Rob Coppinger: March 2008 Archives

The latest Eon Productions, Sony Pictures James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, is to feature a dog fight involving a Douglas DC-3 Dakota.

In a behind-the-scenes video in the media section of the film's website the Dakota is seen taxiing, taking off and flying at low altitude.

The aircraft has been filmed in California using "spacecam" cameras onboard helicopters and what is either a nose-camera modified Aerostar aircraft corporation Super 700 or Superstar 700.

During the video Eon Production's producer Michael G. Wilson said: "We’re down here filming the aerial sequence. We’ve had them throughout the career of the Bond films, but this one we wanted to kind of have a retro dogfight. These are propeller-driven planes, not jet planes. It’s the type of plane that drugrunners would have so it fits the location."

The second propeller driven aircraft maybe the SF-260, produced by Finmeccanica company Alenia Aermachhi.

credit: Finmeccanica

In this article on Bond news website commanderbond.net the aircraft is identified as a Marchetti jet trainer.

But this report could be confusing the SF-260, manufactured today by Alenia Aermachhi, with the Alenia Aermachhi MB-339.

While both are referred to as Marchetti aircraft on the internet, the Savoia-Marchetti Italian aircraft company produced the SF-260 but not the MB-399.

The pilot qouted in the commanderbond.net article owns the California and Arizona based-Planes of Fame air museum. Enquiries at Planes of Fame by Flightglobal have not been answered.

Flight technical editor Rob Coppinger was blogging last week from the 1st US-Asian demonstration and assessment of micro aerial and unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) technology, also known as MAV08, the latest in a series of US military sponsored events encouraging micro air vehicle (MAV) development.

At the conference’s final plenary session US and Australian military delegates expressed a need for MAVs with night capabilities and all-weather designs that were more rugged.

Having seen what was a deliberately tough mission to push the technical capabilities of the competitors at MAV08, I would think that future additional hurdles of operating at night and in all-weather would be quite some feat, and I suspect is more likely to be seen in MAV 2012 rather than MAV09.

Despite the tough challenge that was MAV08's operational scenario involving MAVs and UGVs operating together to detect mines, terrorists and the location of a hostage, four teams tied for first place in the best mission performance category.

The conference had four other award categories, best UGV design, best rotorcraft, best autonomous MAV performance and best exotic MAV design.

The four winning teams of the best mission performance category were Massachusetts Institute of Technology, France ’s Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile (ENAC), the University of Arizona and the Martin Mueller Engineering company.

Flight technical editor Rob Coppinger is blogging this week from the 1st US-Asian demonstration and assessment of micro aerial (MAV) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) technology, also known as MAV08, the latest in a series of US military sponsored events encouraging MAV development.

"The Eagle is down, the Eagle is down, over", crackled over the public address system at the Indian air force's drop zone area that is being used for the flight trials for the competition part of this conference. Once again the MAV had crashed after a few seconds or minutes of flight, a scene that was repeated throughout the day.

Flight technical editor Rob Coppinger is blogging this week from the 1st US-Asian demonstration and assessment of micro aerial vehicles (MAV) and unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) technology, also known as MAV08, the latest in a series of US military sponsored events encouraging MAV development

The conference began yesterday with speeches by keynote speakers on the significance of the surveillance capability that unmanned air vehicles, especially micro air vehicles (MAV), and in future unmanned ground vehicles, would give the soldier, or to use US military speak Warfighter. The programme for this conference can be found here

Most of the speeches given were broad in nature and readers of Flightglobal.com will be aware of the US Army's plans for UAV development. Perhaps the most interesting speech was given by Lieutenent General VJ Sundaram, who spoke on India's work on MAVs over the last ten years. A subject that has not recieved much publicity but one which I will be writing a story about this week.

The press conference that followed brought questions from the non-technical media about the possibility of militants obtaining MAV technology.

The conference's keynote speakers attending the press conference were less concerned that this was an issue - in reality Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers and the Lebano's Hezbollah have both used what could be call MAVs - and focused more on the potential use by emergency services.

Today saw the second day provide more detailed matter with the first seven technical presentations. This was in the afternoon, after a morning that was to have seen flight demonstrations of the conference's competing teams vehicles but which weather brought a halt to.

For my review of the conference so far listen to my podcast here or here
Technical issues mean that these podcasts will no longer be available. The podcast script can be found in the extended entry to this post

Flight technical editor Rob Coppinger is blogging this week from the 1st US-Asian demonstration and assessment of micro aerial vehicles (MAV) and unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) technology, also known as MAV08, the latest in a series of US military sponsored events encouraging MAV development