October 2009 Archives

Russia-InfoCentre has published a somewhat cryptic article that shows the country is still very much involved in the civil supersonic transport game...

Russian engineers from Central Institute of Aerohydrodynamics performed a supersonic cruise research for supersonic passenger aircrafts, flying over densely populated lands. 

For this purpose they cooperated with "Sukhoi New Civil Technologies" company and Central Institute of Aviation Motors. Joint think-tank developed preliminary aerodynamic configurations for commercial supersonic aircrafts with cabins of various comfort levels and seats for 4-50 passengers. 

Engineers also elaborated recommendations for appearance of mentioned advanced aircrafts and estimated aerodynamic, general, performance and ecological characteristics: airport noise and sonic boom level during supersonic cruising. The research shows that there exists a possibility to make a sonic boom much lower than it is now, and fulfilling airport noise stabdards also isn't a problem.

Like the US and Europe, Russian engineers are focusing on environmental factors, including methods to drastically reduce sonic boom signatures at ground level during cruise, and making takeoff and landing noise acceptable to airport communities.

NASA is investing more in mid-term supersonic technologies as well.

Thanks to the $1 billion in economic stimulus money it received from the US government, the agency has recently awarded contracts to Boeing and to Lockheed Martin to investigate various technologies related to supersonic commercial aircraft to enter service in the 2018 - 2020 timeframe.

At top is a picture of SAI's Quiet Supersonic Transport, which was designed under contract by Lockheed's Skunk Works team.

  

Two high profile events of late - A Delta 767 landing on a taxiway in Atlanta and a near-miss between a Boeing 757 and Embraer E190 at LAX - highlight the need for new in-cockpit runway safety systems for aviation, a call that avionics manufacturers are heeding.

Rockwell Collins continues to perfect its first-generation surface management system in its labs in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Honeywell meanwhile has its first generation aural alerting system already on the market and is working on its second gen. More on that at a later date.

Phase one of Rockwell Collins system, an airport awareness and alerting function, is set to go live in 2011 in Bombardier's Global Vision update for the Global Express line and on Gulfstream's new mid-cabin G250 business jet.

Kirschen Seah, principle systems engineer for advanced concepts, commercial systems for Rockwell Collins described various aspects of the system to journalists at the company's advanced development labs in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on 25 September 2009.

Along with five aural alerts -- three for departure (wrong runway, not a runway, runway too short) and two for landing (not a runway, runway too short), the software highlights in cyan the runway selected by pilots in the FMS and displays intuitive runway numbers and arrows that indicate take-off direction on the airport map on the multifunction display.  

The aim of the package is simple - to increase situational awareness to the point where a pilot will not taxi where he or she should be and that the selected runway for takeoff or landing is the correct one.

Phase two of the package, slated for entry into service at a later time, will include the ability to highlight a taxi route on the display and phase three will include other airport traffic through ADS-B surveillance.

Aviation Partners Inc. (API) president Joe Clark says a new generation of winglets will make their way onto commercial airliners in the next five  years as operators look to cut costs and emissions by increasing fuel economy.

Speaking to As-The-Croft-Flies at the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) annual trade show in Orlando this week, Clark said his engineers are experimenting with a variety of new designs, including spiroids, forward-swept winglets and split winglets, devices that extend above and below the wing, all of which will be flight tested.

The initial spiroid design, which API first tested on a Gulfstream II in 2001, was said to reduce drag by as much 10% in cruise, up several points from what the API's trademark blended winglets can provide. Clark did not provide details as to what the other designs might yield.

API is now prepping to fly newly designed spiroids on a company Falcon 50 by year's end as part of a $2.06 million earmark being administered by the US Department of Transportation's Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA).

RITA is also paying API $600,000 for fuel efficiency data captured during the 2001 tests as part of an effort to "demonstrate the modeled fuel burn and emissions implications of the spiroid winglet technolgy on commercial aviation in the US", according to contract award document.

API has already done some analysis of spiroids on large aircraft like the Boeing 747-400, as is shown in this promotional picture from aeronautical engineering firm, Analytical Methods Inc. (AMI).

Clark says data from the 2001 flights include performance information for a baseline aircraft (without spiroids) followed by the same data for the aircraft equipped with spiroids.

The new spiorids, designed with the latest computational fluid dynamics programs, are currently being manufactured, says Clark, adding that the next series of tests will include taking data in more of the flight envelope, including stalls.

A video of a 2001 test flight is shown below.

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Garmin today unveiled its most complex integrated avionics suite to date. Called the G3000, the system features Garmin's trademark synthetic vision and runway safety programs as well as a three-axis dual channel, fail passive digital auto flight system.

Along with thre 14.1in diagonal WXGA high resolution wide aspect ratio displays across the flight deck, the G3000 will include a new touch screen vehicle management system.

Garmin's manager of OEM sales Ben Kowalski describes the system to As the Croft Flies at the NBAA annual convention in Orlando.

The first of what I hope will be many in-flight product reviews on As The Croft Flies...

Garmin Pilot MyCast - The weather world in your hand...

Having access to a world of real-time weather and flight planning data on my cell phone, courtesy of Garmin's Pilot MyCast application, makes me feel as though I've been flying "blind" for the past 31 years.

I began primary flight training in the summer of 1978, and between then and now, I have launched on a thousand flights without -- I realize now - pretty much ever having a truly comprehensive, one-stop shop, big picture view of the environmental conditions into which I was departing.

The change agent was my introduction in August to Garmin's Pilot MyCast application. Though it's available on a variety of handheld devices, I started with a Blackberry Curve that Garmin graciously allowed me to try out for a few months.

The offer couldn't have come at a better time as late summers in Maryland, where I own a 1/3 share in a Piper Archer II (N43756), are all about thunderstorms and the effects of tropical storms that sometimes evolve into hurricanes.

Along with flight plan filing services and an access to an on-line AOPA airports directory, complete with airport diagrams, Pilot MyCast gives you access to a great deal of very valuable weather data, including NEXRAD, visible and infrared satellite views, prognostic charts, lightning strike data, Sigmets, Airmets, pilot reports and local airport conditions.

I realize all of these products have been available on-line in various forms as of the past few years, but the fact that the computer stayed home while I went to the airport meant that it just wasn't convenient, so I didn't bother.

Having Pilot MyCast on the BlackBerry loaned to me by Garmin, made the proverbial light bulb go off in my head in terms of a never-before-imagined form of situational awareness with respect to the weather.

Garmin acquired Digital Cyclone, developers of Pilot My-Cast, in April 2007. The company had launched its first software application in late 2002. Garmin quickly moved to upgrade the service, adding (in chronological order):

• Flight plan filing through DTC or CSC DUATs - April 2007
• Graphical winds aloft, PIREPS, and area forecasts - July 2007
• NOTAMS and support for Blackberry devices - July 2008
• AOPA's Airport Directory and Canadian weather - April 2009
• Airport diagrams, STARs, SIDs, and airways - July 2009
• Announced iPhone and iPod Touch capability by Q4 2009 - July 2009

An immediate benefit played out on an evening in early September when my partner Reid and I went out to do some pattern work at Annapolis Lee Airport (KANP), where our Archer is based.

A visual look west, the direction from which most of our summertime convective weather arrives, showed the normal hazy foreboding we see most afternoon and early evenings. However, bringing up Pilot MyCast, then selecting Wx Briefing, then Radar, brought up the animated NEXRAD sequences that showed that a nasty looking cell, painted in red, was approaching from the west.

Like the satellite images, NEXRAD can be zoomed in or zoomed out and put into animation mode, which was very helpful in revealing that some good clear weather was behind the large cell, which at this point was dropping torrents onto our hangar. I then called Flight Service to get a second opinion about the clear area behind the cell, which the briefer did.

Pilot-MyCast also has a flight planning mode that provides trip times with no wind and plots the course on geographical weather charts, which is very useful for viewing both real-time weather and prognostic charts. With the AOPA airports directory included, you can also get a look at the airports you'll be visiting in advance, both from a data and pictorial runway layout standpoint.

Here is a video Garmin has made to show how portions of MyCast works. You can also download a user's manual from the Garmin website.

As for cost, I paid $10 to download the program to my LG Shine phone through my cellular provider, AT&T. Beware that you'll pay a good bit for bits if you don't have a comprehensive data plan - I was paying $2 per megabyte and had racked up $20 in charges over a one-month billing cycle, in part due to a mysterious once-a-day data transfer that I've yet to figure out. Garmin says MyCast only updates its files real-time when the service is used.

Regardless, I have since switched to an unlimited data plan for $15 a month, which allows me to use Pilot MyCast as much as I like, which is very often.

Rating: On a scale from 1-10, I give Pilot MyCast a 10.

Who knew?

I recently walked through Detroit's Metropolitan Airport as part of a connecting flight from Washington DC to Cedar Rapids.

To catch my outbound flight, I took the underground connector and discovered what I think might be Michigan's best kept secret -- a pyschedelic show that accompanies you for nearly a quarter of a mile as you ride the people-mover through the tunnel.

I liked it so much I rode back and forth several times, and still made my connection.

Thanks for the short respite from airline travel, Detroit Metro!

The fractional provider formerly known as CitationShares, owned primarily by Cessna, has recast itself as Citationair.

Company officials launched the new venture today at the posh 21 Club in New York City. Here's the video describing the new face of the 10-year-old company.

UPDATE: My wallet came in the mail on Saturday. Thanks!

A week and two days ago, I was a happy camper.

As I described in this blog, a Northwest Airlines rep in Winnipeg called me that day and said they'd found the wallet I'd lost the week before in Cedar Rapids and that they'd mail it back to me.

So..... it's a week and two days later. Where's my freaking wallet?

The credit cards have been replaced, but not my license. I'm tired of using my passport for identification, Northwest. 

And the police will likely not be too understanding if they pull me over for speeding, not that I would dream of being a rebel and speeding on the Capital Beltway on my commute. (Yes, 80mph is SLOW on the Capital Beltway)

I can see it now...

Police: "SIr, can I see your license and registration?"

Me: "Uhhhh. Northwest Airlines has my license and they won't give it back to me..."

Police: "Fly United next time. Out of the car, loser!"

The past 48 hours has been a blur!

The adventure started 0814h Monday morning, when four other aviation journalists and myself were whisked away by Gulfstream, care of media relations chief Robert Baugniet, on a G550 (NG550GA) time machine from Washington Dulles Airport (IAD) non-stop to Tel Aviv (TLV) for the rollout of Gulfstream's new G250 super midsize business jet the next day.

Gulfstream builds the G250 and its two other mid-cabin jets, the G150 and the G200, in partnership with Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI). IAI constructs the aircraft at its facilities at the Ben Gurion Airport in Lod, Israel (about 15 miles east of Tel Aviv) and flies the green machines to Gulfstream's completion plant in Dallas, Texas, for the interiors and paint.

Below is slideshow of some pictures from the rollout, as well as an IAI plant tour, which included the government-owned company's Bedek Aviation, electronic warfare and unmanned aircraft operations. I also stuck in some shots of the view from my 10th floor room at the Tel Aviv Hilton.

Below that is a video I took of the powered-on rollout, followed by an interview I did with Gulfstream mid-cabin programs research and development director, Mark Kohler, discussing some of selling features of the $24 million G250. Please excuse the wind noise! 

Eighteen hours after arriving in Israel, we were back on the G550 enroute to IAD. Total time of the round trip was 40h, with approximately 22h spent on the G550, a time made very productive with the broadband multi-link service which gave us connectivity from IAD to Rome on the way out, and from Rome all the way back to IAD on the return leg.

Thanks to Robert Baugniet and Gulfstream for the opportunity to cover the event.