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Aviation History
1998
1998 - 2274.PDF
BSMSSt&L AVIATION Meridian on course for 2000 certification GRAHAM WARWICK/WASHINGTON DC NEW PIPER Aircraft flew the single-turboprop Malibu Meridian for the first time on 21 August, 10 days ahead of schedule. The Vero Beach, Florida-based manufacturer says there were "no major problems" on the maiden flight of the turboprop derivative of its Malibu Mirage high-perfor mance piston single. The aircraft is the first of four prototypes which will be used for flight tests leading to certification in the year 2000. Deliveries of the six-place, pressurised $1.35 million aircraft are scheduled to begin in mid-2000. New Piper says it has orders for more tlian 90 Meridians. The aircraft is powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A- 42A derated to 260kW (350hp). This will provide a time between overhauls of 3,500h, with a hot- section inspection (performed on- aircraft) at l,750h. Cruise speed will be 262kt(485km/h) at 30,000ft (9,100m) and range will be 1,980km (l,070nm), thanks to a 190 litre (50USgal) increase in fuel capacity to 645 litres. Other changes to the original Mirage include adding a leading- edge cuff at the wing root and increasing die size of the horizontal stabiliser by 37%. With these changes, New Piper expects to keep the Meridian's stall speed below the 61kt limit for aircraft certificated to US FAR 23 rules. New Piper has also announced that the Meridian will be equipped with a new "glass cockpit" avionics suite. This will be based around dual Garmin GNS 350 naviga tion/communications systems, each with a global positioning sys tem receiver, large-screen moving map display and VHF transceiver with 8.33kHz channel spacing. Meggit Avionics will supply the engine instrument display system, with dual liquid-crystal displays, and the optional flat-panel elec tronic flight display system. The latter includes primary flight and navigation displays for pilot and copilot and solid-state air-data atti tude heading reference system. Meanwhile, S-Tec will supply its System 550 autopilot, to be fitted as standard and fully coupled to the GNS 3 50, New Piper says. 3 Pirelli acquires controlling stake in charter company Eurofly PIRELLI HAS snapped up a majority share in Italy's largest executive air charter and manage ment company, Eurofly. The tyre and cable manufacturer has in creased its share from 10% to 65 %, having acquired the remaining 20% share from the Valla family and the bulk of the stake held by computer giant Olivetti. The Turin Airport-based company is now majority owned by Pirelli, with Olivetti holding a 25% stake and private investors the remaining 10%. "This is only an intermediate step, we are expecting further changes to the company over the next three months," says Eurofly's chief executive Domenico Osella. Osella declines to disclose details of the changes, but it is believed that an outside company is interested in taking a shareholding. Eurofly, which operates and manages a fleet of 16 aircraft from its bases in Milan, Florence, Bologne and Treviso, and was set up in 1978 by the Valla family and Olivetti, has an annual turnover of 11.3 billion lire ($30 million), which it hopes will significantly increase once the new investor is on board. "We would like to expand into Europe and renew our fleet at some stage, but there are no imme diate plans," adds Osella. • NEWS IN BRIEF • ICE SHIELD APPROVAL B/E-SMR Technologies, the recently acquired Florida- based unit of B/E Aerospace, has received supplemental- type certificates (STCs) for its newly developed Ice Shield pneumatic de-icing system on the Piper Navajo series and Raytheon Aircraft Beech King Air 200. The sys tem incorporates new edge sealing and tapered-edge design technology. • UNILINK FOR HAWKER Universal Avionics Systems UniLink air-to-ground, two- way datalink has been certi fied for use on the Raytheon Aircraft Hawker 800XP. UniLink enables datalink communications between ground-based service prov iders and an aircraft which is equipped with a Universal Avionics UNS-1 flight man agement system. UAV breaks record with transatlantic crossing AN UNINHABITED aerial vehicle (UAV) completed a 3,200km (2,000nm) transat lantic flight on 21 August using only 6 litres (2 USgal) of fuel dur ing the 26h crossing. The record flight was achieved by an Aerosonde "robotic" aircraft built by com posite manufacturing specialist RnR Products of Milpitas, Cali fornia. It was developed over the past three years by Washington- based Insitu Group, an aero space research and development firm, the University of Washington, and Environ mental Systems and Services of Melbourne, Australia. The project aimed to demon strate the viability of low-cost autonomous aircraft for long range, overwater weather recon naissance, and was sponsored by the Australian Bureau of Meteor ology Research Centre, Boeing, L-3 Communications, Conic Division and the US Office of Naval Research. Further flights Transatlantic trip began from the top of a car parked on Belt Island, Newfoundland with a weather data gathering pack are planned for mid-1999 off the Pacific Northwest. Before the transatlantic attempt, field trials were also conducted off the coasts of Western Australia, Vancouver Island and the South China Sea. The 2.7m- span UAV is powered by a 20cc engine and weighs 13.1kg. After being launched from the top of a car from Bell Island, Newfoundland at 06.29 local time on 20 August, it navi gated autonomously across the Atlantic using its onboard global positioning satellite navigation system. Following a pre-pro grammed flight path to the Benbecula military range it acti vated a beacon which was picked up by engineers at the Scottish base at 1.15 on 21 August. The ground crew took over manual remote control and landed it 2 5min later on South Uist Island in the Outer Hebrides. The UAV was one of three despatched, but was the only one to complete the journey. The University of Washington says: "We're not quite sure what hap pened to the first. It just disap peared after take-off on Monday". The second, released shortly after the first, crashed "within a minute of take-off because of a technical malfunction". • FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 2 - 8 September 1998
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