NASA tests helicopter airbag
By Tim McAdams
In an effort to protect pilots and passengers involved in helicopter accidents, NASA engineer Sotiris Kellas developed a high-tech honeycomb airbag known as a “deployable energy absorber.” The device is made of Kevlar and has a unique flexible hinge design that lets the honeycomb be packaged tight and remain flat until deployed. Kellas initially came up with the idea as a way to cushion the next generation of astronaut-carrying space capsules, but soon realized it had many other possible applications.
NASA tested the system using a 240-foot tall structure (once used to teach astronauts how to land on the moon) at the agency’s Langley Research Center. NASA engineers dropped a MD-500 helicopter, donated by the U.S. Army, from a height of 35 feet to see whether its deployable energy absorber could handle the impact. The test helicopter hit the ground at about 54 mph and at a 33-degree angle. Engineers considered that speed and angle to represent a severe helicopter crash. The helicopter was equipped with instruments that collected 160 channels of data.
On impact the helicopter’s skid landing gear bent outward, but the airbag attached to the undercarriage prevented the rotorcraft’s fuselage from touching the ground. The four crash test dummies inside the helicopter showed minor impact damage. One dummy, provided by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, had a special torso equipped with simulated internal organs. Preliminary test results revealed protective benefits to pilots and passengers, allowing NASA to continue testing the concept.
December 14, 2009
from AOPA Online
http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2009/091214heloairbag.html?WT.mc_id=091218epilot&WT.mc_sect=gan
Friday, December 18, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
New fuel for general aviation?
Swift Fuel prepares for flight tests
By Dave Hirschman
Swift Enterprises has announced Dec. 14 that it will begin large-scale tests of its unleaded, renewable fuel that it hopes to offer as a drop-in replacement for avgas.
The Indiana-based company uses biomass such as sorghum and switch grass to produce a high-octane fuel that it says could replace leaded avgas in piston-engine airplanes. The fuel has been tested in FAA and independent laboratories and flown in a few Experimental-category airplanes.
The test program will be coordinated with the FAA, and an extensive series of flight tests, data gathering, and evaluations must be conducted before the fuel known as 100SF can be certified for broad use in the general aviation fleet. Swift officials said the tests will begin as soon as the company receives FAA approval, and the tests themselves are likely to last up to two years.
Engine and airframe manufacturers with sophisticated data gathering equipment will perform the bulk of the flight tests.
Unlike other unleaded fuels, 100SF has an octane rating as high as avgas. Swift Enterprises has built a pilot plant in West Lafayette, Ind., the company says can produce about 200 gallons of 100SF a day.
Swift officials say 100SF will be “comparably priced, environmentally friendlier, and more fuel efficient” than avgas.
December 15, 2009
From AOPA Online
http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2009/091215swift.html
By Dave Hirschman
Swift Enterprises has announced Dec. 14 that it will begin large-scale tests of its unleaded, renewable fuel that it hopes to offer as a drop-in replacement for avgas.
The Indiana-based company uses biomass such as sorghum and switch grass to produce a high-octane fuel that it says could replace leaded avgas in piston-engine airplanes. The fuel has been tested in FAA and independent laboratories and flown in a few Experimental-category airplanes.
The test program will be coordinated with the FAA, and an extensive series of flight tests, data gathering, and evaluations must be conducted before the fuel known as 100SF can be certified for broad use in the general aviation fleet. Swift officials said the tests will begin as soon as the company receives FAA approval, and the tests themselves are likely to last up to two years.
Engine and airframe manufacturers with sophisticated data gathering equipment will perform the bulk of the flight tests.
Unlike other unleaded fuels, 100SF has an octane rating as high as avgas. Swift Enterprises has built a pilot plant in West Lafayette, Ind., the company says can produce about 200 gallons of 100SF a day.
Swift officials say 100SF will be “comparably priced, environmentally friendlier, and more fuel efficient” than avgas.
December 15, 2009
From AOPA Online
http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2009/091215swift.html
CAP in aviation news
Flying for the public good
In 43 years in the Air Force—with the Air National Guard, on active duty as a fighter pilot—Gene Hartman served across the United States and in Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, and Taiwan before retiring as a colonel.
It was a career he said he “enjoyed very much,” but Hartman would go on to find fulfillment, too, in the missions he flew for the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) following Hurricane Katrina.
Hartman was based for a month in Hattiesburg, Miss., beginning just a week after the massive storm hit the Gulf of Mexico on Aug. 28, 2005. Hartman and his team made several daily flights to New Orleans to assist in the post-Katrina recovery efforts, piloting the CAP’s eight general aviation planes, including Cessna 206s and Gippsland GA8s. They brought water, newspapers, and other supplies to affected residents. They also transported members of the media and relief personnel, especially officials of the Army Corps of Engineers who needed to examine the state of area bridges and roads.
Hartman called the destruction and the conditions he witnessed “very difficult for the [residents] to cope with.” He viewed his role, he said, as a mission, as a “job … that had to be done for the community.”
“It was something I volunteered to do,” Hartman explained. “If you volunteer for something, you do whatever the job requires you to do. I’m retired, so it’s easy for me. A lot of people with [another] job could only stay four [to] five days and had to be back at their company.”
Hartman has used GA airplanes often in his CAP volunteer work, including search-and-rescue flights to locate airplanes that disappeared, radar calibration flights, and flying Environmental Protection Agency officials to do imaging photographs of flooded areas in Missouri.
Hartman has been a devoted CAP member for 38 years, serving primarily in the Washington, D.C., area. He became involved with the group beginning in 1971 after completing the Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College in Alabama, and facing a transfer to Hawaii. Hartman wanted to find an activity that appealed to his 14-year-old son Randy, and suggested the CAP. Randy went on to become a pilot and now is an engineer in Minnesota.
An adjunct to the Air Force, CAP has more than 1,500 chapters, known as units, across the country. CAP members perform such community services as lending a hand following natural disasters, laying wreaths on the graves of those killed in uniform, and volunteering at such events as airshows and presidential inaugurations. Its youth cadet programs bring the excitement of flight and aerospace to teenagers and educate them on conducting search-and-rescue missions. In the last few years, three of the National Flight Academy cadets whom Hartman taught to fly earned their private pilot certificate.
“Leadership is one of the main things we try to instill in them,” he said. “The cadet program is probably the most important thing we do, in my mind. Seeing them do it and move on is rewarding.”
A former wing and region commander for CAP’s Middle East (Washington) division, Hartman now serves as its homeland security officer and advanced technology leader. He recently received the FAA’s Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award, honoring those with 50 or more consecutive years of safe flight operations.
Hartman flies his Cessna 337 when he can, but with all his activities, he said, “it’s not often enough.” Of his more than half-century of flight, Hartman said, “I’ve had a good career and a good life.”
He added: “I put in about 10 hours a day for Civil Air Patrol doing something. Everything we do is important.”
—By Hillel Kuttler
from GA serves America
http://gaservesamerica.com/stories/091209hartman.html?WT.mc_id=091211epilot&WT.mc_sect=gasa
Commercial space flight in the near futire?
Virgin unveils SpaceShipTwo
The spacecraft that may be the vehicle for the first commercial “spaceline” for suborbital space tourism flights was unveiled Dec. 7 in Mojave, Calif.
SpaceShipTwo is the sequel to Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipOne, which completed the world’s first manned private space flights in 2004. The spacecraft was unveiled with its mother ship, WhiteKnightTwo, at sundown at Mojave Air and Spaceport. Like its predecessor, it is designed by a team at Burt Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, and features carbon composite construction, but it is about twice the size of SpaceShipOne and is designed to carry six passengers and two pilots.
Rutan and Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson were on hand for the unveiling of the spacecraft, which Virgin says has been designed to take many thousands of private astronauts into space. The joint venture between Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites has a goal of launching daily space tourism flights from Spaceport America in New Mexico—for tourists able to shell out $200,000 per flight.
“The unveil of SS2 takes the Virgin Galactic vision to the next level and continues to provide tangible evidence that this ambitious project is not only moving rapidly, but also making tremendous progress towards our goal of safe commercial operation,” Branson said in a press release.
After a test program is completed, Virgin Galactic plans to start commercial flights with SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo, which was unveiled in 2008 and has been undergoing testing. WhiteKnightTwo, the largest all-composite aircraft ever built, will carry the spaceship to above 50,000 feet powered by four Pratt & Whitney PW308A engines. SpaceShipTwo will then detach and fire its hybrid rocket motor, currently under development, and launch into space, according to the company.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson christened SpaceShipTwo with the name Virgin Space Ship (VSS) Enterprise. The WhiteKnightTwo at the unveiling is named Virgin Mothership (VMS) Eve, after Branson’s mother.
From AOPA Online.
http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2009/091208virginspace.html?WT.mc_id=091211epilot&WT.mc_sect=gan
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