January 2010 Archives

Air cargo carrier FedEx is getting a bit like Frontier Airlines (which brands its planes with animal pictures), but for a good cause.

The company today revealed how one if its first Boeing 777F freighters will look when it departs the US for China on a special mission the morning of 4 February, providing me these artist conceptions:

Dubbed the "Panda Express", the 777F (N850FD) complete with a 12m- by 12m (40ft- by 40ft) panda decal on the nose section, will fly non-stop from Dulles International airport near Washington's National Zoo, to Chengdu, China, with a small but significant payload -- two giant pandas.

Tai Shan, a 4.5-year-old male panda, born at the National Zoo, will travel with Mei Lan, a 3-year-old female panda born at the zoo in Atlanta. FedEx plans to pick up Mei Lan in Atlanta on the way to Dulles. Seating accommodations are being provided by FedEx: Two custom-built tubular steel containers.

Here's some video of Tai Shan.

Cirrus executives make it clear that its flagship offering, the single-engine SF50 Vision personal jet is at the apex of company priorities. BUT, given the lack of big bucks from the gun-shy investing community, it won't be coming to your local Cirrus dealer in 2012, as the company had expected.

"We don't know when [the SF50] will be done," said company prez and CEO Brent Wouters during a 27 January 2010 webcon with owners and journalists. "We've developed a variety of timelines depending on when and how the cash infusion comes." Wouters says engineers will work on "design elements" until the money comes, pushing off high dollar items like the building of production tooling, robotic assemblies and inspection systems until later.

Meanwhile, lots has been accomplished:

• Cirrus confirms that the aircraft will be certificated with a maximum altitude of 28,000ft versus the previously listed 25,000ft. The company had planned on this all along, as evidenced by the tail number of the first prototype, N280CJ...
• Speaking of V1, the first prototype, Cirrus says the aircraft now has 240 flight hours on the airframe and 400 hours on the single Willians FJ33 turbofan engine
• Cirrus will work with Garmin on a customized version of the Garmin G3000 integrated avionics system for the SF50
• Technicians have installed the Goodrich silver coloured deicing boots on the wings and V-tail in advance of in-flight icing tests later this year, after an engine inlet heater is installed. The SF50 will use TKS fluid for windshield anti-ice. Cirrus has also developed in the wind tunnel ice shapes that it will test fly in advance of natural icing tests.
• See slides from the presentation (below) for additional details   

Emivest Aerospace, picking up on a story I recently wrote about actor Morgan Freeman's epic journey in his brand now Emivest SJ30 business jet, N30GZ, sent me a picture of the route.

That's quite an impressive first 35 days in the life of a small aircraft.

Emivest spokesman Mark Fairchild says the track log is a composite image made from the pilot's rouiting and a GPS visualizer.

I might not normally agree with the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), but when it comes to cute little monkeys, squirrel monkeys to be precise, I do...

PETA is protesting in front of various NASA sites about a study in which the space agency will expose 18 squirrel monkeys to the amount of space radiation in one big dose that astronauts would receive on an entire multi-month mission. In other words, a reallly high dose.

Here's a recent clip of PETA explaining the situation:

Come on NASA, can't you use opossums, or perhaps rats, or maybe some of your own engineers for the study?

Russian engineers working at the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) near Moscow have put one of their wind tunnels to work on a very interesting task - taming the behavior of the Kazakh People monument, a structure, apparently, set to be located in Kazakhstan's capital city of Astana,

The problem? Those danged wings...The press release from TsAGI describes it best:

"The 2,5m high model was tested in the Т1-2 WT under contract with CNIIPSK n.a. Melnikov. The monument was designed by the Karaganda Promstroyproekt Institute that contacted CNIIPSK in connection with the recorded unallowable range of oscillation.

The tests performed by the specialists of the Moscow TsAGI Complex identified the origin of the "sudden" braking oscillations: it was the bird sculpture that crowned the monument. The aerodynamic data obtained during the tests will be used for the mechanical oscillation damper design. Its proper location will also contribute to the aerodynamic stability of the "Kazakh people" monument.

Now I know why they say, "Oh Canada!"

Check out this YouTube video that someone took from the jump seat or thereabouts in a new Bombardier CRJ700 during what appears to be a pre-delivery test flight from the company's production facility near Montreal.

The videographer (gentleman4512) explains that every new Bombardier aircraft goes through this touch-and-go ritual during its post-build shakedown cruise at Mirabel. After landing, the pilot brings in full power, lifts off (...when the video stops shaking) and retracts the landing gear just above the runway (in ground effect), holds position to the end of the 10,000ft runway and then pulls what looks to be about 2g or so in a 60deg turn back to the downwind.

Zut Alors!

I just paid $24.50 for the biggest load of nothing I've ever bought.

In November, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to try and get the details of an otherwise off-the-record meeting between the FAA and Sikorsky in July 2009 to discuss the problematic main gearbox (MGB) of Sikorsky's 19-passenger heavy-lift S-92A helicopter.

What I received was a 5-page rejection letter strewn with legalese so convoluted and tangled that my cat probably wouldn't even play with it if I balled it up and tossed it at her. My bill for their trouble was $24.50, which was actually quite a bargain since the FAA says it cost them $617 to send me five pages of nothing.

Here's the whole sordid tale in a nutshell:

Sikorsky in 2002 certified the S-92A heavy-lift helicopter with the FAA, and later with EASA. Incorporated into the certification was an assurance helicopter pilots have known and operated under for quite some time: If the main rotor blade transmission loses its lubrication for whatever reason, the pilot has at least 30 minutes of run-time before gears start seizing up and heavy things fall out of the sky.

The same is supposed to be true for the S-92A, and Sikorsky convinced the FAA and others as much through a failure modes analysis. The upshot of the analysis? Failures that would starve the main gearbox (MGB) of lubrication and that were not accounted for by other means would be "extremely remote", and hence did not have to be protected against.

"Extremely remote" in FAA certification parlance means one failure in 10 million flight hours, in other words, it won't happen in the life of one aircraft but could happen a couple of times in the life an entire fleet.

In-service experience with the S-92A had disproven the theory (and the analysis) with failure rates more than 200X higher than expected.

The situation worsened with the crash of a Cougar Helicopters oil and gas S-92A people-mover in March last year. Seventeen of the 18 on board drowned after the pilots attempted to return to the Newfoundland after losing all MGB oil while en route to several platforms.

The crew attempted to high-tail it back to land, which was within 30 minutes flying time (according to a lawsuit filed by the families and the lone survivor). The MGB however only lasted about 10 minutes before the tail rotor drive failed and the pilots tried to autorotate for a water landing.

With all that in mind, I found out that the FAA had held a meeting with Sikorsky in July to go over again that failure modes analysis, so I submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to get some information about the meeting.

Talk about the fox in the hen house...

My requests went to both the FAA's Southwest Region office and to its New England engine and propeller directorate, and both said the information belonged to Sikorsky, so Sikorsky would get to decide.

Hmmm? What would I do if I were Sikorsky? DENIED -- the information is proprietary (But of course!). The first of two reject letters is below. The second hasn't arrived yet, but an email tells me it's coming.

In the end, we may never find out what happened. Sikorsky settled the lawsuit out of court with the entire group.

What I do know from the $24.50 investment however, is that meeting did in fact occur, on 14 July 2009, and that there is a report titled System Safety Hazard Analysis (SSHA) Report of the S-92 Main Transmission Lubrication System and that there was also a PowerPoint presentation titled, S-92 Main Transmission Lubrication System Overview.

The Canadian Transportation Safety Board continues to investigate and will issue a final report in the near future. 

More than five years after the likes of Aviation Week (myself included as I worked there at the time) said "Don't hold your breath" in waiting for a certain Italian company to actually finish its odd-looking piston twin pusher, airframer Oma Sud has shut up the naysayers.

As of 8 January, the SkyCar is an officially a certified aeroplane. Here's the European Aviation Safety Agency type sheet to prove it.

The company applied for the certificate in 2004 and first demonstrated a mock-up of the Textron Lycoming IO-360-C1E6-powered aircraft at the Paris Air Show in 2005, shortly before Av Week made its assessment. Critics be damned though, Oma Sud completed first flight  in December 2007, and at the time, expected certification later in 2008.

The initial launch customer for the high-wing, twin-tail, retractable-gear aircraft was thought to be a Miami-based aviation charter company, which planned to deploy the aircraft for operations between Miami and the Caribbean.

Though Oma Sud is marketing the twin as "designed for instrument flight rules", the EASA specifications sheet limits the aircraft to day and night visual flight rules operations. The unpressurized twin can fly at a maximum structural cruising speed of 152kt (281 km/h), 8kt slower than advertised, and can reach a maximum altitude of 5,486m (18,000ft). The aircraft is not approved for flight into known icing conditions.

Pictures of the four-seat plane (marketing materials say its a five seats but EASA says four) are fairly rare. There are some on flickr and the OMA SUD website, but video is rarer still.

In fact I couldn't find any clips. I'm most interested to see how it sounds, given the unique "music" of other pushers like the Beech Starship and the Piaggio Avanti.

If anyone can point me to.a video of the SkyCar in flight, please do forward.

Meanwhile, to OMA SUD, my apologies for doubting you in my foolish youth.

Right now, a brand new Embraer Phenom 100 light business jet flown by a pilot name Ben Marcus is somewhere over the Carribean on its way to the US on a ferry flight.

Thanks to Blue Sky Network, we know exactly where Marcus is however, and if by chance a search and rescue operation is required, they'll know exactly where to start.

Marcus is carrying Blue Sky's new $1,595 battery-powered, small, lightweight portable D410A flight tracking and two-way messaging transciever.

Whereas in the past, Marcus' position would be known only vaguely through reporting checkpoints, today, thanks to connections with the Iridium satellite network, light aircraft and helicopters can be pinpointed with as much accuracy as the owner is willing to pay for.

Along with a monthly service fee, customers pay for position reports, which include latitude, longitude, date and time and other information through Blue Sky's web portal. The more often you want the reports, the more it costs.

The company is targeting customers South America, Mexico and the Middle East, places where traditional tracking networks are not available for the low and slow.

You can track Marcus' flight in real-time on Blue Sky's website.

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While writing an article about actor and pilot Morgan Freeman's recent monumental crosscountry flight in his brand new Emivest SJ30 business jet, I stumbled upon one of his other true loves - Blues music.

The trail started with a need to know the tail number of Freeman's plane.

I learned from Emivest that his promotion tour for the movie Invictus, in which he plays South African leader Nelson Mandela, ended in Clarksdale, Mississippi, which is widely known as Freeman's home.

A search through the FAA registration number site showed only one SJ30 aircraft (searched by model name) registered in Mississippi, and better yet, in the same location as Freeman's home.

That aircraft's tail number is N30GZ.  GZ? Since actors have been known to display vanity tags,I figured the "Gulf Zulu" letters must mean something. But what?

A picture on the Emivest web site and a quick Google search provided the answers...

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Ahhh! GZ = Ground Zero = A blues music club that Freeman co-owns in Clarksdale, Miss. and other locations.

The "30"? I'm guessing it stands for SJ30. Just a hunch :-)