Charles Whetsel has been appointed chief engineer of the Mars program at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. He has been acting in that position and was manager of the Flight Systems Engineering and Test Section.
This is a 3-volt, cold spare input/output (I/O) buffer LVDS (low voltage differential signaling) quad driver and quad receiver for spaceborne applications. Cold sparing is required to implement redundant system architectures or subsystems electrically connected without power supplied. Designed for higher bandwidth data communication, it addresses increasing demand to move large amounts of data quickly between systems or components within a satellite while consuming low power, generating low noise and having high immunity to noise.
TELEAVIONICS, A RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CALIF.-BASED telecommunications research company, proposes using civil airliners as relay platforms for broadband wireless voice and data communications, providing a cheaper service than low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites and fiberoptic cables. The $500,000-2-million cost of equipping the aircraft would be borne by the service supplier or equipment manufacturer in exchange for a share of the revenue stream. The Internet and data infrastructure, called WingTouch, would utilize avionics already in use by LEO satellites.
THE U.S. AIR FORCE F-15E WILL BE GETTING NEW COLOR Head-Up Display Cameras (HUDC) to replace the monochrome cameras now used on HUDs for documenting missions. Rockwell Collins' Kaiser Electronics has delivered the first HUD camera to Warner Robbins Air Logistics Center in Georgia, with 150 to follow for existing aircraft, and 13 for new-production HUDs. The cameras, mounted on the HUD in front of the combiner glass, record the outside world that will later be combined with HUD symbology and any sensor information shown on the display.
Smart Software received a U.S. patent for a ``system and method for forecasting intermittent demand.'' The system has been incorporated into the company's demand planning and forecasting software, SmartForecasts Enterprise, which is finding aerospace OEM applications in reducing inventory, the company said. ``Slow-moving'' demand is present when historical demand data used to generate a forecast includes a high proportion of zero values intermixed with random non-zero values.
SWANguard was designed to integrate with industrial engineering and maintenance programs by providing information needed to detect faults, and provide a condition monitoring capability for use with mission-critical machinery such as generators or pumps. The technology is based on monitoring and analyzing high-frequency sound generated by friction between machinery moving parts. Using patented stress wave analysis (SWAN) technology, the system is designed with fault detection capabilities in the earliest stages of failure progression.
Voters have thrown a new wrinkle into San Francisco International Airport's (SFO) plans to expand its runways. By a 3-1 margin, voters stipulated that they must approve any project that will involve filling in more than 100 acres of San Francisco Bay. The measure was written to head off plans by the airport to fill as much as 1,300 acres of the bay to extend runways. The airport is one of the nation's busiest hubs and is plagued by delays caused by rain and fog because separation of parallel runways is too narrow to permit simultaneous takeoffs and landings.
Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer reported a 34% rise in third-quarter net profit, to about $100 million, on a 42% jump in revenue. The company profited, literally, from a depreciation in Brazil's currency, as about 97% of total revenues come from export sales.
Latin American carriers, while struggling with the challenges of volatile national economies and foreign competition, still hope for vigorous growth in the long term. According to the the International Air Transport Assn. (IATA), the region's carriers were performing poorly prior to September, measured against the global traffic average (see table).
Richard Ziskind has become Connecticut-based senior vice president-private travel and Paul Desalis vice president-corporate shuttle, based in Geneva, for PrivatAir. Ziskind was head of charter sales and marketing for American Trans Air, while Desalis was commercial director of Virgin Express in Brussels.
Japan will buy two Gulfstream V special mission aircraft for use by the Japan Coast Guard for ocean surveillance and rescue missions. The twin-engine, long-range jets will be equipped with surveillance radar and Flir.
While U.S. regional carriers have been stung by the market downturn, they have fared somewhat better than major airlines because of regional jet redeployments on routes that have been flown by mainline jets. In addition to route trade-downs, the regionals have been aided by the momentum of their strong growth, their contractual arrangements with code-sharing partners and the fact that they tend to be the low-cost providers in a regional-mainline partnership.
The QubePak module is an RF life-test system used in production and testing environments. It supports the ThetaDelta's BakPak technology, a temperature controlling technique for burn-in and test of semiconductor devices. The technology has applications in testing mission-critical parts such as semiconductors used in satellites. It can control the temperature of either a single or multiple device under tests (DUT) and applies individually programmable DC, pulse DC, and AC voltage stimulus to each DUT.
Guangzhou Aircraft Maintenance Engineering Co. has made its claim for a much bigger stake in China's maintenance, repair and overhaul business with the ground-breaking of a $100-million hangar project at the New Baiyun International Airport, which is under construction. Gameco, a joint venture of China Southern Airlines and Lockheed Martin Aeronautics International, expects the 96,253-sq.-meter (1.04-million-sq.-ft.) facility to be completed in October 2003.
Airbus Military Co.'s industrial partners still expect to launch the A400M airlifter before the end of next month. In an 11th-hour decision, a launching ceremony scheduled to be held in Berlin on Nov. 16 had to be canceled.
This family of colored, low-surface-energy tapes are designed to replace aircraft top coat paints. The solvent-free film resists accumulation of surface contaminants. For aircraft surface protection, fluoropolymer construction isolates and protects surfaces from natural and man-made elements including jet fuels, hydrocarbons, petroleum, solvents, moisture and corrosion. The tape is stable, and resists degradation and discoloration caused by ultraviolet light exposure. It is designed to adhere and conform to complex exterior and interior surfaces.
The U.S. Navy has made some key adjustments in operating its aircraft to be able to handle the challenges posed in carrying out bombing raids against targets in Afghanistan. But the latest developments on the ground have created new problems.
F-14 crews participating in air raids over Afghanistan have expanded the use of the multirole fighter even as the first of the veteran aircraft head for retirement.
Boeing is making sharp cutbacks in production and refocusing preliminary design work on several future aircraft models in an effort to weather the unprecedented downturn in the commercial transport industry. Soon after airlines began seeking delivery delays for aircraft on order with Boeing, the company responded by cutting delivery projections and announcing plans to lay off up to 30,000 employees by the end of next year.
The FAA is giving Boeing 737 operators 60 days to comment on a proposed airworthiness directive calling for major rework of the aircraft's rudder control system. The action comes more than a year after the agency first warned operators of 2,000 of the aircraft in service in the U.S. that significant changes, including new hydraulic actuators and a cockpit alert system, would be required by 2006 (AW&ST Sept. 18, 2000, p. 22).
By Robert Gandt New American Library 368 pp., Softcover, $6.99 I have two admissions to make. First, I have known Bob Gandt since the early 1960s when we both flew U.S. Navy A-4s in VA-36 from the USS Saratoga. Second, I have read all of his books and enjoyed them very much, especially Skygods, which recounts the demise of Pan Am as seen through the cockpit window. Gandt has spent most of his life in the cockpit (he recently retired from Delta Air Lines), and his newest book reflects this unobstructed view.
Lockheed Martin will use Green Hills Software Inc.'s Integrity real-time operating system to control all the general purpose airborne PowerPC processors on board the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's avionics systems. Programming for the subsystems--navigation, cockpit displays, stores management, fire control and the like--written by Lockheed Martin and its subcontractors, will be developed using Green Hills' AdaMulti IDE development tools and Ada 95/C/C++ compilers.
Asian carriers counted on transpacific passenger and cargo traffic to sustain them during the region's devastating recession in the late 1990s. The strength of the U.S. economy encouraged business travel and brought markets for all sorts of Asian products, particularly electronics exports, to propel the information technology boom. But when Silicon Valley started going bust late last year, even some of Asia's ``recession-proof'' economies spiraled downward. The Sept. 11 attacks added another bruising blow.
