess so. Well, let's, let's talk about this before we get there later, let's talk about the odds of catching covert in a flight. And so.

Planes are flying an increasing amount. Obviously it's still knower like normal, but we're getting back there. And so far it doesn't seem like these are the, these are the vehicles of, of infection. Like, it doesn't seem like there's mass spread coming from airliners. And they're talking about in this article, I'm at a Bloomberg, which is really interesting.

Uh, just about the odds of getting it. You know, the, basically this a researcher, mr. Barnett is talking about that you have a base sale, one in 4,300 chance of getting COVID-19 on a full two hour flight. Um, so yeah. What, what, what were your takeaways from this article? 

Allen: Well, that's the, that, that number is based upon just the, having somebody sitting next to you with a, uh, sitting extra for two hours and everybody's mast, obviously.

So there's, uh, you know, the percentages kind of change depending on where you are in the aircraft rights. So. That's why the probabilities are so low that unless you're really sitting real close to that particular person. And there's some, some probabilities with that. I, it seems like the there's enough flight data and enough tracing history right now that there's, I think you could.

Pretty well say there's not huge outbreaks. I think the cruise ships have had significant outbreaks of 20% of the, of the population on a particular cruise coming positive on an aircraft. We don't see that. So the one in roughly 5,000 numbers. Not bad. 

Dan: One key thing. No, one's rubbing suntan lotion on each other.

I want a flame. 

Allen: I hope not

the flight then. I don't know 

Dan: traveling. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off there. I just had to throw that joke in, but, um, But, yeah. So, and then what's interesting about this article is that he's talking about look just the proximity to other passengers. So if, if there is one or two people on board that does have it, how close are you to them also?

Uh, so you know, again, tons about the systems on an aircraft and he's talking about. How the air is constantly being renewed in airplane cabin. So it seems like every 30 minutes, uh, you pretty much brand new air 

Allen: sooner than that. Totally sooner than that. Every couple of minutes, but it's also so about two thirds of the air is getting dumped overboard about a third is getting recycled back into the cabin after it passes through HEPA filters.

Uh, and you know that the airlines are changing those HEPA filters on a regular basis. Plus they're cleaning the cabin. So there shouldn't be much going into the HEPA filters to begin with the clog it, because the aircraft are as clean as they probably have ever been. So, you know, the, the, the, the air circulation system is going to be working at roughly peak performance.

You would think right now. So your, your risk goes way, way down and yeah. And adding that middle seat opening, basically adjunct a factor of two. A probability. So it lowers your, your rate by a factor of two that's. That's a, that's a huge, uh, improvement for, uh, a single seat that makes a big deal, but it just gets back into the likelihood that someone really has it when and not to say that people haven't traveled.

With COVID and not, not know it, but it appears to me having traveled a good bit during this time, at least a couple of times we've traveled. There is nobody that appears to be even remotely sick or have symptoms or right. They don't do any of that. And even if they had seasonal allergies in which we're in that period of time or seasonalities pop up.

No one at the airport is showing signs of seasonal allergies. They're just not traveling. So again, I think your risk are hello, compared to other things that people are doing, like going to the grocery store or go into the pharmacy. You got to kind of put it way down on the list of risk items right now.

Dan: Yeah. And you also wonder if the people that are saying, Oh, I feel okay. Traveling are probably living a healthier lifestyle in general. Like maybe exercise a little more. I have no data to back that up, but you probably think that maybe the people who are healthiest or most likely to like give it a go.

Seems reasonable though. I have no data. That's just a, I 

Allen: think I would say that's in ballpark is probably true. I think that people that feel they would be at risk are not traveling. 

Dan: Yeah. Which is good, which is good. Yeah. 

Allen: Which is smart. What's your they're way? The odds also. So if I, if I was 80 years old, I'm probably knocking on an airplane.

If I had, uh, a weakened immune system, for whatever reason, I'm probably not traveling on an airplane. So you, I think you're right about that. I think people are making smart decisions about how to travel and so what's left and that is the traveling public is in pretty good, healthy shape and the right.

Age demographic, where they're not gonna, uh, have severe consequences if they do happen to pick it up. So I think you're partially right about that. 

Dan: So let let's shift gears here. So a really good article in aviation week about, uh, propulsion systems. So the advantages and challenges of electric powered airliners.

So. Um, obviously like with Tesla automobiles, one of the cool things about them is that their torque curve is very short and that goes zero to 60 in like basically hyper speed. Right. Um, and that's one of the one advantage here with electric motors on aircraft as well. But, um, can you talk us through the, kind of the pros and cons.

Allen: Of of just sort of electric propulsion on aircraft. Uh here's here's, here's sort of my delineation of all this. You'll never get to jet speeds on electric aircraft. That's not going to happen. So there's, there's some sort of misnomer. I think that you can take a seven 37 rip off. It's a, it's a kerosene burning jet engines and put on a, uh, electric fan and it's going to go just as fast wrong.

Totally wrong. Right? It's some part of the thrust is the burning of fuel is mass times acceleration. Right? So that's force. So you're actually burning something, celebrating it. It's shoving out the backside, which is creating force and thrust. You don't have that with electric propulsion. So, what you're talking about now is turbo props, uh, Q 400 dash eight, uh, King air ATR 72.

I'm just rattling off on turboprop airplanes. That's the kind of thing you're talking about replacing. So you're talking about a 200. Plus mile an hour kind of aircraft that, or a short three 60 there's another one we had in Belfast. There's us. There's a bunch of them that you're just going to replace those aircraft, which don't tend to be along there.

Those are of four or five hours are gonna fly an hour. Maybe too, because the noise to kids to get you. So that's the market they're replacing that's I think that's the only market they can possibly replace it. And this is why the European consortium's are focused on hydrogen because propellers are not the future for, for flights across the Atlantic.

Just, 

Dan: yeah. 

Allen: Yeah. You know, Well, we had the Concord back in the seventies and I think if anything,...

In this episode we discuss BAE's partnership with Jaunt Air Mobility, Boeing's continued trouble delivering airplanes, a lightning strike to an Airbus A320 in New Zealand and more. We also take a look at the VoltAero Cassio, a unique medium-range hybrid electric aircraft prototype and discuss its road to airworthiness certification.

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: Struck Podcast EP22 - Boeing's Tough Sales Month; An Airbus A320 Gets Struck By Lightning, BAE & Jaunt Air Partner on Flight Controls, Plus VoltAero's Hybrid Electric, Aircraft, the Cassio

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

You are listening to the Struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett. 

Allen: I'm Allen hall. 

Dan: And here on Struck, we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightning protection.

Alright, I'll come back to the Struck podcast. I'm your cohost Dan Blewett. And we've got a great show for you here today. And our first segment, we're going to cover some kind of scary news, uh, on an Airbus, uh, out of New Zealand was diverted after a lightning strike. So we'll, we'll chat a little bit about that.

Um, Boeing seven 37 max might be delayed again. I mean, the saga continues, uh, we'll chat a little bit more about Boeing and the, the amount of jets they delivered this quarter or not this quarter, but this past month, which was crazy low, um, and a little weird quarantine run in from, uh, unlucky a plane full of people.

So that's a, some. Kind of funny, uh, COVID news here, but in our engineering segment, we'll talk a little bit about, uh, BAE working with John's, um, on flight control actuators, and then our EVT O L of the week. We're going to talk about the connect air, uh, the volt Aero Casio, which is a four Cedar, um, actually maybe larger pass, uh, passenger capacity.

So pretty interesting little pusher, plane Allen, what is going on? 

Allen: Well, it it's really strange aircraft news over the last week or two. I know it, it seems like airlines are struggling and they are, uh, but I got to say that the aircraft industry in terms of projects has been relatively busy and that's a good positive sign because it's all those little projects that get rolling that turn into larger products later on.

So. I think so. 

Dan: Well, you said you've gotten some new, some new projects recently, right? 

Allen: Yeah. Several. Uh, and that always comes and sometimes it just comes just because everybody's sort of back from vacation, August early August, people like to take off and then they come back and, you know, mid August, September and things start rolling again.

It's just kind of like the shutdown around Christmas and January is always chaos. Mid January is so positive. Some positive things going on out there. 

Dan: Well, that's, that's good. That's good news for sure. Everyone wants to get back to work and you see good people get rehired and the industry get back to normal.

That's for sure. So let's on that note, let's start first with Boeing and how many jets they've delivered. So in July, 2018, and this is an article from Barron's. They deliver 39 jets, uh, this past July, they delivered four. So what do you think about these numbers? Obviously, this isn't surprising anyone given how insane this year has been.

Again, my prediction is still, we still have four months to go to see if the crackin comes out of the deep sea. Um, just to cap off this crazy year. But, I mean, what is your sentiment about four planes being delivered? 

Allen: Well, the, the issue really for Boeing is the seven 37 max. And because of COVID, there's not a lot of international flights going on.

So your bigger triple sevens, uh, Are just not going to be in a big production since in terms of demand, they're just not going to be there. So the smaller seventh of three sevens are going to be a workhorse internally to the U S and also in Europe and Asia and all over the place. And since they can't deliver them, it doesn't, it doesn't help their bottom line.

So they got to get the aircraft certified in which it looks like it's coming closer and closer, at least in the U S 

Dan: but it says here that, uh, the return outside the U S has maybe been slowed. So what's that about? 

Allen: And in terms of just outside sales, that's how the U S. 

Dan: Well, it looks like the European union aviation safety agency is still waiting for more clarity.

Yeah. And key update. 

Allen: I don't know if that's a, a, uh, policy position that they're having disputes about or an interpretation about. Particular rules that are maybe slightly different in the ASA and in other parts of the world versus the United States. But it does seem like there's always a little bit of dragging.

Uh, when the European Airbus certifies an airplane, FAA tents can drag its feet. It seems like it, it doesn't seem like. Either side is try to help the other country or region. Uh, I don't know. So I don't know if it's politics or real engineering concern when you get to these levels of international disputes and the seven 37 is reached clearly international dispute territory.

Sometimes the engineers don't get to play so much as much as the politicians get to step into it 

Dan: could be both. Yeah, well, that was a good point by you that you're right. Like stick air travel is going to be the first thing to come back and it's going to be really busy at some point. And you're right.

Like Boeing has the plane and they have like the perfect plane for that, but they just continue to have problems. Like they've gotten man the solution, but it's just not there. So hopefully the seven 37 max gets, gets into the hands of these companies that want to fly it in our radar. Put it to good work and get people back around.

Yeah. 

Allen: And I, I thought the Airbus 82 20 was going to pick up on some sales and deliveries just because they are not necessarily a one to one competitor to the seven 37, but they are sort of that regional jet, new, modern out a cockpit designed cabin efficiency has all the checks, all the boxes. They two 20 does.

And it has seen some improved sales. There's no doubt about that, but they're not going to rival the seven 37 anytime soon. So people were still waiting for the seven 37 or they're not taking airplanes one or the other. 

Dan: Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk about Airbus. So there was an air New Zealand  that got struck by lightning and quickly diverted.

And this is really sad because it's a beautiful plane. Like I'm looking at this photo and it's like black with that. Cool. Like feather or a, maybe it's a leaf, whatever it is at the end, kind of like little, some little tribal symbol on the, on the tail. Coolest plane like that. Plane's awesome. But anyway, this is, I mean, planes get struck in commercial flight about once a year.

So why is this plane diverting? Like I thought it's not a big deal where they just kind of keep going and no big deal, but that doesn't seem to be the case. 

Allen: It's not a safety impact as much as it is an inspection requirement of trying to handle. And if you're at a major hub where you have mechanics and.

And technicians to inspect the aircraft. You probably don't want to fly away from the hub. You wanna go back to that hub? They were craft inspected so they can get back in services as soon as they can. If you fly to some remote destination and or if you're going to fly with a water. So this is, is New Zealand.

So there's a lot of flights. Most likely over water. I'm not sure you want to take a long flight over water and you'll probably want to revert back. It's like if you're flying from London to New York and you had a lightning strike coming out of London, you're probably going to go back to London. Um, similar, similar situation here, but there, there is, that does tend to play into the part of.

There's mandatory inspections after lightening that have to occur. And if you go to a remote airport where you don't have those mechanics technicians on site to do that inspection, then the airplane is essentially grounded. And then you've got to send a backup airplane to go, to get everybody to their next destination.

So sometimes it's it's as a passenger, it's like the worst situation. The airplane turns around. It goes back and you're stuck on the ground for a couple hours while they inspect the airplane. But. Overall, it's probably your fastest way to get the flight completed. 

Dan: Yeah. Well, in slightly more comical news Blaine was traveling from, from France to Oslo, Norway.

And landed just minutes after a mandatory quarantine was imposed. Meaning every passenger on board had to sell Valisa late for 10 days. I mean, obviously the coronavirus is no laughing matter, but that just seems like, Oh, we just met, we dismissed it. And then they're stuck. And that really sucks. I mean, we've, you've talked about this before on how cumbersome that, I mean, how difficult that is for the industry in general.

Like if every time you travel, you have to quarantine. That's a nightmare, but this one just seems like they, they just may, I got a bad draw here, but, um, but yeah, funny story next Atlanta and right 

Allen: at midnight. And so the deadline was, or the quarantine period started at midnight. So if they had arrived at 1159, They would have been, I don't know.

It sounded like the pilot was, cause it was all getting a little flustered there because he's the impression was it was like, Hey, we landed in time. We landed at midnight. And the law says no at midnight it counts towards the quarantines....

In this episode we discuss the AVX/L3 compound coaxial helicopter (CCH) and its unique design, Delta CEO Ed Bastian's letter on the company's future, new tiltwing EVTOL designs 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!

Full Transcript: EP21 AVX L3 Compound Coaxial Helicopter, Delta CEO's Letter on the Future; Tilt Wing EVTOL - Will it Fly?

All right, welcome back. This is the Struck podcast. This is episode 21. And on today's show, we've got a bunch of really interesting topics. First we're in our new segment, we're going to cover, um, a couple of different things about the coronavirus downturn. So number one, Delta CEO, Ed Bastian, just released a letter announcing some of their outlook going forward.

They just had a, uh, a tough period of laying off a lot of people. And also they just had a bunch of employees except early retirement. So we'll chat about that a little bit in his outlook. Uh, also an interesting article at the BBC on. How jet planes are getting sent to boneyards essentially, I'm also a little bit of lightening strike news because we are a lightning first show.

A couple of people injured at the DHL hub. When a lightning strikes a lightning struck a ramp, it sounds like. So a couple of workers injured. We'll talk a little bit about that, which apparently happens more than people realize. Um, as we get into our engineering segment, we were talking a little bit about Honeywell, their UV cabin disinfection system.

It's really interesting how all of the world is changing as far as cleanliness and disinfection. And obviously the air air aircraft is no different. We'll also talk about the AVX aircraft, which is a really fascinating looking vehicle with a tilt rotor it's and they're developing, I guess, that for the U S army.

And then lastly, as we jumped to some electric tech, the do for. Tilt wing O L so a lot of discussion on that really interesting design. Very complex design. So Alan, let's start with news. We both just read, uh, ed bastion, the Delta CEO's letter. What are some of your thoughts? They got to stop the cash burn.

That's there. That's the thought? Yeah. 20 down to 27 million down from a hundred million, a port per day. Which is staggering $3 billion a month. They used, they were burning back in March, April leash. Wow. Money, a lot of cash burn the industry and what Delta jet blue, Southwest American United are all trying to do is.

Get the customer satisfaction numbers up so they can increase the ridership so they can fill some airplanes. Cause I think the issue right now is consumer confidence that they aircraft are in the airports themselves for that matter are clean. And that they're taking the precautions that were being told about every 30 seconds that.

Uh, th that we're maintaining a social distance that we're wiping down the airplanes or cleaning the airplanes and that, um, everybody on the airplanes or we're in math and it seems to be okay, a very effective way of dealing with it. But the problem is, is that I think people who are traveling at least haven't seen any indication that there's been any sort of COVID transmission.

Via airline flights and we've been flying it. We ain't never shut down the airlines they've been flying since this all started. So we have several months of data and thousands of flights, tens of thousands of flights at this point. Uh, it doesn't seem like there's a connection between COBIT transmissions and flying in airplanes.

That doesn't seem to be a thing let's let's shift forward here. So speaking of Delta, um, well speaking of just the industry in general, These planes are ending up in bone yards now. So what does that mean? Exactly? Well, there's a couple of places across the United States, mostly in the desert, uh, in the U S where, and I think Australia has a bone yard.

I don't know about the UK. I've never really seen one over there, but, uh, when you decommission an airplane, you may want to bring it back. Uh, if the permanent decommission it, the aircraft gets used for spare parts. Just like in an auto junkyard recycling center, I guess we call it now. Uh, so they go so off my, my old Honda, uh, you know, I was getting rusty and no longer of any use.

I could send it to a salvage yard and they're going to. Either crush it or take parts off it. So someone else can use the parts to keep their automobile running. Same thing happens on airplanes. Of course, airplane parts are a lot more valuable than, uh, automotive parts. And I have limited usage, right? So the, there is a sort of a secondary market for parts.

Um, even sections of airplanes get used for other testing purposes. I know we've been involved in a couple of different efforts where we've actually cut off a section of an aircraft it's in a bone yard, uh, and use it for a test to get. Something approved for the next generation of airplanes. So they have used, but there's a lot of, uh, if you go down to Arizona is, and one I've been at a couple of times, there was a big bone yard down in Arizona, uh, where they just park their planes in and pull the engines off engines have a lot of value.

Uh, avionics have a lot of value. But everything else is just a shell, right? So all the hydraulics and all the structure, pretty much not usable, um, controlled surfaces, I guess, can be usable and reused. So there's value in those aircraft. Uh, but I'm, I'm guessing that there's just getting a huge influx of aircraft, right?

I'm like, where are you going to park them all? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And so let's talk about this lighting strike. So at a DH DHL hub at a Cincinnati airport. So how does this happen? So they're on the ramp of a plane and lightning hit the ground or hit the D it's not clear where the lightning strike.

Exactly. Touchdown, but obviously you can just spread and hit anyone on the ground. That's how people die in parks and forests. Same problem. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. In an airport, uh, especially a busy hub, like a DHL or FedEx or ups where there's a lot of ground workers running around, uh, pulling, uh, packages and containers off on and off of an aircraft.

Lightening in the area is usually means of shutting things down. Uh, just because the aircraft tend to be the highest things. Oh, around particularly larger ones. Right? So like a triple seven is probably the tallest thing at the airport. Oh taller than the airport itself. Uh, so they get, so aircraft gets struck.

And what happens is, is that, uh, the ticket struck on the tail and the energy runs down and jumps over the, the wheels to the tarmac and energizes the ground. And everybody's around. It gets knocked down and hurt because there's all kinds of current running through the concrete and the rebar and the concrete, but it's, there's a voltage there.

And usually the ground is wet because it's raining and everybody gets shocked and knocked out. People have gotten killed doing that. So there's usually procedures in place to limit access to the ramp when. There's been lightening and Dan, I don't know if you've ever traveled to Florida, uh, in the summertime where you pull up in the airplane.

He, you can't get off. Cause there's a thunderstorm coming. It's the same sort of thing. They don't want the ground crews out there when there's Dunder storm nearby. Cause someone can get really hurt. Really hurt. And the, the guys that wear the headsets and they plug into the airplane, those guys can get really, really hurt because the energy goes through that wire into their head.

Oh yeah. Terrifying. That's terrifying. Very dangerous.

right. So let's talk engineering a little bit. Uh, first thing, a quick one jet blues testing. Honeywell's UV Cavin doesn't disinfectant system. So if you imagine this it's just looks like a, a service cart going down the aisle. And if you imagine you're just walking down the aisle, just with your arms extended, um, you know, this thing has two wings sort of extending out and just covering all the seats with, I guess, some sort of intense blue light or UV light, um, you know, to disinfect these.

So. What do you, how do you feel about this? I know they've been using lots of different things like wipes, uh, electrostatic foggers, which I don't know what that is. It sounds terrifying. It sounds, it sounds like what you, you know, you put that huge blanket over your condo building and bomb all the bugs, but similar, similar to that.

Yeah. But this seems like a pretty clean, like smart technology. I mean, it seems really like, just roll down the aisle takes 10, 15 minutes and. Everything's good to go, but, well, I don't know, had seen this device when I saw this a little news article pop out this week. I thought I've seen that before. And Honeywell did not invent those things.

Honeywell actually acquired a company that, that had created it a while ago. Uh, and, uh, it was a smaller company and they had done some initial research on, I forget the name of the company. So the tip of my tongue, so I may pop out, but the, they had developed this, a UV C ultraviolet light, and the C spectrum was ABC.

So, uh, the, the ultraviolet C spectrum. Tends to kill a lot of virus and bacteria, and they had done a bunch of, uh, initial studies. I don't, I'm not sure how deep and this article didn't really talk about that either. Like how sure are they this kills coronavirus. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. They said there's several studies that are trying to understand the effect of UVC light, but it doesn't sound super conclusive.

But I guess everything's better than nothing at this point. So no, one's arguing about sending us down the aisle for 10 minutes, but right. But it is time. We don't really know. Oh, it kind of looks like if you ever run a snowblower and you got the little cover

In this episode we chat about the scary ransomware attack that sent Garmin scrambling to get their systems back up. Airbus announced successful autonomous takeoffs and landings; the Sabrewing EVTOL that will haul cargo is getting some press; And Lilium explains why they're no longer going after the short-range air taxi market--is it perhaps not a viable 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!

Full Transcript: EP20 - The Garmin Ransomware Attack; Airbus Makes Autonomous Takeoff & Landing; Sabrewing EVTOL for Cargo

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

You are listening to the Struck Podcast. I'm Dan Blewett.

Allen Hall: I'm Allen hall.

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

All right, welcome back. This is the struck podcast. This is the big 2-0 Alan--episode 20. How you doing?

Allen Hall: Great, Dan sighting, another great week of news and aviation, you know, it seems slow out there and not literal airplanes are flying. Their aviation business is busy.

Dan: Yeah. So today, uh, we're going to cover a bunch of different topics.

So in our new section, um, what seems to be a ransomware attack at Garmin? Pretty scary stuff. Uh, we're gonna chat a little bit about Airbus. Um, They're autonomous taxi, takeoff done some landing tests, really interesting stuff there, and a little bit of a scary storm incident out of Russia with a quite old AN-24 aircraft.

Uh, we're gonna talk a little bit about the EPA and some potential, um, environmental limits. They're going to set on aircraft. It seems like so much missions testing. And lastly, a couple different, uh, EVTOL's, uh, so Sabrewing, they've got some interesting stuff going along with cargo transport, and lastly, a pretty interesting letter from Lilium about their view on really short trip, uh, flights.

So how let's get started with Garmin. So they haven't said the words ransom, but this seems textbook ransomware, which is really scary for any business owner. When you start to hear these, especially with bigger companies, but what's your take here with the garments situation.

Allen Hall: We've been seeing a lot more ransomware attacks in aerospace in the last six months to a year.

And it's not surprising that Garmin was the focus of one of those ransomware attacks, just because they're one of the more prominent electronic, uh, highly integrated aviation AVN X companies, but a lot of technology and probably a lot information. On servers. And so it's not surprising that, that they would be a, an attack point and plus they're just a kind of a global company now.

So there'd be a lot of ways to infiltrate them. And it kind of sounds like there's listening, just watching some of the news reports that it was via. Um, You know, some sort of email that triggered the, the system to go haywire, but when those events happen, what's what, what I'm hearing from the engineers from different companies, not, not just garment specific is that everything gets shut down.

So they lose all the internet phones, internet. Connectivity, all access to drawings and everything that an engineer would need are basically taken offline. So it shuts down the company. And if there's any, if it is a true ransomware where they're asking for money, it has to be a big trade off, obviously.

And then what, what seems to be happening at most of these places is a companies are calling the FBI. They're not playing. They bring in the federal investigators immediately. To one, try to help them figure out what they need to do next, but to. Stop it from happening to somebody else because this sort of nonsense has got to stop.

And you got to wonder where someone was like, Garmin is a very technology driven company and very forward thinking that they hadn't had systems in place to prevent this from happening. So there's a little more postmortem to happen in. The news has just been trickling out of the last couple of days. So we need to keep a sense of.

You know, this, this here, where this is where those goes, because it's, this won't be the last attack, but let's just hope that Garmin and the FBI and everybody involved is it's passing along information so that the other aerospace companies and other companies across the United States killer, uh, don't have this happen.

Dan: Yeah. So it sounds like, like wasted locker is the, the, the cyber weapon, the brand of a, of ransomware that, but you're right. Garmin seems like they played this pretty close to the vest and, uh, I don't know. I mean, I just imagine that becomes like a. Point of embarrassment for such a high tech company. But at the same time, you just, like you said, you can't plug every potential leak where if it only takes one email or whatever it is, and maybe it's, you know, the, the old, like, Hey, you've won $11 million from some random person in some random continent.

Right. I'm sure it wasn't something like that, but these things have gotten very sophisticated and sure has never know. I guess, you know, it's crazy.

Allen Hall: Well, it's in the United States has happened to national political parties frequently. And you have to think that they have access to some of the best security technology in the world.

You'd hope so I'm in a company like Garmin, doesn't have those resources to play with, but still, uh, you gotta wonder what garments next steps are because one, they've got to get up back up and running again. That's the first thing. And then too, um, they gotta figure out a way to prevent this from happening in the future.

Dan: Yeah, so Airbus, uh, they have self flying plane just completed, successful taxi, a taxi take off and landing. So this is not a small all plain, either. This was a, a three 51,000 X WB. And, uh, obviously like full scale, like commercial plane, which is pretty cool. So is this getting close to market? Is this something that's in our near future autonomous or are we still a ways away?

Allen Hall: Well, I kind of wonder if this is driven by all

Dan: the, can I fly the plane? Like just can a IB pilot just go push the button.

Allen Hall: No

Dan: fine. That will not happen.

Allen Hall: Not for a long time, but it's a larger airplane. The three 50 is a big airplane. The dash 1000 is, is a very long aircraft. Um, I think. Airbus is flexing their muscle a little bit.

And I think Boeing will, would have done it already too. If they could have been, they got other problems right now, they're trying to deal with the ability to flying aircraft autonomously of that size and particularly taxi taxi is probably the place where a lot more difficulties. Uh, it is not. Easy. So you have to have a very, very talented engineering staff.

Do you even get close to doing something like that and great software engineers and with all the EVT E electric, vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, talking about being autonomous and Honeywell and some others and Garmin. Doing a lot of things that are nearly autonomous. I'm not surprised that her bus just stepped up and said, okay, watch this no way.

Then no way they went to show that. Yeah, yeah. Airbus isn't playing either and they, if they wanted to do it, they could do it. But then on the, on the other side, Airbus has watched some of the problems that Boeing and Airbus has had with pilots making mistakes in the air. And I know Boeing this past week talked about their, their CEO was talking about how the aircraft is going to be more autonomous and that they weren't going to let pilots make, uh, as many, uh, critical decisions where they could get the aircraft in trouble.

And Airbus has been down that path was down that path long ago. So I'm not surprised that Airbus is doing it. How, how were they, whatever. I don't think there were ever to the point in the next 10 years, I don't see there's going to be autonomous aircraft in a commercial sense, uh, either cargo or a commercial flight, but if it does release some of the burden on the pilots and make the airplane fly cleaner and smoother on all that, I would expect a lot of those pieces of information that they've done at Airbus has developed on this project will be integrated into the aircraft over time.

They will be.

Dan: Well, how does this affect pilots in the longterm? So say, you know, 10 years from now, don't have to take off. They don't have to land. And they don't have to do that much. Do they become quickly out of practice at like actually having to do these things and say, the system is like not working one day and they have to land it and they hadn't landed a plane in a hundred flights.

I mean, is this, you know what I mean? Like if you don't cook dinner every night, do you get rusty at, at whipping up a really nice meal? You know what I mean?

Allen Hall: Yes. I think that's totally true. It's just a human nature outcome that it's inevitable. The, the. The other side of that is companies like Airbus and Boeing.

The bigger craft company have the ability to create simulators and put pilots in simulators and to have them quote, unquote, fly the airplane. Because the one thing if you don't want to do is burn a bunch of fuel, getting a pilot up to speed if you don't have to. Yeah. And if there's any complacency, the regulatory bodies like JASA, And the FAA will be all over it.

And the first people usually complain about not getting enough flight time on the pilots. Quite honestly, they want to be as proficient as ever. That's the big push by all the pilots. Unions is proficiency, proficiency, proficiency, and proficiency means seat time, actually flying the airplane. In fact,...

The eHang EVTOL took its first commercial flight in China - how important is this milestone? Boeing 737 MAX re-certification has entered its public comment period, and other 737 models have had an emergency airworthiness directive recently sent out. And, the big four airlines (United, Delta, American and Southwest) have had a rough Q2 in 2020 - how does it compare to a year ago?

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: EP19 eHANG EVTOL First Flight; Boeing 737 Woes; Are the Big Four Airlines in Trouble?

Dan: This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech - at Weather Guard, we support design engineers and make lightening protection easy.

You are listening to the Struck Podcast. I'm Dan Blewett.

Allen Hall: I'm Allen hall.

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

Hey, welcome back to the Struck Podcast is episode 19. I'm your cohost, Dan Blewett and in today's episode, got a bunch of really good topics, actually. So we're going to cover a bunch of things with the Boeing seven 37, their public comment period has begun. Uh, we're also gonna talk about. Jet time, which is an interesting, quick little story of Danish company.

Um, we're going to chat about some of the big four airlines as their losses this year have come to light and we're starting to compare to, you know, Q2 last year to Q2 this year. So we're going to chat about that. Uh, there's been some really interesting conversion, the, uh, Embraer prey tour legacy for fifties, actually have a conversion kit now to go into the parade tour 500.

We're gonna talk a bit, a little bit about the engineering that goes into a conversion of a, of a business jet, which is really fascinating thing to think about. And then we're also going to chat some more about a seven 37 or eight homes. Um, a airworthiness directive, just put out on the Boeing seven 37.

And lastly, we'll chat in our electric tech - the ehang EVTOL. Which just made the first passenger trip around a yang. Tell China. So let's jump in here with, uh, some of the seven 37 max stuff. So the public now has 45 days as of July 21st to comment on the proposed changes. So tell us, what does this, what does this mean?

Allen Hall: Well, for any sort of major, uh, changes, uh, special conditions, uh, it was all rural changes. That's always a public comment period because these changes end up being, having the, the rule of law essentially applied against them. And so when you make new regulations or laws, you want to have a public period to discuss those, to see what the public feedback is in this particular case.

I'm not sure what the public feedback is going to be. Uh, but the FAA has to respond to all the comments. And so they may get thousands of comments back on this, whether they're valid comments or not, you still have to respond to them and situations where we've seen a lot of public responses in, uh, sort of critical or controversial areas.

You kind of get this wide range of responses. And then as the FAA, I don't know how they must lock a couple of people in a room to go through almost responses. It sounds terrible, right? Because you can write as much as you want for and as a response. So you could have 50 different comments in response.

So the FAS go through those and sort them out and put them into groups and title respond to each one of them. So it takes a long time, right? Which is why they keep, keep saying like the seven 37 is not going to be flying at a couple other minor reasons, but it seems like the certification open public comment forum thing is going to shove it out to December of this year, before those airplanes get going again.

Plus they have to qualify all the, all the pilots, which is going to be another hurdle, but they could actually probably start that now. So I understand the need for open dialogue on this. I just, I, I, there are times I wish I think the public has no idea w the specific specificity of these changes and be able to add anything to them.

That's what the FAA is for. And that's what all the DTRS are for. Right. And yeah. So,

Dan: so if I write these jet engines should be more shaped, like watermelons. Yes. Yes. Or respond to that. Thank you for your, we, you know, we don't believe they should be shaped like watermelons. We believe

Allen Hall: that that's right.

Dan: That's right.

Allen Hall: They'll do that. Or they'll say that doesn't fit the, the, uh, the question or the comment isn't applicable to the particular situation, but they have to respond to them. So you could say, and like the added yeah. Angle of attack censure, uh, may cause, uh, the improper activation of some other system.

Pick it just pick it, pick it out of the hat and they have to respond to that. And then someone has to go look and then what the FAA is going to do is they're going to talk. If they have something that is even questionable, they're clearly going to throw it back into Boeing and Boeing gets to see those comments.

So Boeing's got the engineers at Boeing, get to see those comments and get to respond to them. And it's sort of a negotiated outcome, but it's not, we've been working on this for more than a year. What's going to be added at this point that we don't already know. I don't know. And then you have to go through the, once you get FAA gets checked box off, you still have to do all the foreign certifications too.

So it isn't like Boeing's out of the clear on this. There's still a lot of work to do.

Dan: Yeah. Well, it's interesting process. I guess it's still good that the public does have a chance to sure. Stay within you to say, I mean, that's, I guess kind of kind of democracy and action.

Allen Hall: Well, yeah, it is. It is, it is, but it isn't, you have a system in place right now and which, uh, you can.

Direct comments to in this particular case, I think just because of the visibility of it, they had to do that. I'm never sure what it adds to the end result.

Dan: Yeah. So quirky story. I will just touch on this Danish company, jet time, two words, uh, it hadn't basically didn't survive the COVID situation. Um, Went under and it says, nevertheless, jet times owner has already registered and received a certificate for his new company.

Jet time, just pushing the two words together and expect it to start chartering flights in 2021 using some of their old key employees, as well as five of the previous Boeing 30 sevens. This seems bizarre. I think I realized that companies are shielded from liability. Like you have. You know, watermelon LLC goes out of business.

You can then just like start a new LLC. Right? Like, and those assets are gone and creditors can come after the LLC, but not, you know, you personally, whatever, but like, does this seem weird to you that they just made another business that quick?

Allen Hall: It does. There's something called the corporate veil or piercing the corporate veil.

You can't. Be malevolent and do bad things, intentionally skirt creditors, uh, by, because you have a corporation Vale, particular case. That's what exactly. If you have to, like, you're like, I'm going to take all the money out of this thing and shovel into a new company. Good luck to all my creditors on the other side and, and, uh, come get my airplanes.

Now. Let's just, if you have watched that show on airplane repo, if you don't pay the airplane bills, Someone's coming to get those airplanes. There's no doubt about that. So you gotta, if you want to keep those airplanes, you better keep them locked under someone, watching them all the time, because they're going to get repoed.

Airplane companies are not playing. And I, I remember, uh, when I worked in Wichita, there was a, one of the repo guys that I knew that used to work for Cessna. They go down to South America all the time and bring your airplanes back. Which has gotta be scary as all get out, right? You were walking down to South America, you flying down to South America, you go into this, a remote field.

If you can find the person that runs the airport and saying, can you get the keys? You're probably paying him or paying the desk person to get the keys. And then, you know, you're trying to, you're playing a flight back at two flight back to America or wherever they needed to take the airplane. That's serious business.

So even though they may skirt the bankruptcy here, they're not going to skirt. The marketplace. They totally won't.

Dan: That's interesting. Yeah, it just struck me as funny. So I wanted to bring it up. So let's, uh, shift to the U S big four and who's kind of been hit the hardest. So between Southwest Delta, American and United, and I personally didn't realize that Southwest is that is about half of the size of those three other companies.

Yeah. Delta United and American all do about. I guess 45 to 50 billion in revenue a year. And Southwest does about 25, but all of them essentially have converged on the same point, which is about 2 billion in revenue in second quarter of 2020. So for Southwest, it's a much lower drop-off because they're only coming down from 6 billion, a quarter rather than dropping down from 12 billion a quarter.

But I tried, um, What do you think about this? I mean, who do you think is going to come out on top as far as these four? Or what kind of predictions do you have?

Allen Hall: Well, it's all due or at least mostly due to the lack of international travel. So Southwest only has a selected number of flights that are outside the continental us, uh, to Hawaii, uh, Puerto Rico.

And I think Mexico now, too. So they're relatively limited on their international travel and international travel is expensive....

In this episode of the Struck aerospace engineering podcast, we discuss Jaunt Air Mobility's gyrocopter EVTOL design and talk about it's future. We discuss NXTCOMM's new flat satcom radome antenna design, Airbus' white paper on hydrogen-powered planes and the EU's plan to become carbon-neutral. We cover Embraer's new foray into Turboprop planes, antimicrobial tech in cabins, and the toxic, costly nature of fire-suppressing foam.

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: EP18 - Jaunt Air Mobility EVTOL - Will it Fly? Hydrogen-Powered Planes and Is Fire-Suppressing Foam on Its Way Out?

Dan: This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech at weather guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.

You're listening to the Struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett

Allen Hall: I'm Allen hall.

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

All right, welcome back. This is struck episode 18, Allen. What's going on?

Allen Hall: Hey, it's been a great week, Dan, pretty busy things. Just starting to pick up. Looks like air. Aviation's getting a little, a little more busy. Flights are ticking up a little bit. So it's

Dan: gonna be, yeah, you got another trip this week.

Don't you?

Allen Hall: I want, so this is my second trip outside of Massachusetts. Uh, we're a little curious to see if the. Any changes have occurred in the, uh, airport experience and on the aircraft, it seems like the Southwest airlines was what were travel on. It is still blocking out the middle seats. And there was a report by MIT I saw yesterday or day before that was talking about how that reduced.

Um, exposure to COVID by like roughly 50%, which, which was interesting. But the last time we traveled through the airports, airports seem busy. They were really busy, but the parking lots were empty. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but that's what it was. Um, so yeah, it can be a busy week.

Dan: Well, I heard, yeah, I heard Delta's gonna keep, uh, their middle seats blocked off until September, but then again, other.

Uh, companies hadn't really followed suit. And of course, with American airlines, they didn't even seem to enforce, uh, one of our United States senators wearing a mask, the whole flight, apparently. So

Allen Hall: it's not

Dan: still spotty regulation across the industry.

Allen Hall: Well, it's not regulation, right? Uh, the FAA can't oppose company

Dan: policy, company policies,

Allen Hall: right.

And the companies can remove you from an aircraft for whatever reason they want it's denial of service. That's what it is. So, yeah. Uh, when we traveled, uh, on the, on the last flight, it was, I think there was one or to people who weren't wearing a mask, but you notice what happens is it kind of get shuttled to the back corner of the airplane.

What seems to be part of the approach that at least Southwest was taking at the time. And I've heard that from other airlines that they try to take people who decided not to wear a mask for whatever that could be medical conditions, that dissolve variety of reasons why that would occur.

Dan: Oh. So they know ahead of time.

So it was just thinking to myself, I'm like, well, how would they know if they're not on the plane yet? Yeah. But I guess some people.

Allen Hall: Some people with breathing problems, you know, it's, it's, it's a big deal. They have a mask on it. Doesn't make it easier to breathe.

Dan: Sure. And this is true. This is true. So in today's show, we're going to cover, I've got a good, good smattering of topics.

We're going to cover Jaunt Air Mobility's aircraft which uses ROSA technology, which is a slow rotor, uh, just really interesting, uh, Airbus and some of their, they had extensive white paper. They're talking about, uh, the use of hydrogen fuels in the future. So we'll catch up on that. Uh, Embraer is developing a new turboprop, so they haven't really made a new one in a while.

So we're gonna talk a little bit about that. And then a next column has a new design of a flat panel antenna. So some interesting Satcom news there, and then rich out a little bit about the Textron explosion and OSHA has just recently cited them. Uh, that was back in December, but still really scary incident.

I think they were lucky to not, um, Have as nearly as much a injury. And then we're talk a little bit about fire suppressing foam, which is a crazy thing that just, this seems like a very toxic and just a it's. It seems as I did research on this seem strange that it's hasn't been banned yet, but anyway, so let's start with, uh, with Jaunt Air mobility.

So this is their attempt and their, I guess, partnering with Uber elevate. And they make a lot of claims that this is a really great little aircraft that it's fast, that it's a quiet, that it's smooth, you know, vertical takeoff and landing. Uh, but this is a gyrocopter am I right?

Allen Hall: Essentially it is just a, what I call a power.

Gyrocopter a gyrocopter or an autogyro. Is a think of it as a, it has a main rotor blade on top, but it's not powered and it needs four thrusts for the, for the blade on top to start rotating, to act like a propeller or a wing, that's essentially what it does. And this particular case, uh, Jaunt is actually powering that rotor on top of the aircraft to provide lift. So they, they power that rotor up to take off the, the vertical takeoff. And then when they're flying forward, they just kind of let it auto rotate. What looked like, um, with a forward thrust provided by four electric engines, two on each smaller, it's a really small wing, just enough to put some propellers out there.

So it looked like, so it's sort of a combination of an auto gyro power gyro electric aircraft. Somewhere in between all those things

Dan: yet another kind of hybridized design. So what along and these have been around for a little bit. So like what's the history of like safety and efficiency. It's a really, like I said, it's a unique, cause I said it gains, I think it can rotate as slow as 80 revolutions from maybe where you can just very clearly see.

The rotor you can move in it's round.

Allen Hall: And the autogyro is a way to fly slowly. What, in a smaller aircraft, that's what it's been used for originally. I don't remember where it was designed originally. I think it was in Europe, maybe in Spain where the auto Jara was first invented and as a long time ago.

Uh, but what, what it can allow you to do is. Really fly slowly across, uh, I think they're using it for agricultural purposes originally. That's where I've seen it use is where a regular aircraft is going to be flying at say a, um, roughly a hundred miles an hour. And this auto gyro can fly much, much slower than that and still get the cover the same amount of ground.

So it's basically a simplified way of flying slower. Uh, so you don't need that much for thrust, kind of a combination helicopter airplane. So it's not helicopter. He can hover. It's not an airplane where you're going a hundred knots, but it's somewhere in between. That's the way to think about it for an urban transport.

It may be a good fit because ultimately, um, you, you really, you, you need that vertical aspect, right? You want to be taken off. If you aren't on top of a building, when it lift off and go fly to the next building, or he wouldn't take off from your building, go fly to a restaurant or wherever you were going to.

I I'm always dubious at anything. That's rotating over my head. And, uh, the

Dan: you're not a big decapitation guy, not

Allen Hall: into that. No, if you see helicopter crashes that are really turn you off to helicopters, uh, uh, and, and this situation not on dry roads. So I think, or even worse because the blades going to be floppy, even though they're not moving all that fast, you get hit with a rotor moving.

Even a couple RPM says it's going to be a severe damage. So. I think you've got to balance those two off the thing, John, what is interesting at least to me was a little certification timeline. I think they're talking about starting the certification process in 2022. So they've got some design phase company stuff they're going to go do and then transition off into certifying for part 27 and part 29, which is the rotocraft regulations from the FAA part 27, essentially small rotocraft or to a nice large road craft.

Not sure why this would fit. In between those two, I would consider to be parked 27, but maybe there's some technology about it that makes it part 29 are some aspects about the way it flies that were thrown into part 29, but they only a three year window to get that done. That will be very difficult. I haven't seen a lot of aircraft certification programs get to get done in three years now.

I've seen a lot of schedules that say three years or two and a half years from start to finish. But very few from start to finish, get down at three years as more likely five. Uh, because there's always setbacks and delays, particularly some sort of new design, you just never can get through that hurdle.

And more realistically, a lot of later programs have been new aircraft programs closer to seven. So there's, there's a time clock that when you go to the FAA, you start their certification, say I'm applying for a type certificate for this aircraft being. That starts a clock. And I forget that clock is three or five years.

And after that three to five year window, I think it's three years and you can have us for a year in a year extension. I think that's all. So what happens is you have your defense regulatory basis to find the day you apply,...

In this episode, Allen and Dan discuss the idea of applying undue pressure to engineers as they moved to certification of the 737 MAX. They also explore some of Honeywell's new UAS tech and their autonomous landing technology. Lastly, they cover Vertical Aerospace's Seraph aircraft and discuss it's path to market and potential engineering missteps.

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: Struck Podcast EP17 - Did Boeing Apply Undue Pressure re: 737 MAX? We discuss Honeywell's UAS tech and Vertical Aerospace's Seraph aircraft.

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

You're listening to the Struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett

Allen Hall: I'm Allen hall.

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

Alright. Welcome back to another episode of the struck podcast, Allen. Well, it's going on this week. Well,

Allen Hall: uh, Boeing's under some pressure again, to get max deliveries go on. It sounds like the factories up and running, which is a good sign, but there's a lot of FAA in department of transportation pressure for undue pressure on the delegated, uh, engineers that help sign off on the design, which is just another bad thing for Boeing to be going through.

So, you know, better week in terms of flights, did you notice that the number of people flying this week is up another couple of ticks? It's not 20% up, but we're in the low thirties look like in terms of number of flights versus last year, which is a good sign and alongside numbers still, still goes up and that's a positive sign for the world economy and the U S economy and aviation overall.

And, uh, It also looks like the business community. The number of flights in the, on the business side is still pretty stable. It's down, it's down. I thought I heard 20 to 30% versus last year. That means we're still in the 70 percentile range in terms of business flight and the lease market. That's not bad in the lease market's doing really well.

Uh, the partial ownership market, uh, I listened to a podcast this past week with Honda jet deal with HondaJet, a lease program from his that wasn't a Honda. Own program, but as a Honda, they're using Honda jets to shuttle people around. And it sounds like they were doing pretty well there. They had five airplanes in their fleet and we're going to take delivery of another one here shortly.

And they're going to add a total of 10 new ones. So to get to 15 odd digits in their fleet. And you have to have a pretty, uh, rosy economic forecast to bring hot to basically triple your size of your company. Joe's airplane fleet. So I thought that was a, a good positive sign too. So some green shoots, right?

Dan: Yeah, a lot going on. Uh, so in today's in today's episode, we're going to cover, uh, what Allen just mentioned. So belling and, uh, this undue pressure idea as far as some of their delegates, which is a really interesting, and, um, I know Alan has some pretty deep insight on this. We're going to, in our engineering segment, we're going to talk about Honeywell doing a bunch of stuff on the UAS and the urban air mobility side.

So they've got a couple of different pieces of new tech we're gonna, we're going to chat about. And then our third segment, we're gonna cover, um, some vertical takeoff and landing, uh, news in the electric sector. So, uh, we'll talk a little bit about vertical aerospace and their Saraf, uh, aircraft, which, uh, Honeywell is a, is a partner with that new development.

So interesting design. I know you've got some thoughts, so excited to get to that later, but let's, let's start first with, with Boeing. So this is something that you've had a lot of experience with being an FAA, der designated engineering representative. And so you felt this pressure of, Hey, we need you to sign off on this.

Um, So take us down this road of, of, of undue pressure on and what this all means.

Allen Hall: So the term undue pressure in relates to delegated, um, engineers or DTRS or unit members, or, uh, there's different names from different place has been essentially their engineers that have. The authority to sign off on regulatory regulatory approval to say that that design complies with this particular regulation or regulations that it meets all the FAA requirements, therefore, uh, it can be approved.

That is a very high level of responsibility. Now in the real world, people have that der or unit member or airworthiness representative authority depends. Uh, just, just which is der is a generic term for all this as, as a der. You are also probably a person designing the system. So you're one of, probably a, several people that helped him design the system, which you were ultimately hopefully later approved the show that it's airworthy.

So you're, you're you have these engineers call it this two hats situation. My engineer hat, when I'm out there are design and stuff and I take the hat off and I put my FAA hat on and say, yup. Okay. It's either good or it's not good. And here's the reason why. Human nature is a funny thing. So if you're working for as a, as a der, a lot of, of just two levels of DTRS was to try to keep it simple there's company DTRS that are employed by a company that can only work on behalf of the company to show compliance.

And then there's sort of people like me or a consultant that YDS, who can work for anybody. Why there two levels? They're not really sure. I'm sure the companies had something to do with that. So if I'm working for a company, a I'm an insurer company, but I'm also a der for company a I'm getting paid for both jobs by company.

A company writes my paycheck. And I'm at a bar and I'm a room or an office. We'll have people who are my peers and my manager. I got to have a manager. Right. Cause I'm just a lowly engineer. Uh, I'm a manager. Uh, I have a manager who is, you know, roughly the same age. We all are. The kids probably go to the same schools.

There's a, there's a little community, a little click that develops there because you're around each other all the time. And then you got this. Obligation of you need to get a design done to get it out the door and you should get this, uh, kind of a ying yang thing going on with management where management has to sign off and all the stuff, at least not until recently, there's some.

Things about that, but basically a management could put pressure on DDRs to sign off on designs and der is you'd be able to push back and say, no, I don't want to do that because here's the reasons why, so you automatically create this sort of combative dynamic, and there's really no way to get around that.

And it takes time for any engineer to sort of build up their intestinal fortitude to say, screw off. You know, I'm not going to sign it. And here's the reasons why, and if you want someone else, if, if you want this sign, you have to find somebody else. Cause it's not going to be me and it's not going to be today, but that takes time and it takes, it's an engineer.

You always feel like, well, I could be walking the streets tomorrow, which happens, totally happens. Not supposed to happen, but it happens. So there is always this sort of a combative relationship for engineers, where they have to try to serve two masters, try to serve in a generic sense to serve the FAA and to serve their employer.

Who's writing them, writing their checks. It is sort of a no win situation. So if you get asked to do it, you better think hard about it, whether you are up to that combative task, there's a lot of hard. Decisions that you're

Dan: not good at saying no. Right? That's not a, that's not a position that most people would want to be placed in for sure.

Allen Hall: No. And, and, but at the same time, you feel like you are knowledgeable enough to make those decisions and you have to, Hey, thanks. You're knowledgeable enough. Otherwise they wouldn't have contacted you to do it. So the FAA doesn't write you a paycheck, right? You're working on behalf of the FAA, but you're not an employee of the FAA.

That's one of the things that make perfectly clear to you is that if a company decides to let you go. See, ya know, you have to figure out what happens tomorrow. Um, and it, so it's common. It is more common than you think that there's disagreements between delegates D E R's and the companies that they work for.

 It's tough. And it drives into things that you're seeing lately on the Boeing seven 37. It's not necessarily, I mean, recently it's seven 37 specific where, um, Boeing has a system. There's a, there's a newer system set up such that it's not, it's such a, well, they haven't quote unquote an eternal FAA.

That's sorta run by the company. Uh, it's hard to think about this way, but in previous history, Uh, Boeing would go to the FAA office or actually talk to the FAA engineers and the FAA engineers, uh, would we start to be the final authority and everything, and the FAA would be constantly involved in your project and your design effort and overseeing it well.

As the aircraft community has gotten larger and larger and larger. There's a lot of, lot of small companies making aircraft parts and aircraft designs and BFA, hasn't been funded to the point where they can cover all those things, what they have done. They set up these delegated organizations and these delegated organizations act on behalf of the FAA.

They actually. Function like an FAA. So even though they're all paid by company a, they, they have these, um, uh, structure, like the FAA and the FAA blesses them to say, alright, you set up an organization where it was,...

Dr. Ana Vukovic joined us to talk about radome design testing using her computer modeling techniques at the University of Nottingham's George Green Institute for Electromagnetics Research lab. Testing radomes complete with lightning diverter strips is a game-changer. Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube.

Her team can test radomes complete with lightning diverter strips to get accurate modeling before physical parts are created. Her team at the University of Nottingham, including Dr. Trevor Benson ([email protected]) and Dr. Phillip Sewell ([email protected]), are doing incredible work to push the limits of computational modeling in the aerospace and other industries. Contact Dr. Ana Vukovic at [email protected] or visit the University of Nottingham at https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/ggiemr/index.aspx

Transcript - Dr. Ana Vukovic on Computer Modeling for Radome Design Testing with Lightning Diverter Strips

https://youtu.be/l9o7BwL4dc8

Dan: And here on struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightning protection. All right, welcome back. We've got another great episode of struck actually a special episode today.

so Allen, we've got another, really good segment with Dr. Ana Vukovich out of the George Green, Center for Electromagnetics Research out of the University of Nottingham. And, what are we, what are we talking about today?

Allen Hall: We're talking about a paper that is being published this summer. That. They at the University of Nottingham had put together, which looks like the performance of radar homes installed sort of on aircraft with the lightning protection on the radar.

And so usually when we model, we're just looking at the, our performance of itself of the radar, basically the thickness and the dielectric constant of the radar and whatever the antenna is behind it. That's basically the basics of trying to get an antenna pattern out of that. Cause you can model the antenna and you can model the radon and then you can kind of combine the two together to simulate.

What that would look like RF wise, the real key to the University of Nottingham's approach is that they can actually install lightning protection on the radar, which is the next level up, because the RF performance of the radar is not just, or the radar itself, but everything else that's on it, including paint coatings and diverted strips and whatever else is going to be on the radar, erosion boots, things of that sort.

That's been very difficult to model in the past, but Nottingham has broken through that barrier. And is able to not only simulate, the effects of diverted stress, but like accurately do it. So their, their modeling has very F really, really capable meshing of small objects, but it also does larger object too.

So you can get to the fine detail, a diverter strip, like a segment, a diverter strip--like StrikeTape--on top of a larger radome, like on an Airbus A380 radome and get performance numbers, which is unheard of.

Dan: So this paper, Impact of In-situ Radome on Lighting Diverter Strips on Antenna Performance was written by dr. Ana Vukovic, Dr. Phillip Sewell and Dr. Trevor Benson. So I mean, a pretty impressive group. And what they're doing with computer modeling is, is pretty special.

Allen Hall: It's way off the charts special right now. And this is sort of your dream as an RF designer to have this kind of capability at your fingertips.

And. We really haven't had that much power to do things like this without having essentially a supercomputer now, because of the way that a Nottingham is broken up their mesh and able to handle some of those more discrete problems. Now we have the capability of actually modeling an antenna and a radar come in in an aircraft without having all the pieces there.

So we don't have to build it and test it. We just model it, try it. And if you don't like it, adjust it. And that's the way it should be. So big improvement on, reducing costs and producibility issues and all those other things that come with making aircraft parts are going to be greatly impacted by this paper.

Dan: Well, yeah, I mean, especially in today's, you know, not just economic condition, but you know, with COVID-19 with all of this stuff, being able to test things in a, in a lab in a day, instead of having to build physical parts and put them on a plane and get people in it and gas it up and go, I mean, it seems like just a huge, yeah.

A huge time and cost savings and just logistical savings with just everything that's been going on in the world. So I think the timing for it as well,

Allen Hall: it's great timing. And there's a small cottage industry of in the aircraft world of testing RF testing of nose rate homes, which is where this papers is discussing in particular.

There's, there are a limited number of sites around the world in which they have an antenna range and those incinerators are expensive millions of dollars. And to actually get time on them. Is not easy either. So you have to actually make the part, shift the part to the lab, get it up on the range, test it, tweak it, tweak it.

It's like this iterative process, which is expensive as all get out. And now we can do that computationally for much less cost. And thank goodness. We're finally get to the point of doing this

Dan: well, We're going to jump to the segment with Dr. Ana Vukovic on the Impact of In-situ Radome Lightning Diverter Strips on Antenna Performance.

Allen Hall: So Ana, one of the more complex problems there are in the world today is trying to model antennas, under radomes. And you recently published a paper, discussing how your modeling can produce very accurate results, of, radon and antenna, and even including lightning protection on the radome. Can you explain how that all works?

Dr. Ana Vukovic: So we know that lightning protection is critical for usually lightning protection is placed on the nose of the random where of the, which is the most sensitive region, for the lightning strike. However, this, well, what we don't know is how disliking protection, which is metallic will affect the antenna. And we know that any metallic structures when it's put into near field of antenna, well, Somehow affect the antenna performance.

So previously we have just the model impact the radome, simple, random with no protection on antenna. And, in this next step, we are now including diverters on the on the radome nose, metallic or segmented diverters Allen--like you--like you invented a and prototype. So, in fact, I was looking at you prototype on Google, to, find out some dimensions.

So, so yeah, so we have, for example, I think, our overall rate them diameter was one meter. and segmented diverter strips had five millimeter radius. We had a very complicated antenna, which has evolved the antenna at the bottom, which we, which operated the three gigahertz. so all this, was, the subject.

So the paper, how the debate, the strips affect the performance of antenna.

Allen Hall: you actually did, as you did a comparison between no lightning protection, which older aircraft still implement, to metal bar or what we call hard bars, sometimes just metal bars, which you see on a, like an Airbus or A320 or a Boeing 737.

And then to the segmented diverters, which you see on more modern aircraft, you saw differences between those three configurations in terms of the RF pattern. Can you explain that a little bit?

Dr. Ana Vukovic: We saw differences and, initially, we looked at sec, so metallic strip is just simple metallic. or a certain thickness of certain week, however, segmented at the strips have, different parameters, spacing between metallic segments, size of the segments or length of the segments and so on.

So what we observed is as you reduce the spacing between metallic segments, they, the, the likely protection becomes more visible to antenna and interferes with antenna pattern more. Before I was writing the paper before I brought the paper, I did lots of research on what other people have found out.

And predominantly people were reporting that segmented diverter strips have no effects that metallic, metallic, metallic, diverters have some but meant it not, unless there is a lightning channel. Now what we find is that again, it depends on the structure of lightning diverter strip--segmented, diverter strip. Some, diverter strips with gaps between six segments of a much bigger, and bigger, meaning more than one millimeter, bigger.

are more invisible to antennas. However, as you reduce this gap, 2.3 millimeters, which is what is in practice. If, if I'm, if I'm not wrong, then it becomes much more visible. It's not a huge impact, but it's more than nothing,

Allen Hall: Right. Yeah. As, as the, each of the metal segments gets closer together, they become sort of capacitively coupled together and then RF-wise, you can start to see them.

And that's why we always encourage, customers to, we provide a lot of samples. Try the product out, see which one works. We do offer different varieties of button sizes and gap spacings so that it worked for their particular application. Now that the difficulty has been in modeling, that is because the segment of diverted structure is relatively small compared to the size of the radome.

So like a 737 radome is big it's it's, you know, meter plus diameter and a segmented diverter, the segments are very, very small. So you've been the really, the first group that I've ever seen, to do something really accurate computationally, even to get the antenna patterns, which you don't see a lot of computationally with a radar home.

So you did the radome plus the lightning protection on it to really get accurate antenna patterns. That's unusual because the industry right now spends a lot of money. And, millions of dollars of,...