STRUCK: An Aerospace Engineering & Lightning Protection Show

Allen and Dan discuss further cuts in the airline industry, with Airbus announcing 15,000 job cuts. The 737 MAX completing flight testing this week and future prospects are perhaps improving. Lastly, Pakistan has a huge scandal on their hands--is it really possible that up to 40% of pilots there have fake licenses?

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: EP16 - Airbus Cuts Jobs; 737 MAX Testing and the Pakistan Pilot License Scandal

Alan, how you doing

Allen Hall: right boy, busy week aviation. Huh? A lot. A lot of things are changing. Yeah, yeah,

Dan: yeah. A lot of stuff's going on. So, um, let's jump right into that. So Airbus. It's cutting 15,000 jobs. How, and that's a big deal.

Allen Hall: It's a big deal because in America I was thinking about European companies never laying off anybody or, or just letting people retire out of, out of, out of the industry.

But at Airbus needs to make cut backs pretty quickly. Uh, they got to maintain their financial stability here and with the, uh, the market in the airline industry where a lot of airlines in the United States are only flying at about half, half, or maybe three quarters is what they're thinking going forward.

Like Delta is thinking about getting to basically a three quarters aircraft level. There's just not going to be huge demand for new aircraft. Immediately. So whatever they've been building in the last couple of months is probably going to be it until the airline industry catches up. So they're talking about by the sometime next year, 5,000 employees in France, 5,100 in Germany, 1700 in Britain, 900 in Spain and 13 others.

Elsewhere. There is a, obviously a factory and Airbus factory down in Alabama and out of state. There's also a Airbus, um, engineering office in Wichita, Kansas, and maybe a couple others, but, um, this is a far reaching kind of lay off and it's, it's going to be hard for Airbus once he let those people go to sort of get them back.

So if the industry does pick up pretty quickly, It's going to be hard to find those people. It seems like the American economy is going to pick up relatively quickly compared to some others. So in the engineering world, once you lose those engineers, they're going to find some other place to go. It's more stable and it's going to be really difficult, really difficult to get those people back.

Dan: Uh, so yeah, air, air buses, shedding, a lot of workers. Um, I mean, do you see this being. I mean, Boeing is doing similar things. Like we just heard that Dave, they have a lot of their orders are getting canceled. They are also cutting production of the 747. So right before we get back to Airbus, uh, how do you, what's the story of the 747?

Why, why do they need to get rid of that airplane? Just laying it did not do what it was supposed to do.

Allen Hall: The aircraft is built in the seventies and it's been around about 50 years. And at this point with the reduction of international travel, Which is what it's going to be. Uh, so Europe's going to open up to Europe.

United States is pretty much open to United States where you can fly internally in the United States anywhere you want to go. For the most part, uh, you don't need large aircraft like that going international because it's not all international flights. Uh, and it's also a combination to that. The seven 47 is a four engine.

Aircraft and the fuel burns not great. So the triple seven and the triple seven X, whatever they're calling that, that version is going to be the replacement and Airbus has done the same thing with a three 80, because they have the a three 50, which is a 20 hour airplane, which will take over for whatever.

A three 80 had left. Um, so smaller airplanes is going to be a little more profitable. You're going to see people be really conscious about fuel. Also as fuel prices will eventually rise. So we're going to see a reduction in the four engine airplanes and see more of the dual engine airplanes. And Hey, it's about time, right?

Um, engines are getting more efficient. There was no reason to you need four engines right now. Uh, I see for the next couple of years, probably it's going to be a two engine kind of marketplace with a triple setup, seven seven eight seven seven six seven, which is mostly freight or now, and then a three 50 being the dominant one in Europe.

Uh, it's, it's going to be a two engine aircraft marketplace for a while.

Dan: So where do the economics, I mean, how many passengers they have to have on a, on a plane to make a four engine make, make equal financial sense? I mean, is those numbers just not going to catch up in the future?

Allen Hall: Uh, not until international travel picks up because otherwise there's really no reason to fly, like the seven 47 and at least in the United States for a while there, it was going to Europe, but for the most part, it was going to Asia or to Australia.

And that that's stopped. That's totally stopped now. So there's really no need for the aircraft at this moment. And there's really no need for like afraid of version of the thanks. There's plenty of those seven 47 is kicking around still. So you don't need a new one.

Dan: Gotcha. So back to Airbus, I mean, they just let go of the

They delivered their last ones. Um, I mean, are they just kind of going step by step with, uh, with Boeing? I mean, what do you see, do you see either of these companies taking any risks in the future or is a really just going to be consistent and downsizing? For the next couple of years,

Allen Hall: both, both companies are at risk at the moment, Boeing, just because of seven 30, seven it's been going on before the COVID-19 crisis.

And they were in a financial pants before that. And they got a couple of development programs. Um, Casey 46, which is the tanker program. And they also have the triple seven program. And I got a couple of other things cooking. It sounds like. And then Airbus always has something in the pipeline too. So you're, you're burning money on the R and D side at the same time, you're trying to fulfill market share they're there.

And now with the new airplane market really drying up, I think the number of sales in like may was essentially zero. Uh, both of those companies need that cashflow to keep. Workers employed. It's sort of, you know, Rob from Peter to pay Paul sort of situation in the aircraft industry, you need those orders, you need that cash flow to pay employees.

And when, when the sales dry up, then you have to make cuts, really drastic cuts to the employment, which is what they're doing have to,

Dan: yeah. What about the, uh, the, the smaller aircraft market, like the business jet market? So we saw here the. The 2021 NBA business aviation convention and exhibition, um, is going to be, is it canceled?

Allen Hall: It's canceled for this year? It was supposed to be down in Orlando. Yeah, they, well, they have to have that happen before they had that happen in 2001. Uh, with nine 11, where they push the convention. I think it was in new Orleans that year. They pushed that convention back later in the year in this particular case, look, I says flat out canceled.

Now it was supposed to be take place down on Orlando and. Florida at this particular moment is becoming more of a hotspot for the COVID-19

Dan: and yeah, it's not good down there.

Allen Hall: Right. So I think until we got a handle on that, it just made sense. And an MB table LA sorry. MBWA has actually had layoffs internally.

So this is a little bit of a trouble spot for anybody AA, which is a big proponent of business aviation. They've had to have some layoffs and now the, all their conventions are big money raisers for them. Uh, that keeps everybody employed. So if they don't have a convention, they don't have that sort of income and revenue and advertising and sales that they're normally have.

And so now, It really hurts them sort of going forward. But I think there's sort of an upside on the business aircraft. At least the United States, some of the stigma has been lifted on the business aircraft for a while. There, uh, there was a 2008 and nine. It was a sort of forbidden thought to actually go out and buy an aircraft.

And corporations were unloading a lot of their business jets as, um, As market pressures would have to demanded, but now with the COVID-19, I think it makes a lot more sense. You don't have high value employees, like a CEO, COO CTO. Uh, maybe flying commercially while they may be exposed to, uh, COVID-19. It can really take down a company if you lose somewhat late, especially if they've died from it, they can really hurt your company.

So it makes sense then to go ahead and get a business aircraft, just because of the isolation part of it, it may make financial sense, longer term financial sense to have one of those aircraft will be become part of a leasing program to pick up an aircraft and go with it at least for the next year or two, until you kind of.

Things settle out. So the business market and the business aircraft market may be picking up a little bit. We'll see how it plays.

Dan: Yeah. Well, interesting enough. He just talked about, you know, the spread of it. So Italy is banning use of overhead bins and flights, which is such a weird thing to think about.

I mean, it's such an integral part of flying is to being able to carry on, but now. You can no longer use the overhead baggage. They call them lockers lockers. But do you think, do you think that's going to be a trend in the U S and people would tolerate that in the U S they probably go, they probably throw a huge fit, like the biggest fit,

Allen Hall: throw a big fit in the United States.

And most of Europe too,...

In this episode we dig into more layoffs in the aviation industry, including Spirit Aerosystems, who is slowing down their work for Boeing. The final Airbus A380s were delivered, marking the end of an era. In our aerospace engineering fails segment, we discuss United Flight 811 and how a cargo door lock nearly took down the entire plane...Lastly, we touched on Joby Aviation and others, discussing some new VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) technology.

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: EP15 - Spirit Aerosystems Stops Work; Final Airbus A380; Crash of United Flight 811; Electric VTOL Tech

https://youtu.be/RRJLYtCpRVk

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 on. So another week, another episode, how's everything out there in Massachusetts

Allen Hall: Fine! Dan, you know, it's weird. We were seen to be coming out of the coronavirus thing just fine, but now we're in a drought. And I know last week we're talking about a, was it locus or Cicada? What's the crazy

Dan: books that we had.

Allen Hall: Yeah. So we've gone to from Corona to drought, insect infestations. So it's crazy right now, in a still. Mid June, you know, it's, it's supposed to be, it is nice outside.

Dan: It'll start raining snakes probably any day. So raining Cobra, dogs,

Allen Hall: any kind of small animal

Dan: snakes will come out of the toilet. That's what all, that's what it'll be.

Allen Hall: It's like that movie Snakes on a Plane, right? What's not

Dan: a big, which was, which was funny. It was legitimately funny. Cause people like laughed at it because they thought. That it was ridiculous, but it knew it was one of those movies that it was satire. Like they knew it were that it was ridiculous. And I thought it was really funny.

I really enjoyed it. I got a lot of, a lot of acclaim at the time. A lot of fanfare.

Allen Hall: We finally, we finally hit bare season here. So we had bear in the yard this past week with some colleagues. So it's a mama bear and a couple of Cubs gotta be careful around that.

Dan: Yeah.

Allen Hall: Spring, spring in the mountains.

Dan: Yeah, for sure.

So in today's episode, in our first segment or in our new segment, we've got, about spirit, you know, they're one of the big, part suppliers for Boeing. So some news there, the last . you know, end of an era is, as on our list here, we're going to talk about some of the new developments and cabins and specifically seats.

Obviously this is big time re Corona virus. we're also gonna talk a little bit about, United airlines flight eight 11. Which this is kind of in our learn from failure segment, which, obviously aviation has evolved a lot over the years and we're going to talk about just how cargo doors have changed, in part, because of that incident, which is really, really fascinating, I mean, tragic, but a really interesting story.

And the investigation took some twists and turns. And then we're gonna talk a little bit about. Airbus's new drone copter and this potential flying car model. that's after the Israeli Cormorant, which is, I guess not, it's like a prototype vehicle, but it's actually flown. She hasn't had any passengers in it yet.

So, so Allen what's, what's the deal with spirit spirit

Allen Hall: is a big supplier to Boeing. It has been that way for a long time. They also supply parts to Airbus. And I think that you should have Gulf stream too, but there are big seven 37, seven 87 supplier to Boeing and with the seven 37 max, essentially on hold until we get to the flight testing, what it looks like flight testing with the FAA is coming up at the end of this month.

But the. They just had to put it on hold. They have so many airplanes on the ground already. Where are they going to do? You can't keep putting more airplanes on the ground. So Boeing finally issued the stop, work to spirit now, but the things I've been reading about it are that the stop work is only for about two to three weeks.

At least that's the initial cut on it is in a couple of weeks. Everybody's going to be brought back. They think the flight test would be done. And then we're. Quasi back to normal again,

Dan: which is

Allen Hall: good. It's not permanent layoffs, but it's still not any fun. Cause Wichita's just getting hammered right now because Textron Cessna Beech have been shut down for a while.

and since Boeing is essentially pulled out of Wichita, it's been pretty rough there and Bombardia, selling off all their business. Everything about the business airplanes. It's been pretty tough times in Wichita.

Dan: Yeah. So it looks like yet, like you said, 21 day lay off. it was announced, Wednesday and so spirit, which makes the seven 37 fuselage.

Is it going to furlough or lay off temporarily about 900 workers. So, yeah, I mean, you don't think, I think a lot of people out there don't think about the trickle down, w you know, how many of these incredibly complex machines are parted out and subcontracted to so many other smaller companies that are yeah.

You know, essentially like those little, those little fish that, you know, follow the big whale. Right. And they they're just along for the ride the whole time. So a

Allen Hall: lot of all the sub-suppliers get shut down when that happens. Wichita's have a town of 250,000, 300,000 people. So you wouldn't think 900 employees would make that big of a difference, but it really does have a significant impact on the community because those 900 people are not.

Going out to dinner. They're not shopping. Everything kind of stops for them for a couple of weeks. Cause they're going to try to conserve and do everything they can until the job starts again. So it's a bigger impact on the community than just the 900. It affects a lot of families and it directly effects the economy in Wichita.

Dan: Yeah. Every time this

Allen Hall: happens.

Dan: Yeah. You just have to get used to it. Yeah. Hopefully we're through this, this sooner than later, but you know, who knows, like we said, it could be, could be raining snakes before we know we have to halt all of our traffic because there's too many snakes in this

Allen Hall: guys. Well, I'm flying next week.

I'm gonna be flying at a seven 37 something or another. And if we're flying Southwest out to the West coast, so, you know, at least there is some traffic, it was this week was interesting. just buying tickets on Southwest because Southwest has really changed a lot of the rules. They're not selling all the seats.

I think every middle seat is open. So you get out, not that there's assigned seats in Southwest, but essentially they've booked. People for Isles and, and, windows seats. But at the same time, we were trying our usual trick of as frequently as I fly, I can do some interesting things in Southwest. They let you do them like book two flights at the same time going in different directions and they just shut it down.

So we had, played the usual Rotarix and the next morning Southwest had canceled all the flights. So

Dan: we had wait, explain that. I don't know what that means. Two flights going into the direction. I mean,

Allen Hall: yeah. You kind of book options because you can cancel at the last minute at, on Southwest without paying penalties, or that's how much penalties they just hold your money for the next flight.

You don't, that you don't lose all the

Dan: funds,

Allen Hall: you know, lose the funds. Right. So if there's any chance that you may have to go a different direction, you. You booked both and then cancel one. As you get close,

Dan: what do you mean different direction?

Allen Hall: we were going to, we were going to go straight to the West coast and then we decided we're going to stop in the Midwest and then go to the West coast.

So we had this one direct and one kind of two legged thing. And, Southwest said, no, you can't do that. Mostly because I think they've gotten rid of the 30% or 40% of the seats on the flight and there they need every seat to be open. They don't want to hold a seat and then you have your cancel.

Southwest flights are overbooked all the time. Anyway, my opinion. and before coronavirus, you could come and go as you please, because there's always somebody else willing to get on the airplane, but. That stopped. So, gotcha.

Dan: Yeah. Interesting tactic.

Allen Hall: Yeah. We're going to be on a seven 37 some sort, cause that's all Southwest flies.

so hopefully we get across the country.

Dan: Well, yeah. And we need to talk a little bit about the, the seven 37. So they're trying to get that re certified, but some of them are still in operation. Is that right? So explain that to me.

Allen Hall: Well, not that not the max is the Max's aren't right. So anything that had the, the, a new flight control system that, that was acting up and they had to recertify all those airplanes are immediately grounded.

Right? So they got grounded overseas and they got then the, the president granted him in the States. Those airplanes are not flying. It's all the older airplanes, the seven 37, 708 hundreds are flying, not the dash eight dash nine, which were the maxes. so at some point though, that's what Boeing was making was the Max's and that's what's sitting on because I think there's 400 plus airplanes on tarmacs right now of new airplanes.

They gotta deliver pretty soon....

Dr. Ana Vukovic from the University of Nottingham's George Green Institute for Electromagnetics Research joined us to talk about her incredible computational modeling work. She shared examples of how their computer modeling technology can greatly reduce the time and expense involved in testing the electromagnetic properties of new parts, including lightning protection, HIRF and RF designs.

Her team at the University of Nottingham, including Dr. Trevor Benson and Dr. Phil Sewell, are doing amazing things to improve efficiency of parts engineering in the aerospace industry, among others. What previously might take weeks and months to develop and test can now be tested in as a little as a day using their unique computational modeling techniques.

Contact Dr. Vukovic via email or visit the George Green Institute page at the University of Nottingham.

Watch the video version of this podcast on YouTube.

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!

Struck Podcast EP14: Dr. Ana Vukovic from the University of Nottingham on Computer Modeling

https://youtu.be/q_3hn0dbdcM

Here on Struck, we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection.

Alright, Allen, we got a guest today from across the pond. So who are we talking to today?

Allen Hall: It's Ana Vukovic with the University of Nottingham. She is in computation modeling. And they have developed some really interesting software and technology over the last couple of years so that we can now.

Really simulate aircraft, uh, installations, even on wind turbines, we can do some of the complex geometries we couldn't do before, because we didn't have the techniques. So on I and our group over there have developed these techniques and, uh, [00:01:00] surely gonna open a whole number of doors in aerospace. And obviously is we're all coming out of COVID.

Uh, one of the things that's really trying to save costs and move programs forward. Well, this is one way to do it.

Dan: Yeah. So it was interesting conversation. Obviously I'm not an engineer, so me being the outsider, it, it still boils down and it makes a lot of sense. So obviously when you're trying to engineer new parts for an aircraft, it's incredibly expensive, takes incredibly expensive people to do so it takes a lot of time.

And when you're ready to test these systems together, so not just like an antenna, but the whole radon with antenna inside and diverter strips on the outside of this whole complex thing currently, you guys have to actually build it. And then in most of this is actually put on the plane just to test it, to maybe see if, if there's an effect at all, or if there's like an incremental effect, which seems like a terrible waste of time and money.

And so it is it's can do this on a computer modeling or on computer modeling. Yeah. And just be done with it, which [00:02:00] sounds like, I mean, just makes a ton of sense.

Allen Hall: It makes a lot more sense. You're going to get better products at the end of the day and less expensive products, uh, in the computational world.

We've been trying to get here for since the 1970s, mid 1970s. So it's been a long haul and obviously the computational power we have now. Helps because we doing a lot of computations, but a lot of this is trying to cut down the computations. And then the techniques that have been developed at the university of Nottingham reduce the amount of computational time it takes to do some of these complex problems.

So not only do we have the horsepower now, but we're also smarter about the way we use the horsepower, which cuts down on cost.

Dan: And so she, they have more capabilities then. So in the industry, COMSOL is the software that. You can have a computer at your desktop, you know, work for a company and do some of this modeling on smaller scale individual parts.

And you can have someone in your company to do that. But if you really have [00:03:00] complex parts where you're not just testing an antenna in isolation, you're testing the whole radar and this whole system together. That pretty much goes beyond the capabilities of this otherwise very effective and, you know, popular COMSOL software.

Is that right?

Allen Hall: Yeah. COMSOL is a very useful tool and a lot of industry uses it. Now the wind turbine industry uses it a lot for lightening protection thing. So the aircraft industry uses it a lot for, uh, lightning and, uh, Electromagnetic compatibility issues. Uh, the, the issue really gets down to is to try to accurately simulate complex shapes and on larger.

Aircraft or larger art objects. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be a ship on the sea. Those are huge complex objects, uh, with a lot of fine detail in them that that matters. And so in order to simulate that accurately, either you have to get decrease your resolution, or you got to increase your horsepower and computing power to actually mimic that and to mock it [00:04:00] up computationally.

Well, The way that Nottingham does it, it's using the best of both worlds. It's, uh, using sort of simpler techniques where they can, but, and the fine details are still there in the model, which is really hard to conceptually think about, but those little fine details as we get. And tonnages and we start working at higher and higher and higher frequencies.

Computationally becomes more and more computationally intensive. So this the higher, the frequency of the smaller, the details have to be it's just gets to be this sort of, uh, uh, it just starts to wrap up into the shoes ball of goo of. Computational problems. They've gotten rid of a lot of that.

Dan: Yeah. It reminds me of the way she was describing.

It reminds me of video compression. So like, for example, if you're watching us right now, most of my frame is not changing. Right? My camera's recording at 30 frames per second, but most frames, all this peripheral information is constant. So in video compression, It's not recapturing [00:05:00] those pixels. It's reusing them from frame to frame when they don't change.

And so that's sort of, it's not certainly not a perfect analogy, but it sounds sort of like that's what her. There it is hybrid. Meshing is where they use cubes, where they can cause they're easier. And they use the tetrahedral where they can't, which is harder, same thing. Like the camera's compressing this video when I move around and it's not when, when I'm not.

So it just makes it a lot simpler and reduces the, reduces the amount of frames and file sizes, or maybe not amount of frames, but the file size in general. So,

Allen Hall: right. So even as we get, as the pictures get more and more detailed in the video sense. They actually get smaller and smaller files, relatively speaking.

The same things happen in electromagnetics and computational electromagnetics. We're getting smarter about the way we do it. So the computers get much smaller and the amount of time it takes us a lot less. And yet the resolution has gone way, way up. It's incredible. It really is.

Dan: Yeah. So without further ado, we're going to jump into our pretty awesome conversation with Ana Vukovich

[00:06:00] So on a, uh, one of the major difficulties, uh, you know, in testing RF and, uh, an EMI. Or I guess, creating new parts just for that purpose, right. There's a really big expense in having to create a radar, just to throw it on an airplane to then test it. So, uh, with some of your computer modeling, how are you tackling that problem?

Dr. Ana Vukovic: Geometry creation is the first step in doing electromagnetic simulation. Um, we have different options for geometry. Creation. We can either read in clean cut files or we can create our own job with refile. Now cut files up historically made for mechanical engineers and they, uh, have tiny microscopic gaps between surfaces, but they're not an issue for mechanical engineer.

But for my other simulations, tiny gaps can pick up as traffic. They can, they stop the field, uh, [00:07:00] and, uh, and give us an accurate simulation. So, uh, it is very important to, um, get rid of this, um, small gaps. So we call this cat dirty cat. And the process of eliminating apps is cleaning the cat. So, um, Oh, all software can read, uh, different, uh, CAD files, such as IGS, for example.

Um, but does not do repair so we can locate the errors, but regarding the repair, we can alternatively. Send the customer report. Oh, we can generate our own in house geometry.

Dan: Gotcha. So, yeah, I mean, you guys have some pretty incredible capabilities. Um, but I'd like to back up a little bit. So, you know, when we're talking about, again, like testing some of these, these expensive to create models, like, all right, we're trying to design something new for an aircraft or new for a wind turbine or whatever the part might be.

Um, what are, what's the, I mean, and now feel free to jump in here as well. I mean, how, how does this [00:08:00] process go in the engineering world? I mean, we go from concept like, Hey, here's an idea that we have that we think might work. Um, then what is it typically? Is it typically a physical part or, cause I know Ana that's where you come in, where you can say, we don't need to do this physically.

We can just do this on our computer simulation and save you a whole lot of time and trouble. Is that Alan, is that kind of the process with aerospace engineering at least?

Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of aerospace engineering, particularly in electromagnetics is trial and error and, and enlightening protection. It really is trial and error.

So there's a lot of work done and parts built just to try out ideas that. We can't or couldn't do two recently computationally....

John Redman of Viper Aviation is a former Air Force mechanic Crew Chief who worked on F-15 and F-117 fighter jets. Now, he'll build you your own experimental Rans S20 or Rans S21 plane. Listen in as he tells his story as one of the best USAF mechanics in history, and how he helps those wanting to build their own Rans S20 or S21 aircraft.

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!

Watch the video version of this podcast here.

Get in touch with John Redman right here via the Viper Aviation website.

Full Transcript - Struck Podcast EP13 with John Redman of Viper Aviation

https://youtu.be/7p0eYhNzE_I

Dan: Alright. So we have an awesome guest today. John Redmond, a real aviation lifer is joining us on the show today. I'm having already recorded our conversation with John Allen. What were your, some of your takeaways?

Allen Hall: Well, John's been in aviation forever and he's one of those guys you meet Wehrli that has been an aircraft mechanic in the air force.

And then once coming out of the air force has been in aviation ever since. And so he knows the ins and outs of pretty much everything. Aircraft related. It's hard to find those people anymore because they're just so [00:01:00] rare. But when you do run across them, it's always a really good, interesting conversation.

Dan: Yeah. So John started his career off, working on, uh, in the air force, worked on F sixteens and F one 17. So he knows those, those two jets, like the back of his hand. And as also clearly, which he didn't really go into depth, uh, on he's worked on some of the, is sort of like. Secret aircraft too, which is pretty cool.

So we'll just have to imagine. Uh, but he mentioned that a little bit about how he was part of some kind of elite teams there. Um, and then he's also been the, uh, after his time in the military, uh, was in the model jet engine business, which is also crazy. So these models, um, with. Really powerful jet engines.

Let me think. What do you say? 130, 2000 RPMs and some of these jet turbines?

Allen Hall: Yeah. That's the full RPM speed and 125 pounds of thrust per engine. That's all ton of thrust for such a little device.

Dan: Amazing. Yeah, pretty intense. And then he, [00:02:00] uh, he and his son, uh, fly drones for the military now as contractors and.

There's some really interesting stuff there. A lot of which he also doesn't doesn't talk about, but he really gave us a really cool in depth, uh, into an all of his career. And so now he's, uh, has a new company, Viper aviation. Uh, you can visit them at Viper aviation, usa.com or on Facebook. At Viper aviation and a he's helping people build their own experimental aircraft.

So tell me, Allen, a little bit about the experimental aircraft industry. Well, the light

Allen Hall: sport aircraft industry is probably 15. Maybe, maybe not that old, but it's relative, relatively new in aviation world. And it allows you to build your own airplane. You have to build 51% of it. So a lot of it's, uh, kits that are.

Halfway built roughly. And then, uh, you end up building the rest of yourself and it becomes your own personal little airplane. It is very popular because it is an inexpensive way to get into aviation, having on an airplane, kind of putter [00:03:00] around in and visit local airports and do that kind of thing. So it's, it is a very, very, very popular thing to do today.

Dan: So, uh, enjoy the conversation with, uh, with John Redman. So really in depth and covers a lot of different levels in the aviation industry. We're happy to have him. And, uh, without further ado, we're gonna turn to our conversation with John Redmond.

Hey, John, how you been? How are you doing?

John Redman: No. We're good. Dan, how are you doing? Hey, Allen. Doing well.

Dan: You're done. So, uh, number one, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. I'm excited to see you again for, for those of you listening. John's no friend of mine. Um, we actually worked together many years ago and then, uh, John, you got a new aircraft company.

So tell me a little bit about it.

John Redman: Yes. It's Viper aviation. We custom build

experimental aircraft for customers as well as paint airplanes for people. We also have an eCommerce store that delivers [00:04:00] carbon fiber fiberglass Aramide materials to fix your callings wheel pants, wink tabs, wingtips, excuse me. Any part of your composite aircraft, sell everything for that as well. So

Dan: basically if I was some rich dude or semi rich dude, and I wanted to build my own aircraft, I could do it myself and then probably crashed into the ground.

Or I could call someone like you. Is that right?

John Redman: Well, hopefully not the, the experimental aircraft that the kits out there understand. They're pretty much designed to be built by the guy who can change the brakes on his car. You can follow instructions, you can build your airplane. Were a lot of people, it becomes a daunting task is in the electrical part of it.

And the paint, because if you're going to drop 70 or 80 or $90,000 on an airplane, you want it to look good. So yeah, with the lipstick on the pig, as they call it very well, and the other one is people sit down and tend to find very daunting situations. They're putting something together and they try and re-engineer it [00:05:00] in their head.

You need to understand that the manufacturer has done that trust what he did and just put it together. As they said, All too often, people tend to go a little overboard. Yeah.

Dan: So let's talk about the experimental aircraft, uh, like sector in general. You know, you were a crew chief in the air force working on

Mmm. How complex are these planes? And so you say like someone, you can change, their brakes can build their own aircraft, but there's no, there's no fail safe. Like when you're up in the air, I mean, this seems like a very different, like you said, daunting task. So what, what is the, the, the climate of the experimental aircraft sector?

John Redman: Very large continues to grow. Mmm. Everybody who's flown an airplane. It's amazing. Most of them tend to start in modeling it's children, whether it was building plastic models or flying radio control models or control line type models. And it's interesting how many people have the desire to once possibly build their own [00:06:00] airplane?

The experimental world. It is a world of about 10 million customers out there and they sit down and they just. They want, they want to take the plunge. They say, you know, I can do this. I can change the brakes on my car. Can I really build this airplane? And of course the man and the kisses, absolutely. We got the best instruction manual out there.

What we offer you is a builder assist program where you come and you'll spend three weeks with us and build your airplane with a team. Okay. I'm going to say highly trained professionals learn processes and programs in the military. That taught me how. To maintain fighters, 500 knots, 500 feet above the ground.

Well, and nine GS and putting bombs on target, never lost a pilot. Then don't intend to do it today. It's not difficult. It is different then the standard processes in life. Hmm.

Dan: Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. So let's talk about your time in the, in your, um, in the military. So. I'm working on F sixteens. Like how do you get to the point?

So you recruit chief, [00:07:00] obviously at some point you were like the guy who wasn't allowed to like, even smell the airplanes

John Redman: when you first get there. You're, you're pretty green.  he said, okay, go refuel that airplane. And they're like, okay, you did that and didn't kill anybody. So now we're, we might let you put air in the tires.

And through the years of you, you will go through a pretty lengthy tech school, about 16 weeks to learn how to fix the man and maintain the airplane and mainly understand what is called the tech order system that is used to repair the aircraft. It was a very lengthy system, but very well thought out, very processed driven.

And it actually, it makes a lot of sense when you first get it. It just is a whole bunch of numbers on the side of a book. And you're like, what does this mean? But as you start to use it, you realize it, it did, the process is so thorough and so well thought out. It's amazing. Absolutely set you up for success.

So after you come to tech school, you go to your first duty station. And like I said, we're going to let you touch the airplane, but that just touch it. Don't do anything else. [00:08:00] And through the next two or three years, you're on the job. Training goes hard and heavy. And next thing you know, you're changing an engine next and you're changing a flight control system, et cetera.

And there's always, I can tell you in the fighter world, there is always something that needs to be fixed. And so there's never a lack of nothing to do.

Dan: Well, how many of these little things can need to be fixed? I mean, again, all of this to me is an aviation outsider seems scary. Like what you've explained that like, Isn't perfect.

You know, you feel like they have to be all systems go at all times, but I mean, that's not the case with cars and they still run. I mean, is that still the case with the airplanes?

John Redman: Well, the airplanes, the airplanes, the one thing to remember with an airplane, as long as it's in motion in the air, it will fly.

If the engine shuts down. You just lower the nose a little bit to maintain a level of airspeed, the airplane still flies. It does not fall out of the sky. And of course the pilot is trained in operating like that in emergencies or things like that happen. There's so much redundancy built into every system

In episode 12 of the Struck Podcast we discussed the SpaceX rocket and its lightning issues, the AC-67 rocket crash from the 1980s, and the Apollo 12 and how lightning protection changed following the two strikes it took upon launch.

Watch the video version of this podcast here.

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

Struck Podcast EP 12 Full Transcript - SpaceX Launch, The AC-67 Rocket Disaster & Apollo 12

[00:00:00] Dan: [00:00:00] You're listening to the struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett

[00:00:10] Allen Hall: [00:00:10] I'm Allen hall.

[00:00:11] Dan: [00:00:11] And here on struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection. All right, Alan, we're back here for episode 12. What's going on

[00:00:21] Allen Hall: [00:00:21] the dirty dozen of episodes. Here we go.

[00:00:23] Dan: [00:00:23] Yup. Yup. And the next one's the Baker's dozen.

[00:00:25] So we can just keep using this dozens theme for. Lisa another episode. So

[00:00:30] Allen Hall: [00:00:30] Baker Baker's does this relate it to donuts somehow? So when you say Baker's does, and it always sticks, you think of food?

[00:00:36] Dan: [00:00:36] Well, I think all of these, like extra things are just stupid because he ended up just getting charged for them.

[00:00:41] Like you think they just it's always reflected in the price. Like I learned this when I was a kid, my dad's from Oklahoma and we'd be visiting, you know, my grandparents and we'd be driving around and you'd see this firework stands and it's like, You drive past one, it says, buy one, get six free. I'm like, Oh my God, what a deal?

[00:00:59] We need to stop. And [00:01:00] then the next one's like, buy one, get eight free. And I'm like, this is even better. And it's like, buy one, get 10 free buy one, get 12 free. I'm like mom, like, and the, and my grandma's like, honey, they just, they just increase the price. So you buy one, but it's like 12 times more expensive than a normal what it would normally be.

[00:01:17] I'm like, Oh, Well, that seems deceptive. And I was like, I don't know, 10 or something at the time, but that's what I feel like. That's how I feel about the Baker's dozen. It's like, you're not really giving me a 13th, like, come on, you're building it. You just you're charging a dollar 25 for a bagel and sub a dollar 20, like just a minute, just a minute.

[00:01:35] But I have no, I also have no evidence to prove this. So maybe, maybe I'm wrong here. I don't know why

[00:01:39] Allen Hall: [00:01:39] you don't think the chef's taken a loss on that one, huh? Or the Baker's taken a loss on the 13th?

[00:01:45] Dan: [00:01:45] Well, well, I mean the cost of a bagel or, or a donut is probably only a nickel. If that it's 10 cents probably less.

[00:01:53] Yeah. So maybe they are maybe I'm wrong. But anyway. So in today's episode, we're gonna talk a bunch about, uh, [00:02:00] lighting protection as it pertains to spacecraft and rockets, because that's where a lot of this stuff started. So obviously, uh, space X is a site they're launched late, was recently struck by lightning.

[00:02:12] Their craft itself was not done in Texas. So we're going to cover that. And then, uh, obviously the Apollo 12 was one of the big factors that got all lightening protection, a lot of, a lot of steam because. That was a big deal. And so they were like, Disney's not happening again. And then obviously the, uh, the AC 67 rocket that was hit and then malfunctioned and had a sad ending was another tall tale for today's episode on space.

[00:02:40] First of all, we should probably just talk for just 30 seconds cause we could probably get on a really big tangent. Space force. How do you feel about the space force?

[00:02:49] Allen Hall: [00:02:49] Oh, I think they have a cool logo. I

[00:02:52] Dan: [00:02:52] feel the exact opposite way. I'm I'm glad you said that because I think their logo is absolutely terrible.

[00:02:58] It's embarrassing and facts, and I think they [00:03:00] miss a huge opportunity to say, Hey, we need a space for us logo America, graphic designers. And there's some incredible artists in this country. What do you got? You got 30 days to send in your submissions for this space force logo. I think they really missed the boat doing that.

[00:03:15] Cause it looks like we were made that logo just basically plagiarized the star Trek logo. And they're like, Oh, Navy blue with one color gray and some times new Roman font. That sounds good. I mean, am I wrong? Am I wrong here?

[00:03:27] Allen Hall: [00:03:27] Uh,

[00:03:28] Dan: [00:03:28] well, I'm not, I'm not wrong. I'm not wrong. I'm definitely not.

[00:03:32] Allen Hall: [00:03:32] I don't, I don't know if you're, I wouldn't say that you're wrong.

[00:03:34] All right. But. You know, how many new logos you're going to come up with that haven't already been done. We've been in the space business since the fifties, early sixties. There's been a lot of logos

[00:03:46] Dan: [00:03:46] and we can make progress on this one. We can come up with something. Cool. Something cool.

[00:03:50] Allen Hall: [00:03:50] Yeah. Uh, I don't know.

[00:03:52] I see it. A lot of your aerospace logos in my time. They're all pretty much the same.

[00:03:57] Dan: [00:03:57] All the more reason to get outside the box.

[00:04:00] [00:04:00] Allen Hall: [00:04:00] I

[00:04:00] Dan: [00:04:00] mean, proving my point here,

[00:04:02] Allen Hall: [00:04:02] I suppose. I mean, how many times has NASA reverted back to an earlier logo?

[00:04:07] Dan: [00:04:07] Doesn't make it six times. Doesn't make it the right thing to do. They don't make a deal.

[00:04:12] Allen Hall: [00:04:12] Well, you know, if NASA, if there's any, any space or European space organization has got a pretty cool logo, there's some really cool logos out there, but they, they seem to recycle them every couple of years because it makes a really cool t-shirt. So. That's the whole point of the logo is for a tee shirt and hat that's.

[00:04:29] So

[00:04:30] Dan: [00:04:30] I'm not, I'm not buying that space where it's logo, but if there was like a cool logo, maybe, and then I think this is a lot like the book industry. So if you there's some of these publishers. Like human kinetics is one of them. And human kinetics is a leader in like strength, training, books, and sports, you know, books.

[00:04:49] They w whoever's the graphic designer for that company. They're still like living in the seventies cause their books. I mean, the graph, like so much has changed in graphic design. I think a book cover is super important. [00:05:00] I think logoing and branding is super important in general for any company to be like, you know, like I was talking about wine the other day, like I'm not a fan of wine.

[00:05:08] How many people buy wine because of the company's name and then, and the label. So many people probably buy a bottle of wine. You have 50 different bottles of wine that are all 11, $11. Which one are you going to pick? They're all gonna describe it in a similar way of tiny. So you're not really going to read.

[00:05:24] So it's coming down to, and I'm saying these truth, wooden baseball, bats, wooden baseball bats. There's a million, you know, we've had this conversation before it all comes down to branding and I think color. Yeah. Yeah. And I think he can get you excited. If there was a cool space force logo, I would buy a space where it's tee shirt.

[00:05:37] I wear it out. Ironically, it'd be funny.

[00:05:41] Allen Hall: [00:05:41] Are you going to make me buy you a space for his t-shirt you know that

[00:05:44] Dan: [00:05:44] right? I mean, I'll, I'll wear it. It'll be anytime. I just want to be like. I just want to go out and, you know, sometimes I have to beat women off with a stick. I mean, you understand? So that could just like help me, you know, just have a normal night out without just being hounded.

[00:05:59] Allen Hall: [00:05:59] That'd be [00:06:00] in harassed. Huh?

[00:06:01] Dan: [00:06:01] That's tough. That's

[00:06:02] Allen Hall: [00:06:02] tough. I'm doing you a favor.

[00:06:04] Dan: [00:06:04] Look at it. That was exactly. Exactly. Let me go out and piece. Yeah, but I digress. So let's, let's talk about, uh, let's talk about space X. So this is obviously nothing got destroyed, but this is still, it seems like a big deal, right?

[00:06:16] Allen Hall: [00:06:16] Oh, yeah. They took a, could have been taking strikes near the facility launch facility down in which essentially Brownsville, Texas. So if you've never been down to Brownsville, Texas, it's right on the border of Mexico, it's like the Southern most tip of Texas. So it's right in sorta hurricane territory, also thunderstorm territory,

[00:06:36] Dan: [00:06:36] right in there.

[00:06:37] Mosquito territory,

[00:06:38] Allen Hall: [00:06:38] probably mosquitoes are probably the size of Volkswagens, Tara dactyl. Yeah. Uh, but the, the one thing about, uh, that facility is they bought it because it's right on. Uh, if you, if you can imagine the United States or ever to get out your globe in your head, You've you've got Southern Texas and then you kind of got [00:07:00] Florida off to the right.

[00:07:01] And then Cuba is just South of Florida. And there was this alleyway between the two. So they bought that facility because it could launch off the Southern tip of Texas and shoot between Florida and Cuba without. If their spacecraft were to somehow fall from the sky, you wouldn't land on a, you land in the ocean, which is what you want to do.

[00:07:20] Right. So, uh, so when they bought this land down in Texas, it's essentially on the beach,...

In Struck episode 11 we discussed propeller planes and what happens when lightning strikes. Propellers used to be made of wood, then aluminum and now carbon fiber, but leading edge erosion and protection is critical, so how do manufacturers plan for this?

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!

Watch the YouTube video version here.

Struck Podcast EP11 Transcript: Propeller Technology and Prop Plane Lightning Protection

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 Sruck we talk about everything aviation, aerospace, engineering, and lightning protection.

Allen, how are you doing? Episode 11 we're really getting up there. 

Allen: Yeah. Exciting.

Dan:  We're 10% deep. 10% more than we had last week. 

Allen: Oh, that's true. 

Yeah. That's good. Good math right there. 

It's ready to go for a philosophy

major, right? 

Dan: Yeah. Gonna be going to continue getting, getting lower and lower as we go.

Well. Oh, that's true too. Right? It's a declining return on investment. 

Right. So, yeah, this is rough. This is rough. So today's episode we're going to chat about, um, leading edges on, uh, on prop planes, uh, and some of just the electrical problems that can cause like noise issues and obviously like the lightening implications.

Yeah. Um, cause there's obviously a lot of different types of props. There's different ways of combating that stuff. So that's kind of on our docket today. That's gonna probably. Be a pretty widespread conversation it sounds like. But first things first, what's your favorite airline? Oh, you have to pick one.

Who do you go with? 

Allen: American and in America 

Dan: In America. 

Allen: Southwest. 

Dan: Southwest. 

Allen: It isn't because I like them either. Uh, because I, I really. The thing about Southwest is so, well, it was so full. Every year, every flight I've been on with Southwest, and probably the last two or three years has been 100% full. Uh, but you got to give them some CRA, a little bit of credit that the.

Flight staff is very amenable, helpful, upfront, cheery, and you do get on off the airplane pretty fast and they fly a lot of different places and it's pretty clean cut. So you can put some luggage on the airplane and they get charged a whole bunch of money. Yeah. Southwest, 

Dan: Southwest, I do like their baggage system.

I'll give them that. I had a couple of rough experiences, uh, like the last, within the last two years kind of soured me on it. But I do agree with everything you just said. It's nice when you're on like Delta or American, they'll have power outlets on the seats that someone doesn't have yet. 

But Southwest has the free, and I don't know if other airlines do this.

Maybe Delta does, but uh, Southwest has the free live TV and movies that are free and you can, you can buy wifi for about eight bucks, whatever it is. So that's, that's not bad. Yeah. It's 

not bad. 

No, it's not bad. It's just so full. Where Elisa was, it was so full. It's not full anymore. 

No more. Yeah. In the land of coronavirus, that was the before time in the before time.

They had full airplanes. Right after time. Well, I'm not so sure. 

Allen: What do you think it's going to change? I don't think it's gonna change all that much. 

Dan: I think probably I probably can't. The logistics there just won't make sense to fly half full airplanes. 

Allen: No. No, it makes zero sense at all. And I'm kind kinda wondering, based on some of the Twitter traffic I see lately airplanes are pretty fall in some cases.

Uh, you know, you've seen some of the passengers complain about the flight being 100% fall and the airlines trying to respond to that. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? I don't know. You go on to do something, whatever that answer is, I don't know. Make everybody wear a mask. I'm sure that's what the, the answer is right now, and then try to spray the airplane down with Lysol or whatever they're doing between flights.

That's what else can you do? 

Dan: Yeah, yeah. I saw a report, which I'm over the whole, you know, they just report these crazy cases. If like, you know, Oh, here's a young person that that died from coronavirus. They're like the one young person in the country or whatever, and it's like, let's not all freak out over.

Like there are people with all sorts of afflictions that afflict a tiny percentage of the population. It's unfortunate, but I'm one of them. So there was a story about this, I guess he is, this guy was a virologist. That's just like he's a doctor and he was on a flight and he had a mask. He had his gloves like he was fully suited up.

Got it, got covert from it, and he was like, Oh, I probably got through my eyes. Then. And there was like, Oh God, it's covered through the eyeballs. 

Allen: We need goggles. 

Dan: Um, and it's like, I mean, I guess that's seems legit. Like if you, if I, you know, if you cough in my eye right now, yeah, I'll probably go like, you can run a virus from it.

Totally get it. Like that's how you become a zombie in the movie. I'm 26 later. The guy look it up and he gets a drop of blood in his eye and he starts freaking out. He's over. 

Allen: Right? 

Dan: So I don't know that they, I don't think that story got too much traction, but for a minute everyone's like, Oh man, it's over.

It's over. Right. 

Allen: It's, it's, it's the, Bob didn't listen to instructions. Now Bob has Corona and yeah. 

Dan: Okay, sure. You might goggles, but right. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. There's so, I don't know, this is just like such an ongoing saga, trying to keep everyone healthy, like, and it's legitimate, like we all want to try our best.

Obviously it's a real thing, but it's just like only so much you can do at some point. 

Allen: Right. And I think you have to just be smart. I think a lot of it is just being smart. It's just like the whole thing at the masks in the last. 72 hours or so, where before it wasn't, it wasn't like yesterday where the CDC came out and said, Hey, masks may be helpful.

Yeah, no kidding, right. God, I know captain obvious pops up my head when I hear stuff like that, but. Again, it's most, most people would have had that thought already and said, Oh, you know, why don't I put on a mask? Because it probably makes a little bit of sense for me to do that here. Okay, I've got to go throw another commercial to home Depot.

But when I was up at home Depot the other day, everybody had a mask on, and it wasn't because it was Forrest, it was because, uh, everybody was thinking about everybody else still, which is, which is 

Dan: good. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, speaking of that, Costco, we got a lot of press this week because a Costco employee, uh, took away someone's cart that wasn't wearing a mask, and it was like an irate customer was like, Hey.

This is a free country. I'm not wearing a mask. And the guy's like, no, it's our store policy. Like you can wear a mask or you know, like go home. And the guy's like trying to shame him. And the guy just was still polite and just like, sorry, like you're not welcome here anymore. Took his cart. Was that a Washington 

Allen: DC?

Like the lady in the Walmart. No, 

Dan: no, I don't think so. We're doing all right. But, um, it's like, yeah, I mean, like, that's never not been a thing. Like, uh, you know, businesses can say you have to wear a shirt, you have to wear shoes. They're allowed to do that. It's a private business. 

Allen: You can't bring in your pet into the store or, right.

Unless it's, you know, you have a medical reason to have the pet in the store and then fine. Right? 

Dan: Yeah. Come on. 

Allen: So 

Dan: yeah, it's like this strange, like I, it's America. I want to do what I want. It's like, look, just go grocery shopping in a mask. It's not a big deal. Just really not that big a deal and just go about your business.

So 

Allen: I can, I can drive on the wrong side of the road too, but I don't do it because I'm going to hurt somebody. That's why I don't do it. Right. Yeah. You can do a lot of things that, that are not smart. That's just not smart right now. Just be kind, just be kind. Right. 

Dan: It seems like the way to go. So let's talk about, uh, prop lands.

So back in the day when planes were made out of, they had wood propellers. What would happen if they got struck by lightning? Just to, yeah. See, I think 

Allen: it's over. Goodbye. Right. You're, you're now a glider, a very heavy glider. 

Dan: It's not ideal. No. Where there were there any that you know of, documented, like planes that went down like that, like their propeller gets hit, splinters, shatters, and just.

Allen: Nothing comes to mind at the 

Dan: minute, but I didn't think of in my research either. 

Allen: Well, if you ever go down to the air and space museum, which is what, five blocks from your, your 

Dan: sticks, it's a, it's probably a mile and a half. No, 

Allen: it's walkable. 

Dan: Yeah, for sure. Everything's walkable in DC. 

Allen: Yeah. So at the air and space museum back in 2003 right.

So it was the hundredth anniversary of the. First Wright brothers flight, they had a big display, and I don't share that if that display is still up or not, but we, we took, we took a Southwest airlines flight to DC for the day to go to see that exhibit. And one of the things that they had there were some of the original propellers, uh, for the Wright flyer.

A, he just went, you thought just off, my God,...

There are more and more electric plane companies popping up, many of them trying to take over the short trip market. Air taxis and planes serving small airstrips and airports can potentially be big business...if these aircraft can get certified. We discuss electric aviation challenges and the difficulty of certifying a new aircraft from the ground up.

Learn more about Weather Guard Lightning Tech's StrikeTape lightning protection systems here: https://weatherguardaero.com/striketape

Struck Podcast EP10 Full Transcript - All About Electric Aircraft, Eviation, Ampaire and Airbus E-Fan X

Watch the video version here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MnTSui6FYbQ

https://youtu.be/MnTSui6FYbQ

All right.

Welcome back. This is struck episode 10 Allen, how are you doing?

Hey, Dan. Good. How are, how's Washington DC doing? Uh,

we're, we're hanging in there starting to get nice 80 82 degrees, I think today. Partly sunny, 85 yesterday. Hm. Interesting. Interesting. Just a sudden jump into summer weather, so it was nice.

Yeah. Well that's cool. Yeah.

So baseball,

no, nothing. There's no nothing, but the national mall is very green. When I go down there today. Mmm. I guess the center cut portion of the, of, of the mall, which I, that's such a weird saying. Mall always sounds strange to me because you just, who doesn't associate the word mall with a little like a shopping mall?

Like going in and out of forever 21, they're like, you don't know? No, that's where I shop. But you know, my little sister, um, it's a park.

It's a park.

Yeah. Like the term is, it's strange. It's just like. Anyway, I digress. But nah, the grass, just like all the wildlife, like are people that talk about wildlife coming back with the crowbar by herself.

The grass has just superb, super green dense. Cause people aren't on it. They kind of like kept us off and there's not that many people in general. So yeah. Um, the parks here in DC or live and well, so, so yeah.

Well, did you see that video yesterday? I think it was yesterday. Uh, I'm just thinking, cause no one's out on the streets right now.

You see that tiger walking down the street of that town of Mexico and the guy's trying to last through the tiger down the street. Do you see that?

That seems like a fool's errand to trying to catch a tiger. That's a good way to get eaten by that tiger. You just gotta let that tiger go to an extent. You got a tranquilizer, dart it and call it.

Call it a day.

They last through this tiger and the street. Unbelievable. Like what's their tiger in the street? Is that somebody's pet that just got out? It's kind of like Florida with the pythons, right? Like people let off their pythons and then they try to go out in the wild and they're 50 feet long and they're,

yeah, I remember seeing this video and it was somewhere in like me, like India or you know, where like Jaguars and like cheetahs are like, and again, I don't know if this exactly works.

I don't know if cheetahs are in India, but. There was like one of these big cats, so it wasn't a tiger, obviously it was like a Jaguar cheetah, like one is a medium size, big cats, but it was like in this little town and it was just like running around like tackles a dude. Then everyone's like chasing it, chasing it around, and it was kind of terrifying how fast the scared.

You know, like five foot long, whatever it was. I think it was, I think it was like a Jaguar, but yeah, it's just, it was just this cat was like trying to get out. Everyone was like trying to shoot out of the little village. It was like jumping up this wall, this building and this building and just like, it was scary because if you're anywhere around.

This cat is like, Oh, I'm going to go punch you in the face, or I'm going to bite you real fast. I'm gonna try to go this way and go that way. I mean, the agility, the agility of these wild animals, it's just impressive. Remarkable, isn't it? Yeah. But yeah, that's why I'm not trying to, that, that tiger, that Jaguars walking

down the street.

Just go at your own pace, sir. I'm not going

to bother the fight, right.

Don't mind your day. Yeah, we're good. We have murdered Asian giant Hornets now too. Like, no thanks. Goodbye, sir. No,

well, here. You know, the bears have finally woken up from their winter slumber and they're looking for food, right? So the next town over, they had a, uh.

Bear ended up in a car and then not even sure how I got in there, but

it got, wow, is it nighttime?

You hear the car shaken outside like what the heck's going on? And as the news reported, it is like looked outside the card, shaken, realized that there's a bear in the car and the bear can't get out. So what are you gonna do with this bear?

Well, in the meantime, the bears all upset, so he just starts eating everything in the car seats. Steering wheel console just starts ripping apart the car. Uh, so they, they brought up another car next to this car and then they pop the door open and the bear shoots out. But at that point. Cars totaled?

No, for sure.

Total they car now. So that reminds us here that when you go grocery shopping, that uh, probably the thing to do is always close your doors. You come in, in and out and make sure, like you're kids aren't still in the car with the groceries, the doors open because you never know. Right now bears have the rate or just all the

weird thing to have to think about.

I gotta. Oh yeah. It's a weird thing that, wow, that's crazy. I never thought about that. Yeah. Which makes sense. And I'm sure in a lot of places in the country that is a thought that people have had. Like if you live near Yosemite or something, or you just live in a heavily forested woods, that is a thing, I'm sure.

Yeah. If you have bears in the area, food outside in your car makes sense. Pad. But I've never had to think about that. Yeah. Yeah.

No. Like our trash cans are on our garage. The reason you put trash cans in the garage, because if you don't, then you'll have a bear in your backyard. So you always put your trash cans in your, in your garage just to keep the bears away.

Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah. Life in the wilderness. Yeah. Well, speaking of keeping things in doors, a news report in Singapore, a FedEx pilot was arrested for. And he was sentenced to four weeks in prison after leaving his hotel room for three hours to buy masks and thermometer.

Yeah.

What do you, what are you nuts from Alaska,

right?

I mean, the guy, the guy's a pilot. He's not some buddy that's, you know, trying to cause trouble. All he's trying to do is probably moving medical supplies from one country to another. That's probably what a lot of these flights were about. Moving essentials around. And then you. Arrests, his pilot. I get the whole thing where obviously he broke a law.

He probably didn't even know it existed. Maybe you knew it existed. Uh, but is that the person you want off the street be like a rest and a doctor? My opinion is that the person went off the street right now. No, no, you don't. And what harm really came about it? You want to find them. You want to. You know, make FedEx pay a thousand dollar fine, but putting this guy out of commission, that's to me is a little overkill.

I'm not sure we would

do

that. He sounds like a real monster. Leaving his hotel room for three hours implies

that professional pilot, you know, probably spent most of his life learning how to fly and airplanes. Yeah, no, this is the wrong guy. Behind.

Well don't, it doesn't say in this article what the law is like.

You just can't leave for any reason. Cause that seems like a valid reason. Like he's got like, he's got a hall pass, like, Hey, like teacher said, I can go to the bathroom. Like that's crazy. Like what is the rule doesn't say that here. I don't know

it, you can't, you can't drink there either. Right? There's no bars there.

So I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah. They're just trying to make everyone angry.

Well, I don't think that's a place where a lot of, uh, you know, if the pilot's out and he's out, I dunno. Playing craps in the back alley or something. I'm like, okay,

all alright, cool. I don't play dice in the back alley. No. Cockfighting no, no, no.

Got healthier, right? Yeah.

But you know, this, this guy. Ah, you gotta think FedEx is going out of their mind right now about us and trying to work the government, try to deal with the police, and then trying to get their pilot back because now I got to spool up somebody else to fly this route. Golly, come on.

Yeah, that's a shame in other, uh, it, well, in business news, uh, so phaser, uh, has filed for bankruptcy. So tell me a little bit about phaser. I mean, you, you know them quite

well. Yeah. Phaser was or is probably still, cause I think they're are bankruptcy to restructure, but they went through bankruptcy before.

They make an electronic, uh, electronically steerable antenna that's made for Satcom use. And they were trying to get into the aircraft market because their system would be more aerodynamic. Uh, possibly way less, uh, maybe have slightly better performance than the mechanically steered antennas that we use for satcoms right now.

Uh, and, but, you know, there's, there's a lot of difficulties with those systems mostly having to do with heat generation, because if they're electronically steered, which music is lot of power, which means they get warm, or in some cases they get hot, and then you got to deal with all this heat and heat and stuff.

So, uh. I, I, you know, there was always been a case for electronically steered antennas and phaser had a very viable product. It was a matter of just a timing. The timing was bad. When they're in the midst of development, they're spending a lot of cash and now there's a lot of airplanes off the market.

They're not sitting in sitting in fields waiting for th

The 2019 Russian AeroFlot flight crashed after a lightning strike...why did this happen? We also talked about Bye Aerospace's E-Flyer electric plane, Coronavirus detection technology from Airbus, 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!

Episode 9 Full Transcript: Bye Aerospace, Airbus Coronavirus Detection & More

Welcome back to the Struck podcast. This is episode nine. Uh, Allen, what's going on?

Well, Hey Dan. Well, we're busily working away and coronavirus season, but enough of coronavirus I'm about done talking about that. What's new and what's new in your neck of the woods?

Uh, I got these really cool plastic handles that you can put grocery bags on, so it's like a real like handle and then you, it's got these weird, I'm going to, I'm going to hold it up for the camera here. It's on my desk. You slipped into the handles. It's a handle for handles. You put the bags in there, so when you're a city dweller, these things make your, I went to Costco like a month ago. Yeah, and I, and I like really loaded up and I put it all into reusable bags and they were like probably 40 pounds he took, they're very heavy. Whoa. It's not that big a deal except those little like canvas or nylon straps or have those, like, they just like dig into your skin after a while. And so it's like not the weight that's killing you. It's just like that. It just really just digs into your fingers and your Palm. So I got those. That's a cool little piece of a. Ingenious plastic that I got from Amazon. So, so that's news in my life. Real exciting, right? I got some groceries, grocery carriers. Well, I like pretty much all my, uh, daily. I mean, you take it for granted when you've lived in the suburbs your whole life, which I, which I have, which I am excited to be a city dweller. But, uh, and I, and I say the word dweller, somebody sarcastically because he says the word dweller, but, um, it's those little things like when you get all your groceries, sometimes you have to get heavier stuff than normal. And sometimes I'll just be like in a place and I'm like, Oh, I'll just get groceries here. Then I have like a 12 block walk home cause I like walking. But that's kind of a long way to carry something heavy that's like digging into your hands. So he's little creature comfort. So you can have in your backpack or your briefcase or whatever can come in handy. So when you need one of those little, uh, little wagons I've seen where they load groceries in the wagon, they call them buggies. But I'm not on the bus. I'm not on the buggy train because number one, it's big. And I don't want, like, if I'm going to. Take something there. I'd rather carry it home personally cause it's exercise. It's good grip strength. Like it's a, yeah, it's a good, good thing to carry groceries home. But just like those straps in my hands, there's not, not gonna be a pleasant thing for longterm. So plus you can belt, you can ball up like five bags in it, you know, when you like put all your groceries on one hand you do the same thing with those handles and it's super convenient. So . Well, is it something that Jeff Bezos put on your Amazon screen? How does that all work? Make that? I've never seen that before. Obviously. Bayzos knows I am not going to be doing that. I figured they existed, so I kind of searched them online, like grocery bag handles or something like that. Um, yeah, I assumed that, but I did have a, uh, a grocery snafu the other day, so I ordered Instacart from Costco. Yeah. Which, uh. You know, the Instacart's a grocery, grocery delivery service. Yup. Yup. And my first order, which was like two or three weeks ago, went fine without a hitch. They had everything that I asked for or whatever. This time, they're out of a couple of products, which no big deal, but the person can like message you from within the app and say, Hey, like this isn't there, would you like me to swap something or whatever. Um, and so I. Like I eat a lot of fruit is healthy. I really like fruit. Like makes my body happy. I, I had two bags of like, clementines is five pound bags of clementines, you know, you can eat five pounds of clementines in like two days, like three days. Like yeah, easy. Yeah. And so they were at a clementines and so the guy says, Hey, do you want to swap a bag of oranges for it? Well, I already had a bag of oranges on the list in general because they're different. And I was like, no, just like scrap it from the order. And I guess he just didn't listen because he showed up at my door with 34 pounds of oranges. Like I got 34 pounds of oranges, so I ordered a separate eight pound bag of car car. Those kinds of like reddish, uh, fleshed oranges, which are amazing. Yeah. And then he swapped 13 pound boxes of navel oranges for each of the five pound boxes of Clementine. It's like, those are not what reasonable person wants that. Plus I told you that I just didn't want that. Like you just ignored my message. Um, and he replied to it, but he just like, I don't know, just didn't. So I have 34 pounds of oranges in my house right now, and I'm one person. And it's like, I don't know. You can't share it because well, no one wants to share with you now. No. Stay away with your oranges. Yeah, I was thinking orange away from me. Yeah. Well, come on, right. Oh my gosh. What do you people, yeah, so I guess if I do, I mean, that's like, well, probably so if I do five a day for 10 days, they might, I can maybe salvage them all, not waste them. You need to go on Amazon and buy yourself a juicer. And juice those oranges so he can at least change its form into a more compact form and then shove it in the frigerator. You know what I'm saying? Like take 30, 30 pounds of oranges, get about five gallons of orange juice out of it, and then there you go. That was, yeah, that was, that was my family suggestion as well. So I told them about my orange crisis, but, um, these are the hazards of getting a well, that was just like an illogical decision for any human to make. It's like. You can't compare. This is like apples, oranges. You can't compare clementines oranges. Like I want to 10 pounds of these little guys versus 26 pounds. What kind of, what kind of swap is that? It's like, dude, swap, like, come on. Okay, so the question of the day, what is the Clementine, so explain to people what a Clementine is, because I think in the States we could call on clementines. I'm not sure they're actually in a physical. Is that the actual variety of Mandarin oranges? Is it a veteran Mandarin or is it a Tangerine? A Mandarin is a Tangerine. I think, yeah. Okay. All right. So, right, so it's not truly, uh, we S a lot of times we say Clementine oranges, but that's not actually the case. So that's like the brand name brand. That's like the Clementine brand name within, they call cuties cuties. Right. Whatever, whatever the grower is, or the distributor or whatever, they can build this, give him a different brand name. Yeah. But I, when I was growing up, they were clementines, I don't know if they're still called that. I think they're like. It just depends. We call it, well, I've never had one until I was an adult. I probably didn't have one until probably 10 years ago because in the Midwest, I don't think I ever saw it. I worked in a grocery store for years through high school and college and I, I definitely did not run across the Clementine in the Midwest, so it's definitely an East coast thing. Well, they're everything. Yeah. But yeah, they're delicious. I mean, the first time I ran across him like, wow, these are great. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't consider him a substitute for oranges. And we gotta we gotta stop talking about artists in a second here. But they're not a substitute because they're very different. But they're very convenient. They're way, they're a lot more convenience. But if we were little kids. Oh yeah, yeah. But, but yeah, cause I could go on about fruit. I mean, if you don't know the, the common banana has a major extinction threat, it's going to go extinct actually. But we'll talk about that in another episode. So, first thing on our docket today that's not fruit related, um, is the. E or the air race II. So yeah, that's pretty cool. What do you got on this? Well, there's, there seems to be some sort of a consortium being built around, uh, aircraft racists. Kinda like the Reno air races where they got these big Merlin V12 engines and these old P 51 type airplanes. And, um. They were creating a race series with electric airplanes. So it's similar airplanes, smaller airplanes in a P 51, obviously, but, uh, um, electrically powered, I think Airbus has an entry into it. And your best as a sponsor of this E race. Now I, you know, the red bull series, have you ever watched the red bull air air cylinders where they're flying crazy? Yeah. They're amazing. Yeah. I think that ended last year. I don't think they're doing it this year. I think they were supposed to end last year. So there's like this void in this aircraft, uh, racing thing is going on, which is kind of cool to watch. I've watched it a number of times. They're the red bull thing, and I've watched the re like today, they had the Reno air races on from, from last year on ESPN. I think it was. Hmm. Um, but yeah, so they are, racers are really cool, but an electric air race. Um, I just watched a little bit of stuff I saw on YouTube the other day. Wow. Those airplanes really have to move, like we're talking about with the Tesla cars going from zero to 61 point. Nine seconds. Well, these electric motors, uh, can do things like that. So, um, I'm really interested to see how that plays out, but they look like you had about eight, 10 teams already established. And it's, I wonder it's going to be like that drone racing league,...

Hector Del Aguila is an expert in EMI, Lightning Protection and HIRF, and also serves as a DER (designated engineering representative) for the FAA. In this episode of the Struck Podcast, he shares wisdom from his career as a researcher, his time with Eclipse Aircraft, and how his work on military aircraft helped shape his private sector work in the aviation industry. Hector is also an EME specialist, providing consulting services to numerous government contractors and organizations.

Hector is the president of Golden Aero Consulting and we are very grateful to have him on the show. Watch the YouTube video version of this podcast episode here: https://youtu.be/30kqC-6uwtg

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!

Show Transcript - Struck Podcast EP8 with Hector Del Aguila, FAA DER

And as part of that education, your focus, and at the time you weren't, were you thinking about being, we're working in the aircraft industry or were you just electromagnetics and you just like the math?

I always have a desire to, to work in our space and, and I think we're on an aircraft. And, for personal reasons because of, my mother died on the, blank crush, when I was, seven or eight years old and, and soil was thought about, when I became, when I was studying engineering.

That's something that the, that it peaked my interest. And I decided to move, to do research on things to do, to protect, Not on the aircraft, but then like electrical and electronic systems in general

and your stuff, like you're originally from Korea.

Yeah. I was wondering through, yeah,

you say it better than I do.

It's such an

awesome, yeah. I came here, you know, in my early twenties and yeah. And, at the study and then that's it.

So after, after you had your, you guys' degree in Texas, you went, where was your next step? Where did you go?

Oh, yeah. Well, after I got the degree at Texas, while I was working on my graduate, degree, I taught in the university.

I thought about the metrics and, and I engineered laboratories about that point a couple of years. Well, I'll say a graduate assistant. And they, after that, I moved to Albuquerque to a, an organization called LaFollette. That's the air force operational test and evaluation center, as an RF engineer.

Not familiar with that place. What did they do? What do they

call that place at that organization? in New Mexico, they do operational testing of, of systems, and, aerospace systems and these stairs, in, in that particular time, it was some satellites and telecommunication systems is what I thought.

And ?

No. Well, what kind of airplanes were you working on at the time?

Well, I thought at that time he was, at that time was not airplanes at the time. It was mostly, telecommunication systems. gotcha. Satellites, satellite, things like that. For example, there was a, there was a system called middle star.

I'll try service.

So after about three years of being on the operational world, I realized that that's not really what my main interest was. So, because I wanted to do some reasons to do research, and after three years, I moved from to. so the air force research laboratory worked there for about 20 years doing research, again, looking at protection of electrical systems, things like that from, from the electromagnetic standpoint.

So, as, as, I mean, doing research over a 20 year span has gotta be pretty incredible to see. A lot of the technology change, just I'm sure the, the resources you had, you know, in just the systems and you, and you could test and I'll just like the different, you know, the technology and, and software I'm sure use it.

How did, how did research change for you over such a long period of time? Well, it, it was, it was very nice because we were able to, to the science systems from the ground up. And, and also assess the, you know, I said it's not only be a performance of the system that will be in bill, why the impact of, water Susan May have on the electrical and electronic systems in general.

And in this case, you know, probably it's, aircraft, military aircraft and these guys, and things like that. Yeah, he was, he was a very, it was a wonderful learning experience in, in a group thing, a good place to be. that's fine. I swapped my, my calls were thankful that as much as we could, and in applications of electromagnetic, they were even through the real world.

And, and so, but after about 18 years. you know, as you progress, you progress through the ranks. I was a civilian, I was not in the military. It was a CB, the engineering work engineer working for, or the military and, and so as you progress on rank and stuff like that, unless you meet inside the, what happens is the things you can face you off from the actual technical work on the management side.

And that's when I decided to go somewhere else because I didn't want to do that. And so after about 18 years, I left in, I decided to join the, private industry at that, at that time, there was a, on this startup company, you know, curfew, that was making big waves throughout the, aviation industry, particularly the smaller.

Yeah. And that wasn't, that was, that was a Eclipse, right?

The company was Eclipse

and Eclipse was a, essentially a startup. If you think of an aircraft

company was in the ground up. Right?

So they had no history. Yeah. They have no history before it was, they had started where they were funded by, outside basically Silicon Valley, Seattle monies, to, to form the thing.

And, and what, what, what was the revolutionary thing to bring to the table?

Microsoft, eclipse us smile by stone, not by our microbiomes. It's Microsoft. one of the, I guess he was one of the founders or close to it. Microsoft, Ray rate. Huh. Okay. But anyway,

are you talking about Fern

Rayburn?

Burbank. Yeah. He was part of Microsoft, right? That's what I saying. Yeah. Yeah. Stuff like that. So that was an eye opener for me when I went to work from the department of defense from our column and organization too. To a, to a commercial institution, especially a startup company. I didn't realize, you know, realize the, you know what I'm, I was getting into what that's all like this.

And, although to me seem that, you know, because of what the needs were, he was right on the area that I did a little research on it and I knew be could be a good vehicle health to them. however, I didn't know much about the regulatory aspects of it. Yeah. And that, that was the eye opener for me.

And then, that's as far as what, Oh, a company like these has to go through. Do we have to be able to certify on that report?

What'd they, what'd they tell you when, when they hired you, when they brought you here, they brought you in, or you knew somebody that was working there and they, they said, Hey Hector, we got this new startup.

we've got, funding to build this airplane. What do they, what do they tell you when you walked across the street there to check this place out?

But somehow they got my name. From someone I don't remember at that point then, and I got a call out of the blue from a recruitment person that this particular organization, and they asked me if I was seen through state and, know if I was to, you know, to send in my resume and so forth.

So, and then I did. Yeah. Yeah. And within a week or so, if I remember correctly, on a week or two, I got a phone call and I said, you know, we would like to talk to you and do you mind coming over and spending a few hours with us? Wow. A few hours ended up being the whole day because I interviewed with everybody, falls at departments, not only with the elect, with the electrical, system department, but also with the mechanical guys and everybody else.

And it was an interesting, He was an interesting, set of, circumstances and, and, and, asked her about, you know, going through the interview throughout the day with different people. you know, some that they realized that I knew what the, they realized that I knew what my expertise, you know, that what I was, I was, what's the word I'm looking for?

Oh, you're clearly the expert.

I knew the area and how it applies on aircraft and so forth. I saw because of my experience on military aircraft and so forth, so when I'm doing protection. On those aircraft from the electromagnetic standpoint and

from their perspective to Hector. I think that they were looking, they did not from my outside, look at that program.

They were looking for the smartest people they could find, not

necessarily people who had a lot of, Oh yeah. As a matter of fact, the fact that, I realized once I joined the team that that team was just awesome. I learned a lot from them. I bought aircraft in general about the sign, their is size, the details so that, it was saw something and yeah, that this company, when it, I've recruited the best that they could find and industry and the salaries were great, but the amount of work was also great.

Did they offer you a stock as part of that to it across?

Yeah. That was, that was one of the enticing things, apart of the service being, you know, a good salaries and, more than a small fact, the, that particular company and Intel, silicone here in, and there is a plant, in topline here.

There were the two, the two, companies that will pay the most engineering wise. And. And so, yeah, the, in order to recruit the people they wanted to recruit, they had to offer that. And in addition to having good salaries, the, they will offer you a stocks on the company and they send that, which gives you an incentive to, you know, to continue to work and stuff like that.

And if that company successful, then everybody. Benefits from that. So is there a pressure, Hector,...

In episode seven of Struck, we discuss Panasonic avionics' white paper about millennial travelers, and whether WiFi should be free on all flights. We also talk about ThinKom's satcom radome technology and how their antennas help make in-flight WiFi a viable solution for travelers.

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

Transcript

Dan: Welcome back. This is the Struck podcast,episode seven. I'm your cohost. Dan Blewett. I'm joined here remotely by lightning protection expert. And CEO of weather guard, lightening tech, Allen hall. Allen, how are you doing? 

Allen: Great. Dan, how you been? 

Dan: I'm doing well. Um, I feel like this has been like a little bit of an easier, slightly more focused week for me.

I don't know why it's rained a lot of the week, but overall pretty good. How about you? 

Allen: Uh, we've been getting in and out. You know, we're sitting at this new manufacturing facility, so we've been running around back and forth quite a bit. But, uh, you know, it's still pretty quiet. All the shops are still closed.

All the restaurants are still closed, so there's really no place to go. Have you been over to the Walmarts in D.C lately? Has 

Dan: To what? To get pepper sprayed? No, I have not. I have not. Um, and then we talked about that story, although it might've been cut out of this, out of the episode, but. Yeah. Yeah.

What, what your Allen's alluding to for you listening as a, there was a story in DC that he sent me that a woman was getting onto the elevator at a Walmart, which, you know, in cities there's Walmarts with you on the second, third floor, they might occupy a number of vertical floors and have parking beneath them, or loft apartments above or below, whatever.

And a woman was getting into the elevator and other other people were trying to get into the elevator to, you know, like as people do, and she's like, Oh no, you're not coming to my elevator. And she pepper sprayed. So another woman and the cops were called, and then like her, the statements from her were just unbelievable.

She's like, Oh no, you're not going to get in my, 

in my elevator gave me that Corona virus. 

It was just like straight out of Jerry Springer and it was an amazing story. I showed up my family 

Allen: and that hasn't spread has it? I mean, Oh, they nailed the target. Do you guys have Kmart? I guess Kmart is closed or what?

Dan: I mean, Kmart does not exist in Washington D C um, I don't. I have Kmarts have been going out of business for a while. I think they still are a thing, but like kind of not really. 

Allen: Just lost a harvest. Yeah. We just lost ours 

Dan: North of here. I mean, DC is a pretty affluent little city, so Kmart, I don't know who's going to Kmart, but, but yeah.

But the interesting piece of news on my end is I ordered my groceries for the first time ever the other day ordered Costco did. Yeah. Okay. It was glorious. It was glorious. Sy, my, my sister has been, I mean, rightfully so. My sister's, uh, she's due with her second child in two weeks, and so she earns the family like, Hey, it's a complicated situation because, um, she's afraid that her and her husband are gonna maybe contract something at the hospital right after she goes birth.

So she doesn't want to come home with her new baby greet my parents. You know, everyone wants to see the baby, and then my parents get something from them because they've been in the hospital. So it's kind of like they've been asked, they've asked us to, Hey, can you guys all quarantine for two weeks before, um, the birth?

And then we're really just probably not going to see them for the first two weeks after, so they can sort of quarantine and be their own little family unit in the house. Um, right when they get home with the new baby. So it's kind of a, it's kind of a. Crazy situation. But anyway, she urged us to please do everything possible to minimize contact with the outside world.

So I ordered my groceries, which was like a, I guess probably a $35 upcharge, all told. 

Allen: Wow. 

Dan: Okay. It was like eight bucks service charge, $8 delivery fee. Um, I tipped the guy $15. It's not a short trip over here from, um, across the way in Alexandria, Virginia. And then, um. And then they Mark up some of the prices, but not others, which is, which is interesting.

And I don't understand their algorithm because I'm a very, I'm not like a, I'm not like overly worried about price when I shop, but I know what everything costs and what it should cost. I would guess a year, probably the same way you said. Engineers are very much like, they know if they're getting, we know exactly know everything.

And I'm the same way too. So like I know like I love fruit and I know. I'm very opportunistic about, you know, what, the bright prices that I'll buy grapes at or blueberries or oranges. I don't pay more than I, I know I should for any given item. And so looking through the, as you're shopping on the app or on the website, it's a, you know, you're like going through all your items and you're like, Oh, this is like a lot more than it normally is, or this is like, seems like it's the same price and you assume that everything was going to be like marked up like 5% or 10% or something to account.

That's probably how they get their fee. But in reality. Some things were not marked up at all, it seemed like, and others were marked up almost double. It was really, really strange. Hmm. 

Allen: What was the company we're buying the groceries from? What was, what was the grocery store? 

Dan: Well, it was Costco and, Oh, it's Costco.

Yeah, but it's through Instacart, so, Hmm. But yeah, so like for example, I got a five pound bag of frozen tortellini. Which is usually like $12 and it was like $12 and I'm like, okay, that's a big item, kind of heavy, like big volume. And then I got a one pound thing of a organic spring mix, which is usually four 49 and that was seven 49.

I don't know where you're laughing right now. But um, 

Allen: cause that's a lot of food. Five pound bag of tortellini is over. You just 

Dan: said it's great to have in your freezer. That's not a waste cause it's got a week's worth of food. Yeah. I mean that's a month's worth, but it's great to have your freezer, two minutes, two minutes and some boiling water.

But like why would the huge bag of pasta be basically the same price it normally is, but then the spring mix is seven 50 instead of four 50. That's the, maybe that's Corona free. I don't know. They went in there and extra wash 

Allen: my wife, I had home some fruit that came, had a label on it. Came from Northern Northern Italy.

I thought, man, they must be, have a hard time unloading produce that came from 

Dan: Northern smallpox blankets right there. 

Allen: It was Kiwi, which I didn't really. Connect. Yeah. I guess that makes sense to me. Northern Italy, it's a good place to grow fruit like that. It's so my daughter chimed in like what the, what are we buying fruit for Northern Italy from your cause it's on discount cause no one wants to buy it right now.

Yeah. So I thought that, I thought that was cute. You know, people get very sensitive about that. Um, cause they know where the coronavirus has been. So any products that come out of there, everybody's real cautious about. I guess that makes sense. Short term, but longterm it's, it's kind of ridiculous, right?

Yeah. Um, and that, that fruit had been on a ship for probably two weeks before it got to us. There's no way that it's going to be contagious all clearly. But you know, that's not the way people always think 

Dan: it's like a Trojan horse, but, but oranges or grapefruit or whatever. 

Allen: We did America one piece of produce at a time.

Dan: Exactly. But I mean, that is interesting. Like I bought a bag of oranges and they're fantastic, but. It's, it's the time of year where it should not be orange season. Like you shouldn't be able to get oranges that tastes good at all right now. Right? Like it's, it's, I mean, citrus season's November, 

Allen: I thought it was in the spring or is it late?

I think dilemmas are produce all year round. I don't know about oranges. I think lemons, lemon trees will produce all year round. I think oranges can be kind of year round. Right? It's not, it's not a, it's not a fall food. I'm pretty sure. 

Dan: Well, it's, I mean, citrus season in Florida, I'm pretty sure is. The winter because we would get, uh, from like my dad's rotary club.

Raise a lion's club, one of his like, you know, public service clubs always did like a big, uh, straight from Florida, like the best, like G, just the best oranges and grapefruits peak. Yeah. And that was always in like around November-ish. Um, and then they seemed to just like kind of get crappy around February, March.

But now, I mean, California I think grows them probably more year round and they're coming from all over the world and all over. Of course, you don't know, watermelons are still not knock it out of season. No. And we're getting close. Getting close. It's almost watermelon season, 

Allen: so yeah. 

Dan: Exciting 

Allen: time.

Oklahoma has a really good watermelons. I think it's the end of July, early August. And when they're at their peak. Yeah, that's good. Eaton? 

Dan: Yeah, up in here in the Northeast, although I guess I'm more like just the I, I actually don't like, so I should explain that. I called DC the Northeast the other day and someone corrected me.

And it's really the mid Atlantic, but Atlantic, I don't know, maybe it's not the, I don't know. You're in Massachusetts. Does Maryland count count as Northeast or now 

Allen: while we're in new England. 

Dan: Okay. Yeah, definitely....