Sydney Seaplanes placed a large aircraft order from Eve Urban Air Mobility, a division of Embraer. Will it work out for them? The Airbus A350 has lightning protection issues stemming from expanded metal foils and paint peeling, leading to a contentious relationship between Airbus and Qatar. We also discuss new EVTOL designs, FAA regulations and more.
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Transcript Sydney Seaplanes Adds EVTOL Order, Airbus A350 Has Lightning Protection Problems & More
00:00:00:05 – 00:00:24:10
Unknown
This episode is brought to you by weather guard Lightning Tech at Weather Guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy. You’re listening to the Struck podcast. I’m Dan Blewett. I’m Allen Hall. And here on Struck we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection.
00:00:28:09 – 00:00:43:05
Unknown
All right, welcome back to the Struck Aerospace Engineering podcast. I’m your co-host Dan Blewett. On today’s show, we’ve got number one something for Allen to really dig his teeth in. We’ve got some issues with Airbus aircraft and their lightning protection systems.
00:00:43:15 – 00:01:01:16
Unknown
Some paint feeling some controversy over expanded metal foils, and there’s a pretty heavy dispute between Qatar Airways and Airbus. We’ll dove into that. We’re going to talk about the Dayton Zoning Board has voted to demolish the site of the Wright Brothers first bike shop.
00:01:02:08 – 00:01:20:18
Unknown
You know, disappointing decision, obviously for a huge, huge end of innovators in aviation. The grandfathers of aviation. We’ll talk about United deciding to put passengers on a safe flight. Not completely safe for one engine will be completely powered by sustainable airline fuel.
00:01:21:12 – 00:01:40:04
Unknown
Also, seems like a curious decision. We’ll talk about Pratt, they’ve announced an update to their A320 neo engine. It’s going to have more thrust, and we’ll see how that might affect their sales and their efficiency. And lastly, in our video segment, we’ll talk about Sydney Sea planes striking a big deal for 50 aircraft of Eve Urban Air Mobility
00:01:40:12 – 00:01:54:09
Unknown
four passenger EVTOL. They do a lot of commuter and tourism flights down Australia, so sounds like a really interesting proposition there. And lastly, we talked a little bit about Joby’s Simulator, which Allen that lacks foot pedals, right?
00:01:54:09 – 00:02:12:10
Unknown
And doesn’t have a rudder. Is that right? It’s a totally different configuration than most airplanes. Yeah, it seems really interesting and unique, to say the least. So let’s start with Airbus and Qatar Airways. So Reuters has obtained a number of photos which are pretty shocking.
00:02:12:10 – 00:02:27:21
Unknown
They they make this seem like almost a home brew, a homebrew thing like you don’t see paint peeling this badly. Qatar is very unhappy with Airbus. And both sides are sort of in a little bit of a tug of war about, you know, what’s going on, who’s going to fix this and how big of a deal this
00:02:27:21 – 00:02:46:13
Unknown
is. Yeah. So the A350 is primarily a carbon fiber airplane. It like the 787, so they’re comparable airplanes in that sense. And the the what Airbus has done is they’ve used an expanded what the article say is expanded copper foil as lightning protection.
00:02:46:13 – 00:02:59:04
Unknown
And so what you do is on the top layer, the carbon fiber, you sort of embed this, this mesh is copper mesh into it and that access your lightning protection and then that mesh gets over coated with paint.
00:02:59:04 – 00:03:14:04
Unknown
So the outer surface looks white like most airplanes do. So you kind of cutting this three layer thing, you got the outer layer of paint, this expanded copper foil and then carbon fiber structure. So the system that’s been around a long time, that’s a 40 year old kind of design.
00:03:15:01 – 00:03:34:18
Unknown
And one of the issues with any expanded foil. Is paying attention, it can be problematic at times, particularly if you have a repair. And what these photos indicate, like they had some small repairs that happened around the airplane that they tried to fix, and there’s their standard repairs, which happened.
00:03:34:18 – 00:03:54:02
Unknown
So as you’re sanding, grinding away on an airplane to make all the parts fit. It’s not unusual that you damage or sand into some of the expanded metal that’s on the surface and then get into your repair situation in which the repair is to put more mesh on top of it to add back the connectivity which you’ve
00:03:54:02 – 00:04:15:00
Unknown
removed. When you do that, that secondary process of sticking on metal and it looks like from some of the photos, it looks like it’s aluminum mesh, not copper. And it was stuck on there. Secondarily, is that you just don’t get it here properly and over time, temperature flexing that kind of thing can cause the mesh to kind
00:04:15:00 – 00:04:24:10
Unknown
of pop off, and it takes the paint with it. So the paint doesn’t like to stick to it, and then the metal doesn’t like to stick to the airplane. And that’s what the photos indicate that Reuters has put up on the website.
00:04:24:22 – 00:04:41:08
Unknown
So that’s I would say that’s not unusual. It’s unusual today in the sense that you don’t think you see it coming off a production line. You tend to see it on. Airplanes have been around a lot longer in flight when the Beach Starship came out back in the late eighties early nineties.
00:04:41:16 – 00:05:02:07
Unknown
They had an issue very similar to that. Pretty much every composite airplane or composite part with mesh has some sort of issue with paint adhesion because of the mesh that surround it, particularly on the cut edges apart. So like where the mesh can be exposed as you cut along a trim edge that can corrode or cause problems
00:05:02:10 – 00:05:22:01
Unknown
, it just it’s more cosmetic than it is a lightning issue. And these particular cases are the mesh looks to be visually to me to be a just a cosmetic thing, not anything critical in terms of lightning protection. And in the way you know that that’s not what’s usually critical here is the mesh.
00:05:22:02 – 00:05:34:15
Unknown
If the paint, if the paint soft carbon fiber carbon fiber does well with lightning strikes, it’s the problem when you paint the carbon fiber that carbon fiber doesn’t do so well. And the message there to sort of bridge that gap and what a real quick why is that, Alan?
00:05:35:02 – 00:05:49:09
Unknown
The paint, the paint controls and limits the were the lightning will go basically forces into a small area, and the carbon fiber, which is great at handling energy, just can’t handle that much focused energy in a small spot.
00:05:50:01 – 00:06:02:14
Unknown
And that just causes the resin to burn off and the carbon fiber to kind of burn off and do all this bad stuff. So once once you paint carbon fiber, the damage gets deeper and just more expensive to repair.
00:06:02:23 – 00:06:15:08
Unknown
But the mesh on it keeps a damaged light on the surface, where you can kind of scuff it, fix it, repair it. That’s why you use the mesh a lot of times on a non-critical things airplane structures is that it just keeps the cost down on maintenance.
00:06:16:09 – 00:06:39:05
Unknown
So this this one is really interesting because it’s been seen at some airplane airlines now. And Airbus is trying to address it. But if you’re in this really weird spot where I think you’ve got a brand new A350 and you’re already trying to fix on it, and more than likely the maintenance crews at these airlines have been
00:06:39:05 – 00:06:54:19
Unknown
trying to repair it and maybe not prepare it the way that it should be repaired. And they’re having sort of this continual problem. Go on. Thereby making the problem worse. That’s and everybody is like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. Probably like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:06:55:00 – 00:07:10:10
Unknown
Slow down a minute. We don’t have to fix it straight out. It’s not like it’s not a safety issue. We could come back and address it. But it’s expensive. Well, Yasa. He also has proposed an airworthiness directive that the expanded copper foil.
00:07:11:08 – 00:07:29:11
Unknown
You know, there could potentially be an issue of a cocktail of factors comes together. You know, adjacent fasteners incorrectly installed, then a big lightning strike. Then they’re saying maybe fuel vapor could be ignited. I mean, is that that’s obviously aircraft design they have to look to toward those crazy.
00:07:29:17 – 00:07:39:12
Unknown
What if? What if? What if? What if? What if? Right? Kind of scenario is, is that is that realistic? I mean, what’s what is the action item here? Is you also going to make them fix this or what’s going to go on out?
00:07:39:14 – 00:07:55:03
Unknown
Maybe the when we talk about fuel tanks, there’s obviously there’s more criticality and more focus on fuel tanks because of the consequences. If you get a spark in the fuel tank with the right temperature and right fuel air mixture inside of that tank like we saw years ago off the coast of New York there.
00:07:55:11 – 00:08:12:19
Unknown
The fuel tank can explode and from the lightning protection side, you do a lot of protection in the fuel tank area. Combination of meshes, foils, fasteners, faster types, all kinds of sealants. On the inside. There’s all kinds of layers of protection that go on to a wing.
00:08:13:06 – 00:08:29:00
Unknown
If the foil is having trouble on the foils, not a stall properly or the foil has been damaged during manufacture like Boeing. Had some of that happened on the 787 on the wing also, then you’re really losing a layer of protection.
00:08:29:10 – 00:08:42:18
Unknown
So instead of having essentially three layers of protection, which is kind of typical, you get knocked down to two. So there’s just less protection there, but you also have to have, you know, less protection. Something really go wrong.
00:08:42:18 – 00:08:58:06
Unknown
A lightning strike in that particular area. So the chances of that being a serious issue are practically zero. And that’s why no one is freaking out. Grounding airplanes right now is that there’s so many layers of protection that Airbus has just nine of those airplanes.
00:08:58:09 – 00:09:13:15
Unknown
It can handle some of these defects and allow them to go back and repair them. So that’s what’s happening right now. Yeah. And of course, Qatar Airways has grounded 20 of its 53 A350s, but it seems like they’re kind of acting on their own a little bit like this as they have their own regulator.
00:09:14:15 – 00:09:27:00
Unknown
What’s the what’s the deal with with Qatar? Why are they? It seems like they’re acting really separately from everyone else on this issue. Delta has some issues, I think, with 11 plane. But the Qatar seems to have the biggest problem.
00:09:27:13 – 00:09:42:14
Unknown
Yeah, and everybody has their own national regulator for the operations side. So when you’re in America, they have the actually the airlines operate under a different set of codes or regulation on how you maintain the airplane, operate the airplane, blah blah blah.
00:09:43:00 – 00:10:03:11
Unknown
So what cutter’s saying is that our national agency airworthiness agency is saying this may be an issue, but that’s all. This is political at that level, especially about the money you’re talking about, and the consequences are big for any airline if you have to take airplanes out of service.
00:10:04:20 – 00:10:26:06
Unknown
So it becomes part engineering, part political with some finance things done on the backside of it. So you never it’s not. It’s never just an engineering problem. Never, never. All right. So moving on the Wright brothers, obviously, their first bike shop is in Dayton, Ohio.
00:10:26:18 – 00:10:44:10
Unknown
And I suppose nowadays it’s been, you know, the shop has been vacant for years, and it looks like back in 2008, it was declared a public nuisance, you know, disappointing that this shop hasn’t been preserved. You know, it held as a historical, you know, make how many places like this have been made into music, museums and like
00:10:44:10 – 00:11:00:10
Unknown
cool places for people to be right. But anyway, this one has not. And it looks like city officials are now declaring that they’re going to demolish it. Elena and I think the some of the other historical sort of monuments to the Wright brothers have been moved.
00:11:01:09 – 00:11:21:12
Unknown
I mean, what? What’s left now in Dayton for the Wright brothers? There’s not a lot in Dayton. Obviously, the Air Force has its Museum Air Force Museum in Dayton, which is massive and beautiful. And if you ever want to get lost for about three days, go wander through that.
00:11:22:06 – 00:11:39:23
Unknown
But in terms of the Wright brothers, there’s not a lot there because Henry Ford bought all. I think they bought their family home, and I think the shop, the bicycle airplane shop, I’ll call it and move them up to Dearborn, Michigan.
00:11:39:23 – 00:11:54:18
Unknown
So everything’s up in Michigan and out of Ohio. There’s not a lot of Wright brother stuff in Dayton anymore. You know, obviously. You know, that became a big center for aviation because of the Wright brothers were being there, which is now sort of an Air Force thing.
00:11:55:02 – 00:12:13:07
Unknown
But there’s not a whole bunch of stuff, and it wasn’t that long ago we were in Dayton itself. We went to the Air Force Museum and I’ve been there a couple of times, but I’ve never spent any time hunting around for Wright Brothers stuff in Dayton because when you go there, there’s no maybe I’m wrong.
00:12:13:08 – 00:12:30:02
Unknown
I am just a generic tourist at that point, but I would think I’m your your key traveler in that in that marketplace, like I’m the person that would want to go look at cool aviation stuff and there isn’t it much right brother stuff there?
00:12:30:03 – 00:12:44:02
Unknown
I think we did go look around a little bit, but yeah, it’s sort of sad. Yeah. And of course, some opponents of the demolition on this building, and of course, they’ve deemed the building construction unsafe. But people are still saying, Hey, like, can we redevelop this?
00:12:44:02 – 00:12:59:06
Unknown
And, you know, use the original facade? Which do you see projects like that all over the place, right? Which are really cool. And but then again, I don’t know the the overall topography of of Dayton, and if that would really make any sense, as you know, might not be in an area where redevelopment makes a lot of
00:12:59:06 – 00:13:10:21
Unknown
sense, you know, who knows, but it would be cool if they could do something like that to preserve it in the air. Forces in the military has done a decent job over the last couple of years of trying to develop the Dayton area.
00:13:12:01 – 00:13:30:14
Unknown
So I get emails all the time about Dayton, Dayton start ups and and prove Dayton and bringing new energetic engineering type aviation company space companies in the Dayton. There’s a big promotion to do that, but Dayton obviously going through a transition like a lot of the former industrial towns.
00:13:30:15 – 00:13:43:13
Unknown
So this is just par for the course, unfortunately. And you’d think that someone would step up like, you know, Bezos or Musk or somebody would step up and say, Well, here’s $1,000,000 go fix the building. But that hasn’t happened.
00:13:43:21 – 00:14:02:02
Unknown
Weirdly enough, arts are moving on. Last week, on December first, United flew the world’s first passenger flight on 100% sustainable aviation fuel and one of their engines. So the 737 MAX eight flew from Chicago O’Hare to here in D.C. to Washington Reagan National.
00:14:02:13 – 00:14:18:15
Unknown
And of course, there were two CEOs on board. United CEO Scott Kirby was on the flight, as well as GE Aviation CEO John Slattery. Allen The big question is why did we need to put 115 paying passengers on this flight?
00:14:18:15 – 00:14:41:14
Unknown
I mean, what did that tell us and is that safe? It didn’t tell us anything, I hope. I think it’s just this sustainable fuel piece is interesting because I thought, Well, am I wrong? Still, that there’s a limitation that it’s 50% is the maximum amount of of sort of jet, a sustainable fuel that you can fly at
00:14:41:14 – 00:14:57:17
Unknown
the moment. But in this particular case, that basically filled one. There’s essentially two of your tanks and the 737. So they felt one side up with sustainable fuel and the other side up with jet air. So you got two engines burning slightly different fuels and put passengers on it.
00:14:58:10 – 00:15:15:08
Unknown
I’m sure it was FAA approved just had to be. But it just feels weird, doesn’t it? Like anytime they say test flights and you’ve got two passengers paying passengers on it that doesn’t ever feel PR wise like a good movie test.
00:15:15:16 – 00:15:28:07
Unknown
And paying past passengers are not the comedies that you wanted to a PR. And that’s that’s what I think. Dan, am I wrong? No, you’re not wrong. And of course, on this on this flight, you’re right on the 50% safe limit.
00:15:28:14 – 00:15:48:16
Unknown
And because one engine had 100% safe in it and the other had 100% jet etiquette in it, that equals the 50%. That’s how why they did this, but rather when they just did 100% on one engine. So interesting way to stay within specs, I suppose, but that doesn’t seem like that’s the same thing as you’ve said, because
00:15:48:16 – 00:16:09:09
Unknown
the high performance that you’re burning in each are very different. Yeah, or slightly slightly different. I what United and GE are saying is that, well, fuel molecules are fuel molecule. The engine doesn’t care. Well, yeah, it does, because there’s all kinds of additives and other pieces to the fuel mixture that make it perform the way that it
00:16:09:09 – 00:16:25:09
Unknown
does. So it’s I’m sure this is completely safe. It had to be. But the visuals on this are not great. I just don’t understand. Yeah. Well, it’s one of those things that has very little upside potential and just insane downside risk, right?
00:16:25:09 – 00:16:46:01
Unknown
If something had happened, you know it, you’ll be like, This is a baffling why and what world did we need to these hunter 100 plus people, you know? And the upside was a happy press release like one in giving a press release that lasts one day and right in the news cycle, you know, like, well, yeah, of
00:16:46:01 – 00:16:59:11
Unknown
course, I do appreciate that. The CEOs are on board because as we mentioned a little bit in the past, it’s good to have skin in the game right back in the day, people used to be held criminally accountable for their work.
00:16:59:12 – 00:17:12:07
Unknown
You know, if you’re a bridge builder back in. Yeah, I don’t know some time in history if that bridge collapsed and killed people. You were going to be in serious criminal trouble. If not, maybe killed yourself. Not say that’s right.
00:17:12:07 – 00:17:28:07
Unknown
But yeah. You know, the CEOs are on board like, we believe in this, too. And obviously the best example was the bulletproof vest. You know, the bulletproof vest didn’t catch on until the inventor of it took a revolver and put it to his own chest and pulled the trigger.
00:17:28:20 – 00:17:43:02
Unknown
And that was a heck of a moment. If you’ve never seen that video. But yeah, so at least they were there. And obviously this went off without a hitch. So no big deal. And like you said, I’m sure they knew that, you know, you know, with like 99.9 and 99% certainty.
00:17:43:11 – 00:18:00:16
Unknown
Oh, but still a little bit of an interesting decision. So let’s move on to Pratt. They’ve announced a update to their A320neo engine. They’ve added thrust to it. It’s going to be the boost their fuel efficiency by 1% with 4% higher thrust when it rolls out in 2024.
00:18:01:23 – 00:18:22:18
Unknown
Alan, how are they going to do this and how two engine makers, you know, continue to just squeeze more out of these engines, computers and technology? Those are the two. If they’ve made some slight changes to the the compressor section, which they probably did in terms of maybe some aerodynamic issues or improvements in terms of the way
00:18:22:18 – 00:18:38:12
Unknown
that the the the air fuel mixtures burns maybe a little run a little bit hotter. I mean, that’s one way to do it is to just get better fuel efficiency out it more thrust. I’m always amazed at these engines when they first come out.
00:18:38:21 – 00:18:52:23
Unknown
They seem like they’re kind of degraded a little bit. And probably that’s the right move, right? You want to get the engine in service a little while, get some history on to get some flight hours on it, make sure everything’s working right and then they start slowly removing those restrictions are getting more and more and more thrust
00:18:52:23 – 00:19:12:12
Unknown
at it. So if you watch the evolution of any particular engine, it just goes up and up and up and thrust the G what nine x G90, formerly the thrust on that went up crazily over time and and the when is doing the same thing, obviously.
00:19:12:12 – 00:19:35:19
Unknown
But it’s just a wonder when I when there’s a talk about efficiency and the sustainability of aviation, you point to stuff like this, like aviation has done a really good job of moving people efficiently, and it gets more and more efficient every day, every day because every engine manufacturer and every airline is looking for fuel savings and
00:19:36:13 – 00:19:52:13
Unknown
better performance. Yeah, I think that makes sense the way they kind of roll it out a little bit on not underperforming. But, you know, I think a good baseball analogy is when you are trying to get a scout to come watch a kid, you know, say as a pitcher, say the pitcher can throw 95 miles per hour
00:19:52:13 – 00:20:08:00
Unknown
some days, but not most days. It’ll probably get there in the future. But today he usually throws 90. Any time you see him. So instead of saying, Hey, I got this kid throws 95, which potentially opens them up to the scout being disappointed, you’d say, Hey, I got this kid, you can throw 90.
00:20:08:03 – 00:20:24:00
Unknown
You know, he comes out if he’s better than 90, wonderful, you know, he’s impressed. At the worst, he’s going to be what he was advertised to be, right? Is that kind of how they do this with these engines like set of expectations to a reasonably low but still high performing level?
00:20:24:00 – 00:20:37:03
Unknown
And then they can always exceed? Yeah. And the way that their framers usually pick an engine, they’ll probably pick it on thrust and costs and some other factors familiarity with the manufacturer. As airplanes get developed, you always get heavier.
00:20:37:06 – 00:20:46:19
Unknown
And I think the engine manufacturers know that. So they they have some reserve in the engines and you have to go back and say, Hey, Pratt, we need another 10% thrust so we can get our airplane off the ground.
00:20:46:19 – 00:20:56:14
Unknown
And Pratt goes, Oh, you know, that’s going to be it’s going to be hard, but we’ll we’ll try to make it work. And then magically, you know, six months later, it has more thrust and your airplane projects off the ground.
00:20:56:20 – 00:21:12:04
Unknown
So they know they know how airplane designers work. Yeah, it never, never. Airplanes never meet their initial weight, no matter how they how they do it. And then the engine manufacturers got to suck it up and get they get the airplane sold just need more thrust.
00:21:12:04 – 00:21:26:14
Unknown
That’s how they do it. All right. So moving on to our whole segment today. first on the docket is Sydney Sea planes, and they’re planning to hit the tourist segment of the market, and they’ve teamed up with Eve Urban Air Mobility to do that.
00:21:26:14 – 00:21:44:13
Unknown
And of course, that’s Embraer’s ALM, so they are agreeing to add 50 of their four passenger atolls. And that’s going to be around 2026 as their anticipated delivery data, I suppose. So, Alan, it seems like, you know, Sydney Sea planes, there’s a lot of tourism.
00:21:44:13 – 00:21:59:02
Unknown
They do a lot of flights just. Motoring people around seeing the beautiful country, the beautiful coastline, this seems like a use that we haven’t really heard that much about in the virtual space, but it seems like a great use for it, you know, short flights.
00:21:59:10 – 00:22:19:09
Unknown
You don’t need three hour time in the air for you to shoot around and see a lot of beautiful sights. Right. And this is a perfect application for electric aircraft, and we’ve seen some of that in Hawaii recently on some of those little shuttle flights where they’ve converted the Sky, Masterson and Sky Master.
00:22:19:09 – 00:22:39:18
Unknown
one engine is internal combustion, and I think the rear engine is electric, if I remember that correctly. And then there’s been some work over over in Europe doing something very similar. But these little shorter flights make a ton of sense and also because of the so the reduced maintenance costs, because if you’re making a lot of shorter
00:22:39:18 – 00:22:58:03
Unknown
flights, it can have a lot of wear and tear on an aircraft, and the electric motors should reduce the operating costs a great deal. But this the Sydney firm also had an accident a couple of years ago. I was reading some of the details of it where they had essentially carbon monoxide poisoning of the pilot and they
00:22:58:03 – 00:23:21:04
Unknown
had a crash and when they were switching to electric will eliminate that as a possibility, you would think. So it seems like a really good mix of improvements and safety, probably reduction in operating costs, operating expenses, maintenance, reduced maintenance and a quieter experience, probably as the aircraft are going to be quieter.
00:23:21:09 – 00:23:35:21
Unknown
So this really fits that that niche that the electric aircraft should be fitting into train aircraft trainers, which I think is by aerospace is doing, which makes total complete sense. Again, it’s a it’s a maintenance operational thing. They’re sightseeing.
00:23:36:16 – 00:23:50:06
Unknown
Yeah, go keep air. Keep of other one to my neck of the woods. Massachusetts is going to have some electric aircraft to shuttle people back and forth to like Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, that kind of thing. So there’s there’s just there’s going to be a lot more of these shorter flights.
00:23:50:06 – 00:24:05:20
Unknown
I think that’s the right answer. Instead of flying New York to Los Angeles or New York to London, I think you got to start smaller and figure out how these systems operate and then expand it over time. And hopefully that’s the direction this will go.
00:24:05:21 – 00:24:19:14
Unknown
Do you do you see that too, that that’s going to be the first entry market? It’s not going to be Uber. It’s going to be probably sightseeing. Yeah, I think it makes a ton of sense. I mean, you can rather than having to worry about getting from point A to point B and you know, how do you
00:24:19:14 – 00:24:33:15
Unknown
recharge a point be like you need a second? Obviously, there needs to be infrastructure everywhere you land here. You’re just making a big old loop and coming back where you’ve got your own fleet of them. So you’ve got all the batteries you need, you’ve got all the charging stations you need.
00:24:34:02 – 00:24:44:23
Unknown
You can set things up exactly how you want so you can rotate planes while ones, you know, charging back up or whatever. Yeah, it seems like it makes a ton of sense. You know, you can be really self-sustaining in your own little ecosystem.
00:24:46:09 – 00:24:59:16
Unknown
And I think people will be really excited to take up next next generation plane around. I know I would if the option was taken e-toll around Sydney or take a helicopter, I’d take it all for sure. Go like, Whoa, that’s cool.
00:24:59:16 – 00:25:12:00
Unknown
It’s yeah, let’s do the futuristic one. And like you said to me, yeah, yeah, it seems like a great idea. Yeah, I think that’s where it’s going to find a sweet spot early on. Electrics are and also on the cargo.
00:25:12:00 – 00:25:24:17
Unknown
I think there’s going to be a decent amount of little shuttle flights for cargo, which electric makes sense for. Also again, Dan to back to your point. Flying to Adobe b to a fixed fixed points, I think that makes total sense for.
00:25:25:00 – 00:25:40:10
Unknown
So there’s there is definitely a marketplace. It just may not be as visible to you and I. It’s not we’re not going to Chicago on an electric airplane in the next couple of years. We’re going to be flying a standard 737 type airplane A320 type airplane.
00:25:41:02 – 00:25:57:22
Unknown
But that’s OK. That’s OK. You got to start somewhere, you got to figure out the technology, and this is, I think, the best way to do it. So last on the line up today, there’s an interesting article from air and online about flying the job while flying it in their simulator.
00:25:57:22 – 00:26:12:10
Unknown
So Alan, one of the unique things about the Jobi aircraft is that it’s just it’s very different because it’s a it’s rather it’s a tilt rotor and B it doesn’t have rudder controls for pedals, that kind of stuff.
00:26:12:10 – 00:26:31:22
Unknown
Is that right? So I mean, what are what are the differences when you would hop into something like this? Obviously, there’s a lot more sort of engine management things going on because you’ve got these six motors propellers spinning all the time and there’s they’re using a Garmin 3000 series flight display system, but essentially you have two controls
00:26:32:01 – 00:26:52:05
Unknown
thrust in a direction. So on your left hands are thrust on your right hand direction up down. Left, right, forward back, yeah, pitch. Depends what kind of flight major and so, uh, it flies like you would fly, uh, computer game on an Xbox.
00:26:52:14 – 00:27:08:09
Unknown
So this may be this may be the first Xbox generation airplane just because of the way it flies. And one of the interesting things they talked about was the aircraft. When you when you bank an airplane, it tends to stay banked like a standard airplane.
00:27:08:09 – 00:27:20:01
Unknown
You put on a tenant and stay there, take your hands off. It tends to stay there or do any any kind of configuration on an airplane. You pointed in a direction. It’ll keep going that direction. And this aircraft, it wants to come back to neutral.
00:27:20:01 – 00:27:36:13
Unknown
So it’s always seems to be kind of coming back to neutral, which which is unusual for pilots. So there’s a lot of it may be intuitive for a kid who’s never flown an airplane, but I think for a pilot that would take a little bit of time to figure out, plus the lack of rudder pedals would be
00:27:36:20 – 00:27:49:12
Unknown
odd. I think, like, what do you do with your feet? Because you do a lot with your feet on the ground, one you steer the airplane. That’s how you get it. Moving around as you taxi is with your feet.
00:27:50:10 – 00:28:18:02
Unknown
But then, yeah, so I always wonder if what has evolved in terms of flight controls today is is is is driven only by engineering or is a combination of engineering plus human. Reaction, comfortability, things. It goes back to like the the there’s a big discussion about Tesla and they’re a little steering wheel.
00:28:18:02 – 00:28:30:21
Unknown
It does. It’s not round anymore. So it’s kind of got the I don’t know the yoke to handle over the yoke. Yeah, OK. Right, OK. So there’s a lot of discussion, like some people like it, some people really hate it and like, OK, you know, you could really hate it.
00:28:30:21 – 00:28:52:07
Unknown
That’s fine. But is is it an improvement on safety as less safe? I think that there’s arguments made in both cases, and I think with Jobi, if you’re taking pilots that have, say, ten years of flight experience, then you know, piston airplanes or king errors or whatever kind of airplane or jets are flying a citation or something
00:28:52:07 – 00:29:06:15
Unknown
like that. I think it’s going to take a little bit of time to transition into this different flight configuration. So I mean, that was part of the part 23 rule change that happened a couple of years ago, 2017, where they try to be less.
00:29:07:12 – 00:29:20:05
Unknown
The regulations were less prescriptive about what the airplane supposed to look like and just said it needs to perform like this inside this box. You can you can do things, but as long as you don’t go outside the box, it’s fine.
00:29:20:16 – 00:29:34:12
Unknown
And that’s the way the rules are written right now. So I think Joby has taken advantage of that and saying, OK, let’s rethink the way. We interfaced with the pilots. But again, it’s sort of jury is out, if it is, it’s as safe, less safe.
00:29:34:12 – 00:29:46:22
Unknown
Seem to. You know, better safety. Who knows, until we get some more flight time and we really we haven’t. Joby, has it put, at least to my knowledge. Joby hasn’t put a real human pilot in the airplane yet.
00:29:47:23 – 00:30:03:10
Unknown
So we don’t even really have any feedback, precise simulator. Today, so I’m curious as the flight, as you get to flight test pilots getting in an airplane, especially as you get more and more airplanes built and you put in more and more flight test pilots in it and ordinary pilots in it.
00:30:03:13 – 00:30:19:12
Unknown
What that outcome looks like, don’t, don’t you? Can you see how that can be confusing in someone’s head? Like, I know how to fly this way, but this airplane reacts differently. Yeah, of course. This article by Matt Thurber, he was the one invited to try out the simulator.
00:30:19:13 – 00:30:34:16
Unknown
He had seemed like a remarkable experience to me, he said. Here’s a quote he said. I’ve never felt so in control of an aircraft and so free to focus on flying tasks rather than on constant control manipulation. This was like a flying, a fictional imaginary perfect aircraft.
00:30:35:01 – 00:30:48:16
Unknown
I can’t think of any other way to describe it. So he seemed to really enjoy it like this would seemed like. And the way he describes it, how if you let go of certain controls or just sort of back off a certain thing or turn the wheels certain way, it’ll just sort of go back and do a
00:30:48:16 – 00:31:04:14
Unknown
quick hover. It sounds a lot like the way drones and I’ve, you know, piloted some, yeah, small drones. I’m not certainly not even a drone enthusiast, but flying a drone was very easy to DJI one. I just got rid of it recently, but I’m considering a different one.
00:31:05:00 – 00:31:20:00
Unknown
But yeah, in general, they’re super easy to fly. And when you do certain things, they sort of go back to like a neutral, like a hover, and they’re programed to keep everything like, you’re not going to crash a DJI drone unless you try, especially if it has some sort of obstacle avoidance.
00:31:20:12 – 00:31:35:11
Unknown
And it sounds kind of similar with with with the Joby Aviation. So, so yeah, a really interesting. Like I said, I don’t obviously have any experience flying or even building a simulator, but the way he describes it sounds like the future sounds really safe.
00:31:35:11 – 00:32:01:15
Unknown
It sounds really intuitive. It sounds really simple, which seems great. Again, the Part 23 regulation change is going to bring up a number of pilot interface aircraft performance changes that we haven’t seen in 50 years, 60 years in terms of how aircraft work, what they do, what they look like even is going to change dramatically because the
00:32:01:15 – 00:32:15:01
Unknown
regulations have loosened up on them. And I think as we go through this process, we just got to keep in mind. We’re still dealing with humans and human interactions like Boeing went through on the 737 on the MAX.
00:32:15:17 – 00:32:32:23
Unknown
And I saw an article about the MAX today, which was written completely incorrectly about what actually happened there. But the human reaction was part of the reason they had problems. Again, you’ve got to take that consideration, so you only learned that through thousands of hours of flight time.
00:32:33:03 – 00:32:47:02
Unknown
So job is going to learn and I’m really I’m really anticipating to hear more and more about how the aircraft flies, especially as it getting into people flight test. Well, that’s going to do it for this week’s episode of the Struc Aerospace Engineering podcast.
00:32:47:02 – 00:32:58:14
Unknown
Thanks so much for listening! Be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, wherever you’re listening or watching. Leave us a review or leave us a comment. Love to hear from you! So thanks again, and we’ll see you here next week on Struck.
