Simon Brown of Timaru has provided these neat pics of Aero L-29 ZK-SSU (c/n 395100) arriving at its new home in Timaru on Sunday 31-07-2011. It flew from New Plymouth via Woodbourne and was met just out of Timaru by the Piper PA31-325 Navajo ZK-NOW2.

It is now housed in the same hangar as its comrade Aero L-29 ZK-VAU.

By all accounts it's been a good show.  I talked with several LSA vendors who, despite the pitiful wrangling in Congress over the debt and general lack of a strong economic bounceback, either wrote some sales or were 90% certain they would.
 U.S. sales leader Flight Design even announced they'd written $11 million worth of business at the show.

 I talked with John Gilmore, the U.S. sales manager for Tom Peghiny's U.S. Flight Design operation, who briefed me on the new, four-seat, to-be-certified Flight Design C4 the other day (I'll post more in the next few days).
John also updated Dan Johnson today on the company's excellent numbers at the show:
"We have taken 40 orders for the new C4 plus another 8 orders for Light-Sport Aircraft here at AirVenture 2011," said John.
The C4 debuted in Europe in April and a full-scale mockup seen here was prominent in the display all week.  Historical note: Flight Design has topped the LSA sales leader board since the category was created in 2004, an impressive run due in large part to an excellent management style and top customer support and service.

Remos GX NXT upgrade model

I was up at the crack o' dawn to fly the new Remos NXT, which has some new features such as a new panel profile that gives more viewing room on top and more leg room underneath - very nice and it definitely feels roomier.  The avionics upgrade features Garmin Aera 500 GPS, and the Dynon SkyView glass cockpit with electronic flight instruments, embedded transponder, and engine monitoring.  Dynon is winning over cockpits left and right with the SkyView, and no wonder: it's got it all, at a price that's magnitudes cheaper than equivalent certified glassworks.
The NXT also refines placement of some control knobs in the cockpit and adds visors and air vents to keep things cool.
Personally my flight in beautiful, calm dawn air reinforced my impression from my flight report 18 months back that there is no finer LSA of the 30 or so I've flown so far in terms of sheer joyful handling.  I hadn't flown one in all that time, yet made two greaser landings with hardly any coaching from my demo host, Ryan Hernandez, who admirably handled the Oshkosh chores for Arkansas dealer Tommy Lee and his Adventure Flight dealership.
The Remos turns so smoothly, is so light on the controls yet not twitchy or oversensitive at all, and as I said back then, as soon as you lift off, you feel like you've been flying the airplane every day.  Really quite an achievement in aerodynamics for Remos.
It's beautiful interior is a testimony to the fit and finish of the entire plane.  In you're in the market for a comfortable, really fun-flying LSA, certainly put Remos on the list.  I know it's on my top ten (a list that constantly changes as I fly more airplanes...but Remos has stayed there since my first flight.
One closing note then on to the show, time to line up some last flights and say goodbye to friends and colleagues in the industry.
It's not an LSA-centric product, but this cute idea, Mutt Muffs, reminds us that any time we go flying with our sensitive-hearing furry friends means we want to help them enjoy the ride too.  'Nuff said.
Scroll down for more pix of the Remos GX NXT upgrade model below.
I'll have another pickup blog for Oshkosh probably in two-three days as I'm flying home in the new Evektor Harmony with AB Flight's Art Tarola
tomorrow...if we can get all our gear into one airplane!

Leading Edge intake for new cabin vents

Two SkyViews and an Aera 500...oh boy.

Top-notch interior features rearranged knobs, smoother workflow

Room With A View...what a wonderful age we live in.

31 Juli 2011



Harpoon anti ship missiles (photo : rightwing)

THE Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) will have missiles in its arsenal within President Benigno Aquino III's term of office, a senator and former soldier said Wednesday.

In his State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Monday, Aquino promised capability upgrades and modern equipment for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

He said the BRP Gregorio Del Pilar, a former US Coast Guard cutter, may just be the first of "more vessels in the future — these, in addition to helicopters and patrol craft."

"If we mean decent armed forces that can maintain peace, that can be done within the next few years under President Aquino," Trillanes said.

"What we expect is that, finally, within his term, that we finally get missile technology. We're really lagging behind (other militaries)," he said, adding the AFP should also eventually buy submarines.

He said Filipino soldiers are trained well but lack equipment.

"We send officer to train abroad, so they have their skills upgraded. We are on standard as far as training and indoctrination is concerned," he said.

Trillanes, a former Navy lieutenant, said he has already seen some of the President's efforts to reform the AFP.

Aquino has put up housing projects for soldiers. Their combat pay has also been raised to P500 a month from P240 a month.

Soldiers in combat operations also get P150 a day as “combat incentive pay.”

"He exceeded the expectations in this regard," Trillanes said.

Trillanes was jailed for more than seven years for his participation in mutinies against the administration of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. He, along with more than 300 soldiers, was granted amnesty by the Aquino administration.

(SunStar)

Not all that common a sight at NZCH was this Cessna C208B Grand Caravan ZK-SAA (c/n 208B-0862).

This Sounds Air Travel & Tourism Ltd Cessna was in for fuel before heading down to Invercargill on Friday 29th.

Pilatus PC-6 B2-H2 ZK-XIT2 was photographed at Helicare Maintenance hangar at Nelson airport as far back as 07-06-2011 by Peter Campbell.

It has yet to appear on the official aircraft register as such.

It is off course none other than ZK-JML2 (c/n 653) being prepared for its new owner Skydive Nelson Ltd.

Check out an earlier blog on this aircraft at :-

http://design-plane.blogspot.com/2011/06/change-of-ownership-for-porter-zk-jml.html

Addendum 02-08-2011:-
This airframe was re-designated from the PC-6 B1-H2 to the PC-6 B2-H2 model on 25-07-2011, and finally re-registered to ZK-XIT2 on 01-08-2011.

Addendum 02-08-2011 1345hrs:-
I note today that this is has been re-designated again - now as a model PC-6/B2-H4; but it still has the lower MCTOW of 2199 kg and not the B2-H4 MCTOW of 2600kg.

 zkddg has kindly sent in these shots of Mooney M20C-3266 ZK-CPP as shot off Kaiti Hill, Gisborne today.

Very nice thank you.

Adria to bid farewell to Paris, London, Istanbul and Warsaw

Adria Airways’ Board of Directors has approved a restructuring plan for the debt stricken Slovenian national airline which will see the suspension of four destinations, a fleet reduction and a slash in jobs. Speaking to the national broadcaster RTV SLO, Adria Airways' Executive Director Robert Vuga said that the airline is likely to suspend flights to Paris, London, Istanbul and Warsaw. Vuga says that these routes are not profitable. The airline will decrease its fleet, although it hasn’t disclosed any further details to the public yet. Adria’s employees will also be reduced with the airline preparing redundancy packages and social programs. Adria currently employs only 450 people.

As of this moment, Adria Airways operates 14 weekly flights to Istanbul, 5 weekly to London Gatwick, 10 weekly to Paris and 3 weekly flights to Warsaw, which are code-shared by LOT Polish Airlines. Lufthasa is likely to take the airline's slots at these airports. Adria Airways is expecting to receive 50 million Euros in state aid and will borrow a further 40 million Euros from the banks. Both of these are under the condition that the airline carries out the restructuring plan it just approved.

This high-pressure air then enters the combustion area, where a ring of fuel injectors injects a steady stream of fuel. The fuel is generally kerosene, jet fuel, propane or n­atural gas. If you think about how easy it is to blow a candle out, then you can see the design problem in the combustion area -- entering this area is high-pressure air moving at hundreds of miles per hour. You want to keep a flame burning continuously in that environment. The piece that solves this problem is called a "flame holder," or sometimes a "can." The can is a hollow, perforated piece of heavy metal. Half of the can in cross-section is shown below:

The injectors are at the right. Compressed air enters through the perforations. Exhaust gases exit at the left. You can see in the previous figure that a second set of cylinders wraps around the inside and the outside of this perforated can, guiding the compressed intake air into the perforations.

So wh­y does the M-1 tank use a 1,500 horsepower gas turbine engine instead of a diesel engine? It turns out that there are two big advantages of the turbine over the diesel:

• Gas turbine engines have a great power-to-weight ratio compared to reciprocating engines. That is, the amount of power you get out of the engine compared to the weight of the engine itself is very good.
• Gas turbine engines are smaller than their reciprocating counterparts of the same power.

The main disadvantage of gas turbines is that, compared to a reciprocating engine of the same size, they areexpensive. Because they spin at such high speeds and because of the high operating temperatures, designing and manufacturing gas turbines is a tough problem from both the engineering and materials standpoint. Gas turbines also tend to use more fuel when they are idling, and they prefer a constant rather than a fluctuating load. That makes gas turbines great for things like transcontinental jet aircraft and power plants, but explains why you don't have one under the hood of your car.

At the left of the engine is the turbine section. In this figure there are two sets of turbines. The first set directly drives the compressor. The turbines, the shaft and the compressor all turn as a single unit:

At the far left is a final turbine stage, shown here with a single set of vanes. It drives the output shaft. This final turbine stage and the output shaft are a completely stand-alone, freewheeling unit. They spin freely without any connection to the rest of the engine. And that is the amazing part about a gas turbine engine -- there is enough energy in the hot gases blowing through the blades of that final output turbine to generate 1,500 horsepower and drive a 63-ton tank. A gas turbine engine really is that simple.

In the case of the turbine used in a POWER PLANT, there really is nothing to do with the exhaust gases but vent them through an exhaust pipe, as shown. Sometimes the exhaust will run through some sort of heat exchanger either to extract the heat for some other purpose or to preheat air before it enters the combustion chamber.

The discussion here is obviously simplified a bit. For example, we have not discussed the areas of bearings, oiling systems, internal support structures of the engine, stator vanes and so on. All of these areas become major engineering problems because of the tremendous temperatures, pressures and spin rates inside the engine. But the basic principles described here govern all gas turbine engines and help you to understand the basic layout and operation of the engine.

Gas turbine engines are, theoretically, extremely simple. They have three parts:

• Compressor - Compresses the incoming air to high pressure
• Combustion area - Burns the fuel and produces high-pressure, high-velocity gas
• Turbine - Extracts the energy from the high-pressure, high-velocity gas flowing from the combustion chamber

The following figure shows the general layout of an axial-flow gas turbine -- the sort of engine you would find driving the rotor of a helicopter.

For E.G

In this engine, air is sucked in from the right by the compressor. The compressor is basically a cone-shaped cylinder with small fan blades attached in rows (eight rows of blades are represented here). Assuming the light blue represents air at normal air pressure, then as the air is forced through the compression stage its pressure rises significantly. In some engines, the pressure of the air can rise by a factor of 30. The high-pressure air produced by the compressor is shown in dark blue.

Interesting Facts about Aerospace Engineering!!!

• Aerospace engineering is the branch of engineering behind the design, construction and science of aircraft and spacecraft
• The energy released by the three Space Shuttle main engines is equivalent to the output of 23 Hoover Dams.
• Participate in flight test programs to measure take-off distances, rate of climb, stall speeds, manoeuvrability and landing capacities

30 Juli 2011

RSAF's KC-135 tanker aircraft (photo : Scramble)

In Asia, Singapore is actively working toward finding replacements for its four KC-135Rs. Industry executives say Singapore’s ministry of defense has been speaking to aircraft manufacturers about this. One industry executive says a tender is expected to be issued next year, with a decision likely in early 2013.

An important requirement is that the new tankers will assist the Singapore air force’s Boeing F-15SGs to fly between Singapore and its overseas detachment at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, industry executives say. Singapore’s air force also has an overseas detachment of Lockheed Martin F-16C/Ds at Luke AFB, Ariz.

Close ties between the Singapore and U.S. air forces would ordinarily mean Boeing would be the frontrunner to win the Singapore contract, but this time around the Airbus Military A330MRTT is the favorite, according to industry executives outside of Airbus Military.

Besides Airbus Military, another possible contender is Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). Singapore and Israel have close defense ties and IAI’s Bedek Aviation has a program that converts Boeing 767s to tankers.

There is also a competition in India for six tankers, with the A330MRTT and the Ilyushin Il-78 tanker shortlisted, as Boeing has already decided to rule itself out of that competition.

Full Article :
Asians, Europeans Seek Aerial Refuelers

(Aviation Week)

30 Juli 2011

At present, nine countries -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia, Spain, Italy, Brazil, India and Thailand -- have a total of 20 aircraft carriers of varying capacities in service. (image : Xinhua)

China needs at least three aircraft carriers: general

BEIJING - CHINA needs at least three aircraft carriers to defend its interests, a general said, days after the state media broadcast footage of its first carrier in a rare public mention of the project.

'If we consider our neighbours, India will have three aircraft carriers by 2014 and Japan will have three carriers by 2014,' General Luo Yuan, a senior researcher with the Academy of Military Sciences, was quoted as saying by Beijing News.

'So I think the number (for China) should not be less than three so we can defend our rights and our maritime interests effectively.' His comments, published on Friday, came after China sought to downplay the capability of its first aircraft carrier, saying on Wednesday the vessel would be used for training and 'research'.

Beijing believes that the three Japanese carriers it referred to, built for helicopter operations, could eventually be converted into full aircraft carriers.

China recently confirmed it was revamping an old Soviet ship to be its first carrier, a project that has added to regional worries over the country's fast military expansion and growing assertiveness on territorial issues.

'We are currently re-fitting the body of an old aircraft carrier, and will use it for scientific research, experiments and training,' defence ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng told a news briefing.

(Straits Times)

Busy times for Zagreb

Airports across Croatia recorded a rise in passenger figures for the month of June as the tourist season kicked in. Zagreb continues to see impressive passenger growth in 2011.

The country’s busiest international airport, Zagreb, saw its figures jump by 14.5%, with the airport handling 229.551 passengers. During the month the airport welcomed its millionth passenger in 2011 and ended the first 6 months of the year with 1.062.590 passengers, up 16.9% on the same period last year. Split, Dubrovnik, Pula, Rijeka and Zadar all saw their passenger numbers increase between 5 and 10%. Rijeka’s fortunes have finally turned for the better. The airport handled 14.056 passengers, an increase of 50.5%.

Osijek was the only major airport to see its numbers decline. It handled 3.335 passengers, which is 42 passengers less than in June 2010, thus representing a decrease of 1.2%.

Below you can review the performance of Croatia’s airports in June 2011. Overall, Croatian airports handled 693.038 passengers, an increase of 10.7% compared to June 2010. The statistics have been provided by the Croatian Bureau of Statistics.

Airport	Passengers JUN 2011	Passengers JUN 2010	Change (%)
Zagreb	229.551	200.515	▲ 14.5
Dubrovnik	179.950	167.931	▲ 7.2
Pula	56.208	53.159	▲ 5.7
Split	169.415	154.778	▲ 9.5
Zadar	37.065	33.838	▲ 9.5
Osijek	3.335	3.377	▼ 1.2
Rijeka	14.056	9.341	▲ 50.5
Mali Lošinj	942	938	▼ 0.4

It's late, I got heat stroked a bit in the beautiful but intensely sunny day so I'm going to post some pix of some things I saw at the show with short captions and will hope to get back with more details once my feet stop throbbing and my brain temps cool down a bit.
A beautiful day in Oshkosh.  Everybody was catching up on flying after being in the gloom and doom for two days.
The electric symposium went off well, I assume, although I missed it, had to try and get in a thrice-postponed flight with Remos...which was postponed yet again, bummer.  That's happening now at 6 am...about 7 hours from now.  Yark!

Calin Gologan, the freshly bestowed LEAP Award, and Elektra One.  Exciting times ahead.

I had a nice chat with Calin Gologan, the extremely tall creator of the Elektra One that won the Lindbergh LEAP award today.  He told me they have achieved a battery storage density improvement that will allow them to make a 500 mile flight in Germany, they hope, this August.  

A very nice, very brilliant man.

Remos GX getting some help from the line dude.  Lots and lots of traffic today.

 LSA Mall seemed to be buzzing all day long...

The Corbi Air Alto 100 was there, with an installed air conditioner!  Very nice install, they'll be selling them to experimental builders and LSA makers too.

Nice air plenum in the Alto 100 sends cooling air over the canopy.  An integrated heating element defrost too...I bet Ron Corbi will sell a lot of these.

Hansen Air Group's gorgeous FK12 Comet acro S-LSA is here too...so much foot traffic has come, it's worn out the grass next to the plane!

busy busy busy

Randy Schlitter's newly reworked S7 with cool

New balanced ailerons for the S7

Legend Aircraft's new Super Legend.  Lovely!

Singapore Airlines logo

 

Singapore Airlines Routes Map

Singapore Airlines is an airline based in Singapore. The airline connects Singapore as a center of world business and all the cities in the world. For additional information, Singapore Airlines is the first airline in the world with the Airbus A 380.

Singapore Airlines flights to United States

 A re-run of Question time # 133 for you.
Top picture is a full view of the offending item: part of which was the initial clue.
Below is an additional clue maybe !

From Croatia Airlines representative to Sarajevo Airport CEO

A new acting CEO has been appointed at Sarajevo Airport. Former Croatia Airlines representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ivica Veličan, will now lead the country’s largest and busiest airport. He has been Croatia Airlines’ general manager for Bosnia and Herzegovina for the past 10 years. Croatia Airlines currently operates 2 daily flights to the Bosnian capital.

Veličan replaces Bakir Karahasanović, a Sarajevo Airport veteran who has been running the airport for the past 17 years. Karahasanović has been criticised for having an extremely high pay which exceeds that of the Prime Minister, although he also boasts some achievements to his name. During his time commercial flight operations resumed out of Sarajevo and the airport went through renovations and upgrades.

Ivica Veličan has been appointed as acting CEO by the Bosnian government. His job will be not only to attract new airlines but also to push through the Sarajevo Airport terminal expansion. The airport has been criticised for its high taxes, which some believe has been the reason why some airlines have stayed away from it. This year Sarajevo has seen steady passenger growth.

A year ago I did a blog piece here as well as a piece in the magazine about the resurrected “Lazarus Machine”, Renegade Light Sport’s super sexy low wing, about-to-be Lycoming IO-233-LSA-powered, all composite S-LSA.

I found Renegade’s prime mover Christopher “Doc” Bailey at the flashy Lycoming display and before I could say “Lightning round!” he was regaling me, as only Doc can do, with the leaps and bounds the company has made in the last year.
I’m going to serve up the rapid-fire infostream in his own words, but before I do, here’s the short tell: the Falcon is done with testing, is in production, comes in two configurations, tricycle and taildragger, sells for $125,000 with a bunch of nice features (including 10" Dynon SkyView, full Garmin stack and dual electronic ignition) and if your mouth isn’t watering yet, I’m stepping to the side and take it away Doc!
“The first production model Renegade Falcon with the Lycoming IO-233-LSA is owned by our dealer on Long Island, NY - Steve Norman.  It’s the airplane you see right here (and in the photos).”

“The engine is FAA Part 33 certified.  The airframe is ASTM certified.  We’re done with R&D, we’ve been through a year of testing with the 233.  We’ve tested six fuel injection systems, five electronic ignition systems (and settled on the Lightspeed dual ignition system), four different exhaust systems (and settled on the Vetterman exhaust), and three or four panel mounts.  We just brought on the Catto 3-blade, nickel-edge composite prop, we also tested Sensenich and others.”

 “And we’re getting 1500 fpm climb solo, 4.6 gph cruise at 2400 rpm, and we’re just where we said we would be in a year.”
“We’ve put in 100 hours of test flying so far.”
“This airplane, Steve Norman’s, has everything you can get, the stuff I mentioned and dual Grand Rapids Synthetic Vision with built-in highway in the sky and autopilot; a ballistic chute, ostrich skin seats...”
Real ostrich skins? I asked.
“You bet, I’m the one who paid for them, they were real alright!”
“So many guys came up and said they’d flown Cubs and other taildraggers all their lives, and when 500 people tell you they want that, you better take notice!   So we now have a taildragger version too, with beefy, durable 7071-T6 gear for flight schools and a Matco 42-degree breakaway tailwheel.”

 “We’ve got five engines coming from Lycoming this month, we’ve sold six airplanes since we’ve been here at the show, we’re in full production here, everything is built in the U.S., we have a new autoclave system set up by former Boeing engineers, and like I said we’ve come a long way in a year.”
“Before the prop has turned 45 degrees, the ignition system is producing a 120,000 volt spark and the engine starts right up like a car.  We call this engine the Rotax Slayer! We’re getting 305 degrees on the CHT, 1000 degrees on the EGT, so it’s burning efficiently and burning cool.  We’re placarding max level rpm at 2400 to maintain the 120-knot LSA restriction.”
“Future enhancements will include room for golf clubs, wing locker baggage, winglets for more stability, things like that.”
I asked how fast it was now at full power.  “You don’t want me to tell you that,” he said with a laugh.  “It’s fast.  We’ll placard it at 2400 rpm for 120 knots.  We had a CFII bring it out here from Kansas City.  He was doing 140 knots at 2700 rpm.”
“People ask me, ‘Why not restrict the engine?’  That’s a huge safety issue for me.  If you’re downwind to land and the wind falls out, you may need all the power you can get.  Why restrict that?  If you go over that 2400 rpm setting, it’s on you legally but I’m not going to take it away.  It’s like CubCrafters did with their 180 hp engine, placarding it to a max of five minutes full power.”
“The first production taildragger Falcon is going to Switzerland, to the guy who started the Swatch company.  We’ve got orders for five, with seven airframes done, we can make five a month and all of it is out of our Lees Summit, MO plant.”

“Weight for the taildragger is 795 lbs.  For the tricycle gear it’s 814, with everything installed.   It gets off in 200-300 feet easily.  Before you get the throttle all the way up, it’s already rotated.”
“It will throw you back into the seat; with the Catto prop you really feel the thrust.  It really takes off.  We figure we’re getting 123-125 hp with the fuel injection.  With the traditional carbureted version, we were getting 120 knots at 2750 rpm.  With the fuel injection, we dropped 300 rpm to get the same speed, at the same altitude and in the same weather.  It just feels smoother.  We think it’s that 120,000 volt spark.   It was burning 5.5 gph with the carburetion: with electronic ignition, it’s 4.6.”
All that’s left now is for me to fly it for a pirep which I hope to do here at the show and let you know how much of this is real, and how much is “Doc”-ese!
One last word: the airplane, already a winner in the looks department, has a beautiful engine installation.  It’s clean, it’s elegant, it’s beautiful.  And, for those “graying” types Doc talks about who still don’t trust the well-proven Rotax, the Lycoming is the deal-maker.  It'll be interesting to see how much support this all-American, $125K looker garners in the market place.