ABQ charter school teaches kids to fly planes

The Southwest Aeronautics, Mathematics, and Science Academy (SAMS) is one of five schools in the nation that offers kids the opportunity to learn how to fly airplanes. As part of the Southwest Learning Centers Charter Schools, the SAMS Academy teaches these kids both in the classroom and online. The schools have already established a record of success with some of the highest test scores in the state.

SAMS Academy is still a school with regular classes like physical education, but students say it’s also preparing them for life. “It’s really cool,” adds SAMS Academy senior William May. “I’ve wanted to fly planes ever since I was little. My grandfather was a structural engineer and he helped design planes.”

“It was very inspiring,” says 8th grade student Sebastian Haughney. “Especially when I was in smart lab because it allows you to go your own way and figure out things.”

School administrators say this formula of learning is working because the parents are more involved in the student’s education and kids are working in teams in what they call smart lab. They say that will better prepare them for their ultimate goal which is to fly.

“It’s something that I’m not able to do at any other school in New Mexico,” says Carina Sicola, a junior at the SAMS Academy. “… so it kind of helps because it’s preparing me for futures that will be so far above other people.”

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Source: http://www.krqe.com

P-8A Poseidon Makes Its RIMPAC Exercise Debut

 

For the 23rd edition of the Biennial exercise, the P-8A Poseidon jet made its RIM of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise debut flown by two air crews from Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 1 at Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe Bay. The P-8A Poseidon jet is a replacement maritime patrol aircraft for the P-3C Orion.

The Poseidon will replace the P-3C Orion as a long-range anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft. It will maximize the experience and technology of the Orion but with significant growth potential, greater payload capacity, advanced mission systems, software and communications. Six additional fuel tanks in P-8As allow for the jet’s extended range. “I had the opportunity to personally observe its great potential during a flight where the crew demonstrated each weapon system while we conducted ASW and ISR.” said Adm. Cecil D. Haney, U.S. Pacific Fleet commander who flew a mission with VX-1 earlier in the week.

“While the P-3C Orion is a very forgiving aircraft and has served the fleet very well, the P-8A Poseidon is easier to fly, trims well, and handles flawlessly [at low altitude],” said Lt. Cmdr. Chris Artis, VX-1 maintenance officer and integrated training team pilot. “It’s easy to maneuver, and the situational awareness in the cockpit is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Getting used to the technology and the different displays can be a challenge, but overall it’s fun to fly.

The world’s largest international maritime exercise, RIMPAC provides a unique training opportunity that helps participants foster and sustain the cooperative relationships that are critical to ensuring the safety of sea lanes and security on the world’s oceans. RIMPAC 2012 is the 23rd exercise in the series that began in 1971. 22 nations, more than 40 ships and submarines, over 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel are participating in the RIMPAC exercise from June 29 to August 3 in and around the Hawaiian Islands.

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Russia To Build New Aircraft in 2020

In a bid to give a major boost to the country’s ability to deploy air power abroad, Russia will begin building a new aircraft carriers after  2020, Navy Chief Viktor Chirkov said.

“At the moment, the construction bureau has received its assignment, the documents are being processed, and the money for the construction programme has been allocated,” Chirkov said.

If the plans reach fruition, it would be a major boon to the Russian Navy, which currently fields only one ageing aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov. The Kuznetsov, part of the navy’s Northern Fleet, was built in 1985 and has been scheduled to undergo a major overhaul.

Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov first announced a plan in November 2011 to construct new aircraft carriers, but also said at the time that the state had not provided enough financing. Another former Russian carrier, the Admiral Gorshkov, was sold to India in 2005, refitted and renamed the Vikramaditya. It is currently undergoing sea trials in the Barents Sea.

Russia is currently in the middle of a huge rearmament programme, with $659 billion to be spent on arms procurement by 2020, according to the defence ministry.

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Source: http://india.nydailynews.com

Eurocopter X3 Hybrid Helicopter Continues US Tour

Today, July 17, 2012, the Eurocopter of the X3 high-speed hybrid helicopter continues its U.S. tour in Fayetteville, N.C. where there the helicopter has made its initial arrival prior to the second round of flight demonstrations for military leaders and aviators in various  locations across the country.

The Eurocopter X3 will demonstrate its unique flight characteristics that includes a cruise speed of 200 knots, high rates of climb and executing high-speed maneuvers that are not routine for conventional rotary-wing aircraft. The X3 has already demonstrated a maximum speed of 232 knots at 80 percent power and a rate of climb of 5,500 feet per minute.

The tour was attended by employees, elected officials, customers and industry partners. It began when the X3 made its debut at the Grand Prairie, Texas headquarters of Eurocopter’s U.S. subsidiary – the American Eurocopter.

“I’m confident that military leaders and aviators will find that the cutting-edge technology we’ve developed with the X3 is truly a revolutionary development in rotary-wing aviation,” said Eurocopter President and CEO Lutz Bertling. “The innovative design and unmatched technology of our X3 demonstrator will have numerous civil and military applications.”

Eurocopter’s aircraft configuration for the X3 uses a pair of turboshaft engines to power a five-blade main rotor system, along with two propellers installed on short-span fixed wings. This concept is well adapted to missions requiring long transit flights and where speed is important, while retaining vertical lift and hover capabilities — all at a very affordable cost.

The company envisions a wide range of applications for its hybrid technology in future products such as long-distance SAR or Search And Rescue, Coast Guard missions, border patrol missions, passenger transport and off-shore airlift, along with inter-city shuttle services. It also is well-suited for military missions in special forces operations, troop transport, combat SAR and medical evacuation — benefitting from the combination of higher cruise speeds with excellent vertical takeoff and landing performance.

Eurocopter began X3 flight testing in September 2010 at the Istres Flight Test Center in southern France, where the aircraft easily surpassed its initial speed target of 220 knots; reaching more than 230 knots in level flight while using only 80 percent of available power. Beyond confirming its excellent flight qualities, maneuverability, outstanding acceleration and deceleration capabilities, the hybrid demonstrator has shown exceptional climb and descent rates along with very low vibration levels — all without any need for passive or active anti-vibration systems.

Established in 1992, the Franco-German-Spanish Eurocopter Group is a division of EADS, a world leader in aerospace and defense-related services. The Eurocopter Group employs approximately 20,000 people. In 2011, Eurocopter confirmed its position as the world’s number one helicopter manufacturer with a turnover of 5.4 billion Euros, orders for 457 new helicopters and a 43 percent market share in the civil and parapublic sectors.

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Crashed C-124 Globemaster Found on Glacier Mountains

According to the investigators, an aircraft wreckage was discovered this summer on a glacier in the East mountains of Anchorage that came from a United States Air Force (USAF) aircraft that crashed in the mountains in 1952 killing everyone on board. Joint Prisoners of War, Missing In Action Accounting Command that has military casualty experts looking, confirmed it was a C-124 Globemaster aircraft that carried 52 people.

On June 27, Wednesday, JPAC spokeswoman Capt. Jamie Dobson said the plane is believed to be a Douglas C-124A Globemaster, a heavy-lifting transport plane that crashed Nov. 22, 1952 while approaching Anchorage. The Globemaster was flying from McChord Air Force Base in Washington. With giant bay doors under its nose and four turboprop engines, the Globemaster, nicknamed “Old Shaky,” was the largest cargo plane in the American arsenal at the time, the only aircraft capable of carrying a tank or bulldozer or 200 soldiers.

“The evidence does positively correlate to that wreckage,” Dobson said.

The crew of an Army National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter spotted the pieces at the tip of the Colony Glacier where it meets the Inner Lake George deep in the Chugach Mountains 45 miles east of Anchorage. The JPAC investigators recovered fragments of the plane and possible human remains a few days later.

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Source: http://www.adn.com

B-1B Lancers Upgraded

As part of the Sustainment-Block 16 program, Rockwell’s supersonic strategic bomber, B-1B Lancers are currently getting their most advanced hardware and software upgrades. The upgrades include a fully integrated data link in the station and vertical situation display in the front. Updates on the navigation, radar and diagnostic systems are also being done. The 337th Test and Evaluation Squadron Assistant Director, Major Thomas Bryant said that the following upgrades will give them an entirely new aircraft.

The crew station will now receive five new color displays all capable of providing moving maps and data link integration. While the weapon system officers will now have a full “QWERTY” keyboards and controllers to interface with the integrated battle station software.

The pilots will receive a new digital flight instrument display providing more precise flight parameters. The pilot and co-pilot stations each will start receiving a new 8-inch by 10-inch multi-function display installed in the crew station.

“Command and control assets will have the ability to send us targets electronically, automatically linking into our system rather than manually entering the coordinates” Bryant said. “The new data link capability is huge for the B-1B Lancer.”

These new situation displays provide independent interactive, moving maps and link information to the front station supplying them identical information available to the station. Developmental testing for the entire Sustainment-Block 16 package is scheduled to begin around March of 2013. The B-1B Lancers will then be tested and will start to operate in September of 2013.

The former Rockwell manufacturer, now part of Boeing, B-1 Lancer aircraft is a four-engine variable-sweep wing strategic bomber used by the United States Air Force (USAF). The B-1B Lancers started service on 1986 with the USAF Strategic Air Command as a nuclear bomber.

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First Boeing 787 made in South Carolina to take flight

The first Boeing 787 made in South Carolina goes up for a test flight this week.

Boeing spokeswoman Candy Eslinger confirms that the first flight is planned for Wednesday. The plane will take off from the Charleston International Airport near the company’s new $750 million North Charleston assembly plant.

The commercial plane, which was rolled out in a ceremony last month, has been purchased by Air India.

The plant should turn out four completed aircraft by year’s end. By the end of 2013, the plant should be producing about three-and-a-half of the speedy, light aircraft a month. The planes are made partly from composite material of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic.

Manufactured by developed by Boeing Commercial Airplanes, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is a long-range, mid-size wide-body, twin-engine jet airliner.

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News source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com

737 MAX engine undergoing modifications

Boeing is continuing to tweak the design of its coming 737 MAX, the update to its workhorse single-aisle jet due in 2017, and has decided to increase the crucial engine-fan diameter from 68 to 69 inches.

Boeing spokeswoman Lauren Penning said the change stemmed from wind-tunnel testing that was completed last week and continuing work with engine-maker CFM International, a joint venture between GE and Snecma of France.

Despite the size increase, the nose landing gear won’t need to be raised for ground clearance beyond the 8 inches previously announced, she said.

The size of the fan on the new jet has been a matter of contention because Airbus is able to offer a much bigger fan on the coming update to its rival single-aisle family, the A320neo.

A bigger fan produces more efficient propulsion. On the negative side, it also adds weight and drag. Engineers must come up with the optimal engine size to produce the greatest overall benefit to the airplane.

Penning said 69 inches is “looking like the best balance of weight, drag and performance.”

However, on fan size, Airbus insists that bigger is better. Its executives argue that Boeing simply can’t make the 737 MAX fan as big as it would like because the jet sits lower to the ground than the Airbus A320 and there isn’t enough clearance to fit a bigger fan.

On the MAX, Boeing is offering just one engine: CFM’s LEAP-1B.

Airbus is offering a choice between a variant of CFM’s LEAP with a 78-inch fan and a Pratt & Whitney geared engine with an 81-inch fan.

In April, Boeing announced a series of design changes to the MAX, including the 8-inch lift to the nose gear, a change in shape of the tail cone and the introduction of fly-by-wire spoilers on the wings. Then earlier this month, it revealed a new type of winglet for the MAX.

Some in the industry have speculated that, because of the ground-clearance limitation on fan size, Boeing is struggling to come up with a design that will match the fuel efficiency of the Airbus neo.

But in a note to clients Wednesday, Richard Safran, aerospace analyst with Buckingham Research Group, wrote that “the revised engine fan size has more to do with optimizing the engine than a means to overcome performance deficiencies.”

And Scott Hamilton, industry analyst with Leeham.net, said that with the MAX still five years away from entry into service, “Boeing is doing what it ought to be doing in trying to get every little advantage out of its redesign.”

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News source: seattletimes.nwsource.com

Indonesia Finds SuperJet Black Box

An official stated that Indonesia’s national search and rescue agency has found the black box flight recorder from the Sukhoi Superjet 100 that crashed during a demonstration flight killing all 45 people on board.

The aircraft crashed on May 9 on the slopes of a dormant volcano about 40 miles (64 km) south of Jakarta.

Those on the flight included Indonesian businessmen, Russian embassy officials and journalists.

Wreckage was found a day later on a steep ridge of Mount Salak.

“The item found is the CVR, cockpit voice recorder. I have asked officers on the ground and rescuers to continue the search of FDR (flight data recorder) as well as the evacuation operation,” agency head Daryatmo told reporters near the crash site.

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 was developed with Western design advice and technology from companies including Italy’s Finmeccanica, as well as avionics and engine equipment from French aerospace firms Thales and Safran.

The Superjet, with a capacity of up to 103 passengers, is already in service with Russia’s Aeroflot and Armenian carrier Armavia and is half way through a 15,500-km (9,630-mile), six-nation Asian tour to try to drum up more international customers.

The Superjet 100 aircraft is being marketed internationally in partnership with Finmeccanica subsidiary Alenia Aeronautica.

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News Source: Aviationweek.com