The Woracle

"You join us live here in Renton, Washington, where Boeing is about to roll out its first new aeroplane of the 21st Century - the 787. With me is our aviation correspondent, Max Legroom. Max, how important is this day, this aircraft, for Boeing?"

"Very important. Boeing has bet the company that passengers will be happy to pay higher airfares, and airlines willing to burn more fuel, just to get there quicker."

"And that's why Boeing picked the name for its new aeroplane - the Sonic Cruiser."

"Indeed. Someone in marketing suggested calling it the Dreamliner, but thankfully they realised that was a silly name for an aircraft."

"And just how fast is it, Max?"

"Well Boeing calculates you will get into the holding pattern over New York up to 30 minutes quicker. But everyone thinks that, with a push, it could go above Mach 1."

"And that could lead to a boom in sales?"

"Well, Boeing would like a few more customers. So far they only have orders from John Travolta, the Saudi royal family, secondlifeairlines.com and Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Brides In A Hurry."

"Some are saying that, with high oil prices and global warning, Boeing is building the wrong aeroplane."

"Well there is an internet rumour that someone in Seattle sent a marketing brochure to engineering by mistake, but Boeing denies it."

"Thanks Max. Now for a message from our sponsor..."

New Fords will have fins, says ex-Boeing boss Alan Mulally

According to a story in the Puget Sound Business Journal, Boeing and forest products company Weyerhaeuser have conducted flight tests of an aerial firefighting system that drops water or retardant in cardboard containers that break apart in mid-air and release hundreds of water bombs.

I'm sure the idea holds water, but the US Forest Service remains to be convinced the system is safe. The story says aviation programme leader Carl Bamberger is concerned people will be upset if they "find Bambi konked out by a big box".

The Precision Container Air Delivery System was conceived by Boeing engineer William Cleary for use with the C-17, but according to the Business Journal the drop tests over western Arizona in early July involved an old Fairchild C-123.

Boeing's Cleary with his Bambi-bonking water bomb

Iran has donated an Airbus A300 to Iraq for use by government officials as a VIP transport. The aircraft arrived in Baghdad on 21 July after a delay blamed on "unspecified technical reasons", says the Associated Press.

It might pay to give the aircraft a thorough going over. In 2002, China claimed it had found almost 30 surveillance bugs in a Boeing 767 converted by US firm Dee Howard to a VIP transport for then president Jiang Zemin.

But a US and European embargo on Tehran that grounded Iran Air's GE-powered Airbuses was only lifted in October 2006.

In our never-ceasing search for silly acronyms, my colleague Steve Trimble has just turned up the US Air Force's Battlefield Air Operations Kit - Battlefield Air Targeting Man-Aided Knowledge (BAO/BATMAN) advanced technology demonstration.

Surely you can do better than that...

"It's fun to stay at the Y-M..." (USAF photo via Craig Hoyle)

While my colleague Steve Trimble over on The DEW Line gets his knickers in a twist over Iranian fighter developments, I am left wondering why their names seem to come from Harry Potter books. Azarakhsh? Perhaps J K Rowling is a closet plane spotter.

What I can't understand is why pick from Potter when you could use any one of the great fighter names from history: Vildebeest (Vickers, 1928), Gnatsnapper (Gloster, 1928), Hedgehog (Hawker, 1924), Tabloid (Sopwith, 1913), Dormouse (de Havilland, 1923), Armadillo (Armstrong Whitworth, 1918).

I could go on...and on.

Azarakhsh . . .

. . . . . .Tabloid

(Thanks to the British Aircraft Directory for the info and pic)

So, is it Bambi-safe? A few blogs back, I talked about a new firefighting solution being developed by Weyerhaeuser and Boeing. It involves dropping carboard boxes containing water balloons out of the back of a cargo aircraft. As reader Ty Bonnar pointed out, the concept has evolved quite a bit from the original idea.

As this KNBC TV report reveals, the Precision Container Air Delivery System - PCADS - looks simple and seems to work. Instead of the original football-sized water bombs, the cardboard box now contains a flexible bladder. After exiting the aircraft, the box lid acts like a parachute and its straps rip apart the bladder, releasing the water or retardant.

Weyerhaeuser says PCADS allows any rear-ramp cargo aircraft to be used for firefighting, and avoids the dangerous low-level manoeuvring that has claimed many waterbombers. The disadvantage, as the report highlights, is the debris - plywood pallets, cardboard boxes and shredded bladders - admittedly all biodegradable.

So maybe the biggest risk is not to Bambi's head, but to his stomach.

Take a box.....fill it with water.....load it in the aircraft...

...and bombs away! (For a 5.11Mb video, click here)

Confession time. A long-time friend has alerted me to this youtube clip from a BBC documentary on Airfix, a famous if fated name in model kits. Watching it I was immersed in nostalgia, as James May's memories of building pastic kits echo mine - and probably every other once and future model maker.

My particular tale of shame was of making an "aircraft carrier" out of a plank of wood, loading it up with model planes and floating it out to the middle of the pond on my childhood farm - then shooting at it with an air rifle, and watching as each shattered kit spun off the deck to sink into the murky waters.

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!"

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:

Just couldn't resist posting this...

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

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

This is a picture they don't want you to see - the VH-71A presidential helicopter landing for the first time on the White House lawn. Sorry about the abysmal quality, but this is the first evidence that milestone ever occurred.

Earlier this year, Lockheed Martin conducted rotor downwash testing on the White House lawn using TV-1, an AgustaWestland EH101 on loan from the Italian navy. But no pictures were ever released.

Why? Nobody is saying. Perhaps it's because this helicopter is painted plain grey. The first VH-71 to carry the signature green-and-white scheme of the Marine One presidential helicopter has yet to arrive in the USA.

I was just checking the Pentagon picture site. Imagine my surprise at finding this beautiful study of a US Air Force F-4E Phantom II as the lead photograph. It seems Gen Ronald Keys, retiring as commander of Air Combat Command, got to pilot the beast on the final flight of his 40-year career.

And, yes, the USAF retired the F-4 some time ago. ACC says the 'Toom' flown by Gen Keys on his 'fini flight' was one of 50 QF-4 drones normally operated unmanned by the 82nd Aerial Target Squadron at Tyndall AFB.

"Don't shoot, I'm retired!" (USAF photo)

Flight has been all over Eclipse this past week. I interviewed CEO Vern Raburn about the start-up company's very public production ramp-up problems (watch for the feature in Flight International). My colleague John Croft flew back from NBAA in Atlanta in an Eclipse 500, and still has the silly grin on his face - you can read all about it on John's blog, As the Cro Flies.

And Flight's roving reporter Jeff Decker was in Tallahassee, Florida for the much-anticipated launch of DayJet's air-taxi service using Eclipse VLJs. I wish DayJet CEO Ed Iacobucci the very best of luck with his pioneering venture, but I can't resist posting these pictures taken by Jeff at the inaugural flight event in Tallahasse. Did someone say Florida is the Sunshine State?

It must be all this talk of reviving old ideas, but Robot World News is running a story about a new look at an old idea - too old for even me to remember - the cyclogyro.

The what? The cyclogyro is a sort of flying paddle steamer - lift and thrust is provided by several long, thin aerofoils that rotate around a horizontal shaft. It looks like this 1930s design (from The Douglas Self Site):

Now a paper published in IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics details an experimental cyclogyro-based micro-UAV. This incorporates a new variable angle-of-attack mechanism enabling it to hover, climb and fly backwards.

If you feel the urge to know more, there is an explanation of the cyclogyro at this National University of Singapore website. It includes this video of a tethered flight:

So Singapore Airlines is asking its passengers not to avail themselves of the horizontal entertainment opportunities in the double bed-equipped suites in its new A380s. I blame my colleague Kieran Daly who, with his journalist's questing mind, asked the question "Can you have sex on the A380?" on his blog Unusual Attitude.

Personally, I would be too preoccupied worrying whether they had managed to install all those miles of wiring correctly...

Browsing through the latest US patents issued to Boeing, my eyes were arrested by patent number 7,284,287 - Dual purpose lavatory. What two purposes?

According to the patent, the lavatory has two sections: one with a commode and sink and one with just a sink - thankfully with a divider between them. The idea is to "speed up cycles through the lavatories", to reduce wait times and shorten queues - basicially so those of you who just want to wash your hands don't get in the way of those of us who want to...do more.

Interesting that this design should come from Boeing, which brought us the "no-slam can", a quiet toilet seat developed specially for a Japanese 777 operator and Alan Mulally's pride and joy. Personally, I am wondering just how thin that divider is...

Back on the subject of new Boeing patents, here is one for "a method for facilitating emergency separation of in-flight refueling system components". Basically it is a "fuse" located between the hose and its drogue to allow the drogue to separate from the hose before damaging the probe or the hose.

If you wonder why such a thing might be needed, I have put together a compilation of clips showing things that can go wrong during aerial refuelling...

And while on the subject of aerial refueling...

The UK buying two 65,000t aircraft carriers does not seem fertile ground for comedy, but British satirists John Bird and John Fortune succeed in poking fun at the Royal Navy in this hilarious television sketch. They even take a swipe at the Joint Strike Fighter! Next subject Boeing's 787 production problems?

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, AIAA, the professional society for US aerospace engineers, is revitalising its identity with the marketing slogan "When did you know?". Assuming they weren't asking me when I realised that girls were different, I thought back to what first sparked my interest in aviation.

The farm in Scotland on which I grew up was in a low-flying zone. As a young lad I remember playing in the woods and looking up to see a Royal Air Force Avro Vulcan nuclear bomber fly overhead. It was all white, its black radome stark against the anti-flash paint scheme, so it must have been the early 1960s. I can't have been very old, but I was hooked.

As I grew up I watched F-101s, F-104s, F-111s, Phantoms, Bucanneers, Hawks, Harriers, Jaguars and Tornados from the RAF, USAF and other NATO air forces fly down the valleys and skim over the hills around the farm. Aircraft became an obsession (okay, girls too). If you go on the AIAA's website, you can read other people's stories of how their imagination was captured.

© The Flight Collection

What prompted Eurofighter to change its tune in Norway? Why is it packing up the band and not staying for the finale? Perhaps after reading the final paragraph of the Norwegian defence ministry's press release about its proposed 2008 budget it felt Oslo's priorities had changed:

"It is proposed that the funding allocated for military music should be increased in 2008 compared with 2007. The Government proposes a budget increase of NOK 2 million over and above the general strengthening of military music by the allocation of NOK 7.5 million in connection with the revised national budget in 2007."

"So long, farewell..."
(From airliners.net. Thanks to Trevor Barker for permission to use his picture)

Thanks to Matej on secretprojects.co.uk for pointing me towards this Slovak ministry of defence press release on the air force's newly updated MiG-29s. The Fulcrums have been upgraded by RSK MiG with glass cockpits and NATO-interoperable radios and IFF. Now they are getting new "digital" camouflage. All I can think is that aircraft modellers will drive themselves nuts trying to reproduce this colour scheme.

It's Christmas Day, and I didn't get any presents, so I thought I'd sit back with a glass of Old Curmudgeon's and test my remembory of the year past.

Anniversaries

100 years: powered vertical flight (Paul Cornu)...75 years: (Hawker) Beechcraft (and 60 years for the Bonanza)...50 years: Boeing 707

Milestones
8,000th Cessna piston single (since restart)...7,000th Boeing 737 (order)...5,000th Airbus (33 years) and Cessna Citation (35 years)...3,000th Boeing widebody...1,000th Boeing 777 (order) and Cessna CitationJet (delivery)

First flights
Lockheed CATBird (Jan)...Piasecki X-49A (Jun)...Boeing X-48B (Jul)...Embraer Phenom 100 (Jul)...Northrop Grumman E-2D Advanced Hawkeye (Aug)...Kawasaki XP-1

Rolled out (but not flown)
Boeing 787 (Jul)...Kawasaki C-X (Jul)...Sukhoi Superjet 100(Sep)...Lockheed Martin F-35B (Dec)...ACAC ARJ21 (Dec)

I'm off to warmer climes for a few days, so...

What better way to start the new year than with a looney plane. Following up on my flying cars post, Flight's cutaway artist Joe Picarella points me towards the eBay auction under way of the sole remaining Sky Commuter - a roadable VTOL aircraft designed by Flight Innovations and dating from the 1980s. I can't find much reliable information on the project, but the Q&A on the seller's site suggests the prototypes crashed and the survivor is a show mockup. I think I'll hold on to my money...

"No, it's my turn to drive..." (from the seller's eBay site)

"Room for one more?" (Sea Knight approaches Tarawa - US Navy photo)

Rotorhub has just posted an odd story. Conservationists in Alaska are seeking bids for removing rats from Rat Island in the Aleutians by using helicopters to broadcast poisoned grain pellets "from buckets guided by differential GPS". Precision-guided rodenticide - dashed clever, these conservation types! They want to get rid the rats so the seabirds will return. Two helicopters are needed, with "aerial rat baiting" to begin in October. If they succeed, what will they call the place, I wonder - the "Island Formerly Known As Rat"?

Gotta take precautions when there's rats around... (US Army photo)

"Final Countdown anyone?"

Another example of "visual aerodynamics", although usually the condensation cloud caused by the low pressure behind shockwaves is photographed from the side...

It ended up in a hangar covered in bird crap, that's what. A remnant of an unhappy time in NASA's recent history, the Orbital Sciences-built X-34 was photographed by Ashley Wallace in storage at Edwards AFB in California. The X-34 was built as a flying testbed to demonstrate technology for future low-cost reusable launch vehicles.

(Picture by Ashley Wallace, from airliners.net)

The unmanned X-34 was intended to be air launched from Orbital's Lockheed L-1011 mothership and accelerated to Mach 8 by a NASA-built oxygen/kerosene rocket engine. The vehicle was designed to land on a runway and fly up to 25 times to test composite structures, resuable propellant tanks and thermal protection systems, and autonomous flight operations.

Orbital got as far as captive-carry tests on the L-1011 before the X-34 was cancelled in 2001, along with Lockheed Martin's mightily ambitious X-33 single-stage-to-orbit RLV technology demonstrator (video). Spiralling costs and changes in NASA's RLV thinking were blamed. Two completed X-34s and parts for the third were transferred to the US Air Force.

In an aviation community as cosy, and as busy, as that of Wichita, Kansas, it's inevitable people will move from company to company, between Cessna, Learjet, Beechcraft, Boeing and Spirit. But here's one move that's worth noting: Hawker Beechcraft has just hired Russ Meyer III as its director of new product development. He is the son of famed Cessna boss Russ Meyer, and most recently he was programme manager for the Citation Mustang.

"If you would have told me six months ago that I was leaving Cessna, I would have said: 'You're crazy,' " Meyer tells the Wichita Eagle. Meyer says his father, who is chairman emeritus of Cessna, took the news well: "He takes things pretty businesslike." What next, a Boeing taking over at Airbus?

What's in, well not a name, not even a number, but in a single letter? $16 million according to a great story by Roxana Tiron in The Hill. That will be the cost of changing all the manuals if the US Air Force gets its way and redesignates Alenia's C-27J the C-27B.

The C-27J Spartan won the US Army/Air Force Joint Cargo Aircraft competition. The Army is to get 54 aircraft, and the Air Force 24, but the USAF gets to designate every US military aircraft and is calling its JCA the C-27B. Why? Because the USAF used to operate the C-27A Spartan, its designation for the C-27J's precursor, the Alenia G.222.

Now we all know B follows A, the same way F-35 follows, er, F-22...and F-117 follows...er...so the Air Force has to be right, yes?

"I'd like to be an F-27J, thank you."

(And you want ample evidence the US Air Force is quite happy to bend its own designation rules when it suits, check out Andreas Parsch's great site designation-systems.net)

Amazing story on Aviation News International about a Cessna Citation Mustang that has been repaired after being heavily damaged - a collapsed fuel tank and two broken wing spars - on its delivery flight:

"The crew...heard a bang at 18,000 feet during the descent into AGC, which was followed by a left-engine low fuel pressure warning. They then noticed distortion on top of the left wing and heard a second bang. The crew continued the descent and landed safely at AGC.

FAA inspectors found that Cessna workers inadvertently blocked the left fuel tank vent with adhesive vinyl, which covered the Croatian registration numbers while the aircraft carried a temporary N-number. This blockage prevented the inflow of air to replace fuel drawn from the tank by the engines, and the tank deformed."

...your harpoon decklock is broken?

"It's mine, I caught it first!" (US Navy photo)

Remember the privately owned ex-Royal Navy Sea Harrier that had to make an emergency vertical landing on only its second flight after being restored for the US airshow circuit? Well Elyse Moody of Overhaul & Maintenance magazine has an update on owner and pilot Art Nalls' efforts to get the beast back in the air.

I recommend you watch the video of the November 2007 emergency landing on Nalls' website - it's a pretty impressive achievement for someone who had not flown a Harrier for 18 years. The problem was a hydraulic failure, and the nosegear collapsed on touchdown. After some airframe repairs, the team is ready to attach the new radome and is waiting on parts to rebuild the hydraulic system. Fingers crossed, we should see the Shar on show circuit.

Sikorsky has flown its coaxial-rotor X2 Technology demonstrator, in secret. To keep the private-venture project out of the public eye, the company took the unusual step of flying the small helicopter indoors. But in a blow for Sikorsky security, clandestine video of the secret first flight has been posted on youtube.

From the video, it's clear the initial flight was conducted in hover mode and the tail-mounted propeller, which is expected to push the X2 to speeds as high as 250kt, was not engaged. The helicopter, which has a pair of rigid contra-rotating rotors, lifts off quickly, but appears "twitchy" in the hover. Another potential problem is the noise, which one observer describes as "irritating as h*ll after a few seconds".

The previous post was obviously a hoax, but the joke backfired on me as I set the wrong release time!

"Wake me up when its April 1st"

Here's the thing, after almost 30 years I am departing Flight International for pastures new. I have seven days until The Woracle's last post. So how best to mark this momentous life change? With pictures, of course. You know The Woracle: a picture is worth 1,000 words delivered after deadline.

And where best to begin than with the first aircraft I worked on as a rookie aeronautical engineer: the Hawker Siddeley (now BAE Systems) Hawk, the last aircraft to carry the hallmark, artfully curved, Hawker fin:

Ahhh, Hawker (Crown Copyright - a Geoff Lee picture, I think)

Ed Heinemann is a hero of mine. At Douglas, he designed some of my favourite aeroplanes: the A-1 Skyraider, A-3 Skywarrior, A-4 Skyhawk and F4D Skyray. I got the chance to interview Ed in 1979, when I was researching a feature to mark delivery of the last Skyhawk, an A-4M to the US Marine Corps.

I interviewed Ed by phone from Flight’s office, then on Stamford Street in Central London. He was recovering from a stroke, but the interview was going extremely well, I thought, when the fire alarm went off at my end…

Heinmann's Hot Rod (US Navy photo)

Confession time: I am prone to irrational, unjustifiable dislikes when it comes to aeroplanes. More often than not it is an aircraft about which more fuss was made than the aircraft was worth - in my opinion, I hasten to add. Usually that fuss was being made in the pages of Flight and getting in the way of what I wanted to write (3,000-word features on ring laser gyros, that sort of thing).

Top of the list has to be the BAe 146, which must have appeared in the pages of Flight more frequently than any other aircraft over my 30 years. Why? Because it's British and because a former Flight editor had an obsession with the 146 and the Royal Family....

Rule Britannia! (Crown Copyright)

While at Hawker Siddeley, in 1977, I worked my way into the Future Projects office. I arrived just as they were submitting a proposal for Air Staff Target 403, for an advanced STOVL fighter to replace the RAF’s Harriers and Jaguars. After I joined Flight, I returned to Hawkers to interview my ex-boss. I was recognised and waved through by security, only to meet a couple of former colleagues carrying a windtunnel model of the latest secret ASTOVL design down the stairs! (It was the P.1216, for secretprojects.co.uk afficionados).

My post-Hawker honeymoon ended when I displeased Harrier chief designer John Fozard by saying the UK should join the US in developing the AV-8B Harrier II rather than pursuing the homegrown “Big Wing” Harrier. But I’m quite sure the AV-8B cemented the UK-US V/STOL relationship and paved the way for the Harrier’s eventual replacement, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

STO-ing in the rain (US Navy photo)

It didn't have foreplanes, or thrust vectoring, but one of the most enjoyable aircraft I've seen on the airshow circuit was Northrop's F-20 Tigershark. I remember sitting in a traffic jam outside Le Bourget, watching the F-20 literally skid sideways above my head - powered by sheer marketing exuberance...or maybe desperation, as the Tigershark was that strangest of beasts - a private-venture export fighter.

When I joined Flight in 1978, the F-5 was already viewed as a fighter from a previous generation (although the last one was not delivered until 1989!) That changed when Northrop announced the revamped F-5G, later redesignated as the more marketable F-20. It was definitely an F-5, but with distinctly modern touches: the shark nose, the reprofiled canopy, the muscular F404 engine.

Red, white and whoo!

Early in my career on Flight I developed a fascination with fly-by-wire and the possibilities it offered for advanced configurations and new modes of flying. I wrote in excrutiating detail about a series of advanced flight-control demonstrators with extra bits attached to "relax stability" and basically fool the plane into thinking it was way more manoeuvrable than it really was.

They included MBB's F-104 Control Configured Vehicle, British Aerospace's Active Control Technology (ACT) Jaguar, and the USAF's Advanced Fighter Technology Integration (AFTI) F-16. Two that particularly caught my imagination were Rockwell's unmanned HiMAT and Grumman's forward swept wing X-29.

"Lizard-skinned Warthogs flit through German valleys en route to a rendezvous with tree-hugging Cobras." Okay, that was definitely one of my more lurid feature intros. It was written in 1979, shortly after the Fairchild A-10, aka the Warthog, arrived in Europe. And in those days they carried the European 1, aka Lizard, colour scheme. But I'm not sure now where the Cobras came in...

I wrote the feature after visiting the A-10s' forward operating base at Sembach, Germany. The trip involved a couple of days being driven around in a NATO car listening to news and music on the radio, in the course of which I discovered there is no German for "Kentucky Bluegrass" or, it would seem, "100 call girls". I wish I had understood the rest of what they were saying.

This is my last blog post for Flight, and I've realised I never introduced myself. I'm Graham Warwick. I was brought up in the Scottish Borders, on a hill farm, in a low-flying zone, where I learned to hate sheep, but love aeroplanes. I then studied aeronautical engineering at Southampton University, which was as far from Scotland (and sheep) as I could get.

My first job was as a graduate engineer at Hawker Siddeley Aviation in Kingston, outside London. I learned a lot about designing and building aircraft, but an engineering career was not for me. My second job was as a reporter and editor for Flight International. That one lasted almost 30 years - very enjoyable years, working alongside some great people.

The Woracle is the nickname given to me by my wife as a gentle (I think) jibe at the encyclopedic knowledge of aerospace I have accumulated over the years at Flight. Now I am moving on, and you will see my name appearing somewhere else. Thanks to all of you for reading Flight and visiting The Woracle. Till we meet again....

"Of course I know what I'm doing..." (Canadian Forces photo)