The Woracle

Boeing will give a much-anticipated update on the 787 programme tomorrow - Wednesday, 5 September. Will it announce:

1 - it can still meet the May certification date

2 - a three-month delay

3 - a six-month delay

4 - "She'll nae fly, Captain, the warp engines are doomed!"

Indian business newspaper Mint is reporting that Vijay Mallya, chairman of drinks giant UB Group and founder of Kingfisher Airlines, is to make a personal investment of $200 million to take a controlling stake in Oregon-based Epic Aircraft.

A deal has been on the cards since billionaire Mallya - who also looks set to buy the Spyker Formula 1 racing team - met Epic chief executive Rick Schramek at the AirVenture show in Oshkosh in July.

It will not be an investment without risk. Epic is a kitplane producer that has yet to certificate an aircraft. It is also the first customer for a new and untried Canadian centre for composite aircraft certification in Calgary.

But Mallya's money will be a boost for Epic, which has ambitious plans to follow its Dynasty turboprop single with a twin-engine very light jet, the Elite - in addition to adding the single-turboprop Escape and single-jet Victory to its kitplane line.

Type certification of the Dynasty and Elite will just be the first step. As Eclipse has shown, it can be tough to get the production certification needed to ramp up deliveries, and Epic will have to invest heavily in training and support if it is to become a fully fledged aircraft manufacturer.

Pulse detonation engines, active flow control, nano-engineered materials and open rotor noise reduction were among the technologies on show when I toured General Electric's Global Research Center in upstate New York this week.

You can see some of the technologies in action at the research centre’s blog, From Edison’s Desk, at www.grcblog.com. (Thomas Edison’s actual desk is in the foyer of the centre.)

Many of the technologies are aimed at GE’s jet engine business, but some have application elsewhere in the aircraft. It was a glimpse into the future - how far into the future I’m not sure.

A detonation wave exits a PDE (GE photo)

In case you missed the week's headlines, here's a synopsis of the main events.

Aviation record-setter Steve Fossett went missing on 2 September after taking off from Reno, Nevada in a Citabria. He was first to fly round the world in a balloon, in 2002; and first to fly solo round the world without stopping or refuelling, in 2005. Chances of finding him alive - diminishing.

Boeing announced the 787 first flight had slipped to between mid-November and mid-December, from late August, but it still plans to deliver the first aircraft to launch customer All Nippon Airways. That will compress the certification flight-test schedule from nine months to less than six. Chances of the making the schedule - debatable.

DayJet and Linear Air were approved by the FAA to begin air-taxi operations using very light jets. Massachussetts-based Linear, with a single Eclipse 500, plans to fly its first paying customer by mid-September. Florida-based DayJet will be hard on its heels with a dozen Eclipses. Chances of making it work - improving.

The US Air Force acknowledged that a B-52 unknowingly carried six nuclear warheads across the USA. The bomber flew from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana carrying Advanced Cruise Missiles that mistakenly still had their W80 warheads installed. Chances of a nuclear accident - negligible. Chances of extreme embarrassment - certain.

"I Sea the Knights are drawing in" (US Navy photo)

Last week, Aviation International News reported that Gulfstream has applied to trademark a slew of new aircraft designations, suggesting it plans to launch a series of new and upgraded business jets.

A search of the US Patent and Trademark Office website confirms Gulfstream in July filed to trademark G275, G325, G375, G425, G475, G525, G575, G375, G600 and G675. It should be pointed out that Gulfstream first filed for most of these, plus G175, G225 and G625, in August 2003 and has applied for several extensions since.

What are we to make of this? Parent company General Dynamics has openly talked about two new business jets coming from Gulfstream, without giving any details. But, armed with some industry intelligence, an intelligent guess is possible.

It was so simple back then - the Gulfstream I

Wonder where unmanned aircraft are going? Bigger, smaller, higher, longer? Take a look at Qinetiq's solar-powered Zephyr, which has just completed a 54h flight, beating the official world unmanned endurance record of 30h 24min, set by Northrop Grumman's jet-powered Global Hawk in 2001.

A fragile-looking thing, the hand-launched Zephyr is at the vanguard of efforts to extend the persistence of UAVs beyond hours to days, weeks, even years. Solar power, hydrogen fuel, even in-flight replenishment are being researched. The most extreme of these efforts is DARPA's Vulture project to demonstrate technology for a UAV that stay aloft for five years.

I'm not joking, check out this video...

Now that's what I call a stretch goal.

But why all this effort, and how can it be feasible? The why is easier than the how.

Even as it battles to win the contract to build the US Air Force's next aerial refuelling tanker, Boeing has won the hard-fought competition to overhaul the USAF's existing KC-135s.

The 10-year, $1.1 billion contract covers programmed depot maintenance of more than 200 KC-135s to keep them flying until the KC-X comes along.

It was a tough competition, pitting Boeing against Pemco Aviation Group - it's subcontractor on the current KC-135 PDM contract, which ends in October. The two companies were originally teamed for the new contract, but Pemco was dropped by Boeing and decided to bid on its own.

Despite their disparity in size, winning the KC-135 work was importrant to both companies. Boeing said the PDM contract was crucial to the future of its San Antonio overhaul operation, and Pemco is selling its booming commercial MRO business to focus on military maintenance - a significant part of which was KC-135 PDM.

My colleague Steve Trimble over on The Dew Line is taking bets on whether Pemco will protest the award, as seems to be the fashion these days.

If it stands, the win is vindication of Boeing's decision to apply its commercial-aircraft lean production experience to the military-aircraft maintenance environment, creating a "pulsed" line and cutting a KC-135 overhaul from 200 days to 153 - numbers that now have the airlines asking about lean MRO.

Does General Electric now have the widest range of aircraft engines in the industry, in thrust terms at least, following the first full engine run of a GE Honda HF120 in Japan?

The HF120 demonstrator reached its maximum 2,095lb thrust on the first run. That is less than 2% of the power output of the GE90-115B, which reached a record-breaking 127,900lb thrust in 2002.

To help you visualise, this is the GE90-115B:

And, to the same scale, this is the HF120:

US Congress has just been notified of the $1.96 billion sale to Taiwan of 12 surplus Lockheed P-3C Orion maritime-patrol aircraft. It's still classified as a "possible" sale because Congress could say no, but this deal has been in the works a long time...a long, long time.

The US first offered to sell a squadron P-3Cs to Taiwan in 2001 as part of a bigger arms package, but political inflghting in Taipei blocked approval of the special budget for years. The logjam finally broke in June when the Taiwanese legislature approved the Orion purchase.

Taiwan will be the 17th (military) operator of the P-3. It has already checked over the ex-US Navy aircraft in desert storage and picked out the airframes it wants (including three TP-3As for spares). Lockheed Martin will refurbish them to the Navy's current AIP standard, including replacing the wing to restore the full 15,000h fatigue life.

Finally, replacement is in sight for Taiwan's S-2Ts
(Jason Tu picture from www.taiwanairpower.org)

It was inevitable, perhaps: the UK and Italy - the only Eurofighter Typhoon partners that also plan to buy the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter - are being forced to choose between the two aircraft, according to a report in The Times.

The Times says the UK Ministry of Defence is trying to find a way out of its committment to buy 88 more Tranche 3 Typhoons, and to reduce, delay or cancel the final order. Italy also wants to cut its Tranche 3 order, the report suggests.

Citing defence sources, The Times says the UK Treasury will not allow the MoD to buy both Tranche 3 Eurofighters and the 150 or so Lockheed Martin F-35Bs it wants. BAE Systems has a piece of both fighter programmes.

My first guess is the JSF will win - the F-35B is the only STOVL option to replace the UK's Harriers on land and at sea. The Royal Navy's new CVF carriers could operate conventional fighters, but are being designed around the JSF.

And because of delays in developing the Eurofighter's multi-role capability, the F-35 will enter service around 2014 with a greater combat potential.

But - and it is a big but - cancelling Tranche 3 Typhoons would leave the UK (and Italy) entirely at the mercy of the US budget process, which is capable of cutting, delaying and even cancelling the JSF programme without consideration of its allies.

NetJets - the world's largest fractional-ownership operator, with a fleet of almost 700 aircraft making it larger than most airlines - has announced an initiative to reduce its emissions.

It includes sponsoring efforts to develop an ultra-low-emission jet fuel - the Next Generation Jet Fuel Project - at Princeton University and the University of California, Davis. More news to come on this.

UPDATE - here is the Princeton University press release.

The X Prize Foundation and Google have announced a $20 million prize for the first privately funded robotic rover on the Moon. This follows the $10 million Ansari X Prize for the first private suborbital flight, won by Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne.

It's a bigger challenge, and a richer purse, but I am not sure the Google Lunar X Prize will grab the public's attention in the same way. It's a robot not a human, after all. And as NASA's plucky Mars rovers illustrate, robots are not as good at grabbling headlines.

But the timetable will give NASA something to think about, as it plods along its way back to the Moon. The grand prize of $20 million for the first rover on the Moon reduces to $15 million on 1 January 2013 and the competition is to be terminated on 31 December 2014.

Call me a cynic, but I am suspicious about the timing of Pogo Jet's initial public offering to raise more than $100 million to launch its air taxi service.

We've hardly heard from Pogo since it was formed in 2001 - except for announcing an order for Adam A700 very light jets that not-so-mysteriously evaporated. Now, just as DayJet and Linear Air are on the verge of launching the first air-taxi services to use Eclipse 500 VLJs, Pogo is back in the news, looking for money.

The timing of its IPO makes sense. It can ride the publicity as DayJet begins operations and bank the money before it becomes clear whether the air-taxi model works. I note that DayJet and Eclipse have raised millions in private equity and are waiting to prove they can deliver aircraft and attract customers before they go the IPO route.

But then I am a cynic.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne has just tested a subscale combustor for a dual-mode ramjet/scramjet under the FACET programme to demonstrate a combined-cycle powerplant for DARPA's planned Falcon HTV-3X hypersonic test vehicle. The combustor was ground-tested from Mach 2.5 to Mach 6.0.

Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works is designing the HTV-3X. As the attached video shows, the unmanned vehicle would take off under turbojet power then accelerate to a speed where the ramjet when take over, then transition to scramjet mode to cruise hypersonically before returning to a runway landing.

Like most DARPA programmes it's a technological stretch - and Lockheed hasn't even built and flown the unpowered HTV-2 yet - although I've got my fingers crossed for this one. But, as Boeing's George Muellner jokes: "Hypersonics is the future...and always will be."

Part 1

Part 2

Visiting Brazil recently my colleague John Croft snapped a picture of the Hawker Hunter used by Embraer as a chase plane during high-speed flight testing of its regional and business jets.

Hunter becomes chaser (From John's blog, As The Cro Flies)

I will admit to being a former Hawker engineer, but who can deny the Hunter is a beautiful beast? This aircraft, PP-XHH, was orginally built for the Royal Air Force as a single-seat F.4 then converted to a two-seat T.72 for the Chilean air force.

It was retired to a museum, then sold to Embraer. Much as I admire the company's regional and business jets, what I would really like is a flight in its Hunter.

NASA has just posted an update on the Boeing X-48B Blended Wing Body demonstrator, along with some cool pictures of "Skyray 48".

First flown in July at NASA Dryden, the subscale unmanned X-48B has completed six flights and is now on the ground for maintenance and modification - including replacement of the fixed extended slats with slatless leading edges - and a software update.

......................................................................................................................................................................................Two X-48Bs have been built to explore the low-speed flight control characteristics of the BWB, but now NASA says they could also be used to evaluate the configuration's low noise and its handling characteristics at transonic speed.

Here are a couple of headlines you may have missed:

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin caused a stir when their VIP Boeing 767-200 was spotted at NASA Ames' Moffet airfield in California, normally off limits to non-government aircraft. NASA subsequently acknowledged it had signed an agreement to let the 767 use Moffet in return for the right to place scientific instruments on the aircraft. The two-year deal will net NASA $1.3 million to offset the cost of operating Moffet, but has riled its neighbours.

France's defence minister, in interview with La Tribune, said the Airbus Military A400M airlifter would be delivered several months late. The first customer for the A400M, France had expected it to enter service at the end of 2009, but defence sources quoted by the newspaper said the first aircraft was now expected to be delivered six to nine months late. EADS defence chief Stefan Zoller acknowledged the first flight was six months behind schedule and Safran took a €40m writedown to cover delays to the TP400 engine.

"Did I leave the porch light on?" (NASA photo via Steve Trimble)

Just couldn't resist posting this...

F-22 takes off from Elmendorf, Alaska (USAF photo)

Steve Trimble has posted new pictures of the Iranian-developed Saegheh fighter over on his blog, The DEW Line. Look past the Blue Angels colour scheme and you will see subtle but significant differences between the two aircraft featured that suggest Iran's "Lightning" is more than simply a reverse-engineered Tiger with two tails.

The first aircraft, presumably the earliest, looks pretty much like an F-5E and even the twin fins have a "tacked-on" appearance.

But the second aircraft, while similar in planform, has a number of differences including enlarged and reshaped inlets.

The first aircraft's inlets are F-5 sized and shaped. The second one (right) has rectangular inlets that appear larger, and the wing leading-edge root extensions are slightly different.

A closer look shows the second aircraft's intake trunk is bulged compared with the F-5E's classic "coke-bottle" shape, although the auxiliary inlet is still there.

The base of the fin also has a more faired-in appearance, so the second aircraft could be the production version. The reason for the inlet redesign is not clear as the nozzles of both aircraft look similar, suggesting the engines have not changed.

But maybe there is a bigger engine in the pipeline, making for a higher performing aircraft. Which might explain why they would spoil the classic lines of the F-5 by doubling up on tails.

Meanwhile, this picture from Tehran's military parade on 22 September shows two of the round-intake aircraft and one square-intake (top left)

Embraer took the wraps off its ideas for new medium-light and mid-size business jets today at the NBAA show in Atlanta. It was careful to make clear this was not a launch - they are just concepts. But if you want to sign a letter of interest and put down a $90,000 refundable deposit you can get in line for the MSJ. Or if funds are a little tight, $70,000 will reserve you a smaller MLJ. But you won't get a price, performance specs or delivery date just yet. Embraer is still working on those.

You will get a promise of a delivery position if and when Embraer does produce the aircraft. And it will, but the specifics of the designs could change a little as a result of feedback from customers, who are getting their first look at the mockup and the basic specs. And they look promising, adhering to Embraer's established "buy one, get one size up" philosophy.

Just as it has sized the Phenom 100 directly against the Citation CJ1 and the Phenom 300 against the CJ4 - but for up to $2 million less in each case - so the MLJ would compete with the Citation XLS, and the MSJ with the Citation Sovereign, but at lower prices. What makes you think Embraer has Cessna firmly in its sights?

The Citation X was already a text book study in aerodynamics, and Cessna is writing another chapter with the addition of winglets. They seem like overkill on an aircraft already so highly swept and area ruled that, at Mach 0.92, it is the fastest commercial aircraft flying today.

No other Cessna's have them, but the company says winglets should improve the Citation X's hot-and-high take-off and climb performance and high-altitude speed and range. Maybe it's another example, after the Dassault Falcon, of a bizjet manufacturer finally accepting that winglets can look good AND work.

It's actually a little too early to say if they do work as advertised, but Cessna is supporting efforts by Wichita-based WInglet Technology to get supplemental type certification for its elliptical winglets for retrofit on to the Citation X. Elliptical refers to the curvature of winglet, by the way, which is designed to minimise the induced drag.

The latest trend in general aviation is to certificate your aircraft then fumble getting it into production. Sino Swearingen certificated its fast-but-light SJ30 at the end of 2005 after decades of effort, but has delivered only two so far - the second one here at the show.

After pouring an estimated $700 million into the programme, and seeing no return, Sino's Taiwanese backers wanted out. Now the UK's Action Aviation, the biggest SJ30 distributor with 159 on order, has joined with US private equity firm ACQ Capital to buy a controlling stake.

More familiar with real estate than aircraft manufacture, ACQ says the joint venture will put enough money into Sino to get the SJ30 into full production and the company into profit. And they freely admit they face a challenge persuading abused suppliers it's for real this time.

The folks behind the deal clearly love the aircraft. Now they just have to prove to the market that they can produce it, deliver it and support it.

It was slightly surreal to see executives from a US kitplane maker, European airliner manufacturer and an Indian airline seated side-by-side on the podium in a press conference room at a business-aviation show. But this can be an odd industry at times.

The catalyst bringing the three together was not there - Indian brewery billionaire Dr Vijay Mallya. He and Epic Aircraft founder Rick Schramek share a love of aeroplanes and racecars and, after meeting at Oshkosh earlier this year, Mallya agreed to invest in Epic, enabling Schramek to realise his dream of certificating a family of very light turboprops and jets.

So where does Airbus come in? Well Mallya's UB group owns Kingfisher Airlines, which is a major Airbus customer, and Kingfisher has asked Airbus to take a look at Epic to see if it can help certificate the aircraft and maybe benefit from Epic's composites technology.

Airbus's involvement may give Mallya more confidence Epic will make good use of his $120 million personal investment, but it's hard to see how the builder of the 590t A380 mega-liner could help with, or benefit from, certification of the 2.5t Victory personal jet.

It probably couldn't say no, but Airbus isn't committing itself. "We have opened the door, but not yet walked through," said the Airbus exec with a Gallic shrug.

With all the manufacturers busy working on new products to appear over the next year or so, proponents of supersonic business jets are struggling to get a hearing. It's particularly tough for the two independent teams that need an OEM to get their designs off the drawing board.

There are essentially three players with three approaches. Gulfstream says an SSBJ, to be viable, must fly supersonically over land and so must be low boom. It also believes a demonstrator is needed to convice regulators to lift the ban on supersonic flight over the US.

Gulfstream noses ahead with Quiet Spike

Supersonic Aerospace International (SAI) agrees supersonic overland flight is essential, but says it does not need to first build a demonstrator to prove that its Lockheed Martin Skunk Works-designed Quiet Supersonic Transport will produce no perceptible boom.

Skunk magic tames QSST's boom

Aerion says supersonic overland flight is not essential if the SSBJ can cruise as efficiently over land at a boomless Mach 0.95 as it can over water at Mach 1.6 - which is exactly what the company claims for its patented supersonic natural laminar flow design.

Smooth flow cuts Aerion's drag

But while Gulfstream is pursuing its own SSBJ design, Aerion and SAI are trying to assemble industrial consortia to certificate and produce their designs. This is hard to do when the engineering resources at the OEMs are already committed to their own new product priorities.

Aerion and SAI remain hopeful, and Gulfstream continues working the technology, but the prospect of supersonic business jet entering service seems to be slipping further into the next decade. The bizav boom, not the sonic boom, is the biggest obstacle to the SSBJ.

Try as I might to track developments in alternative jet fuels, there is a bewildering array of initiatives under way and it can be hard to separate the hydrocarbons from the hogwash. But if Boeing is involved, you have to assume there is something more than hype in the tank.

Boeing, Air New Zealand and Rolls-Royce have signed a memorandum of understanding to conduct a biofuel demonstration flight using a 747-400 in the second half of 2008. This will follow the Boeing/Virgin Atlantic/General Electric biofuel flight trial early next year, also on a 747-400. Both involve running just one of the aircraft's four engines on a biofuel blend.

Which biofuel will be tested has not been announced in either case. GE says selection of a fuel for the Virgin trial is imminent, while Boeing says it is still working to identify suitable biofuels available in sufficient quantities for the Air NZ trial.

Air NZ's involvement is interesting because several reports have linked both trials with New Zealand company Aquaflow Bionomics, which produces biofuel from pond scum - sorry, algae. But there are lots of other "potential" bio-jet fuels out there, so it will be interesting to see which are picked by Boeing, GE and R-R.

Not every aircraft designer gets the chance to put their creation into production, and Michimasa Fujino is making to most of his opportunity to build a new company, Honda Aircraft, to produce his design, the HondaJet.

The HondaJet is bucking convention in several areas: its overwing-mounted engines, laminar-flow aerodynamics, and composite fuselage. Now Fujino-san is tackling one of business aviation's most unsavoury aspects head-on - the tiny lavatory.

Most passengers will do anything to avoid using the aircraft lav, he says, holding on then heading straight for the toilet in the terminal as soon as they land. But the HondaJet lav is not just for emergencies, he says; passengers will actually want to use it.

So forget that toilet in the terminal. "Passengers will be running on to the HondaJet to use our lavatory instead," he joked at NBAA.

HondaJet - room for a throne

In recognition of six decades of boring holes in the blue sky.

Jet set (F-86F Sabres over Korea in 1954 - USAF photo)

Heavy metal (USAF air display at Nellis AFB in 1959)

I have trolled through the Defense Visual Information Center website to find some pictures of USAF fighters through the years. I will leave their identification to you...

Call me a sad old ex-engineer, but I still enjoy it when a new aeroplane flies. This time its Japan's Kawasaki P-X maritime patrol aircraft - now officially called the XP-1. Looks like a scaled-down DC-8 to me...