Flight testing of the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle has resumed following a Dec. 6 incident in which an aircraft was damaged after landing. Opera- tions resumed with a 6-hr. 32-min. mission on Mar. 11 at Edwards AFB, Calif.
This Aviation Week&Space Technology editor received an up-close look at full-scale drone operations by flying in a QF-4 here at Tyndall AFB. The mission was a regularly scheduled recertification sortie for Lockheed Martin ground controllers, who must fly the QF-4s remotely every 15 days.
Curtis Brock (see photo) has been promoted to vice president-internal audit and shares services from director of internal audit for Alliant Techsystems of Minneapolis.
NASA Ames Research Center has signed a memorandum of understanding with Carnegie Mellon University to plan information technology research and development and education partnerships at Ames. Carnegie Mellon may design a graduate professional development program in infotech to alleviate a skills shortage. . . . The Air Force Materiel Command has chosen Tivoli Systems, working with Logicon, to manage its more than 120,000 desktops at 17 bases.
The first example of Japan's push for greater cooperation among its space agencies will be research on a dead rocket. The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) will lead experiments using solid rocket boosters from the H-2 program, which the National Space Development Agency canceled last year after back-to-back failures. NASDA's replacement is the H-2A, which uses different SRBs. NASDA had only one $170-million H-2 booster left in its inventory and was preparing to shift all launchers to the H-2's successor, the H-2A. But on Feb.
FAA officials said the left rear galley door of an American Airlines Boeing 727 was not opened in flight Mar. 8 to retrieve a strap dangling outside of the aircraft. According to the FAA's investigation, the captain depressurized the aircraft at 12,000 ft. and, following approved Boeing procedure, the flight engineer was able to pull the entire strap through the door seals. The door was never unlocked. A newspaper story, however, erroneously reported that the door had been opened in flight to retrieve the strap, which American officials denied vehemently.
China has voiced strong opposition to the U.S. providing missile defenses to Taiwan. But Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the head of the U.S. Pacific Command, tells the House Armed Services Committee that Beijing itself holds the key to whether that ever happens. Blair, who recently visited China, says he told Chinese officials that if they continue to build up rocket and missile forces on their side of the Taiwan Strait, ``we will have to think about theater missile defense for Taiwan'' to correct an imbalance in force across the Strait.
The Model 1522 handheld thermometer is the first to achieve accuracies as high as 0.005C and provide complete data logging functions, according to Hart Scientific. The battery-powered 1522 reads both PRTs (to 0.025C) and thermistors (to 0.005C) with user-selectable resolution as high as 0.001C. Using the automatic data log function, up to 10,000 measurements can be stored in intervals from 1 sec. to 1 hr. in multiple log sessions. Data sets are tagged internally with user-defined labels for ID and downloading to a PC using a high-speed IR link or standard RS-232 link.
Some members of the House Armed Services Committee are fuming that Middle East oil-exporting countries defended by U.S. troops have tightened the supply of crude oil, causing the fuel prices to skyrocket. But Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, who oversees U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf area and acts as a roving ambassador to those countries, is urging a more measured view. He notes that in recent years crude oil prices were at historic lows, straining the economies of those oil-exporting states, and now the pendulum has merely swung to the opposite extreme.
The UScan optical 3D measurement solder paste inspection system reduces the defect rate in the manufacture of printed circuit modules by roughly two-thirds via a patented confocal, multichannel sensor system. It simultaneously generates 160,000 high-precision height measurements and 160,000 gray-scale images per sec. while transmitting them to a PC for evaluation. Performance criteria are characterized by: a pseudo defect rate of less than 50 defects per million, high light sensitivity and gray-scale image dynamic, high 3D accuracy and large height measuring range.
Joel E. Biggerstaff, president/chief operating officer of AirNet Systems Inc., Columbus, Ohio, will also be CEO. He succeeds Gerald G. Mercer, who will continue as chairman. William R. Sumser has been named chief financial officer. He was acting CFO and vice president-finance/secretary/treasurer. Wynn Peterson has been promoted to vice president from director of corporate development of AirNet Systems and Craig Leach to vice president from director of information systems of subsidiary AirNet Express. James Ernest Riddle has been named a director.
Stephen J. Morrisey has been named Eastern U.S. director of public affairs for United Airlines. He was senior adviser to the U.S. Transportation Dept. general counsel.
Parker Hannifin Corp. used the National Design Engineering show in Chicago last week as a platform to debunk the ``myth'' that manufacturing is tied only to the ``old economy.'' Parker brought 27 new products to the four-day show to help illustrate the role high technology plays in manufacturing goods that improve the standard of living around the world, according to CEO Duane Collins. The company claims its new 8-mm.-wide X-valve, for instance, is the world's smallest valve.
Failure of Sea Launch on its third mission will set back plans by ICO Global Communications to begin a comprehensive satellite test program as the London-based mobile communications company continues to work toward emerging from bankruptcy. The Mar. 12 launch failure will result in another delay for the program, which was originally scheduled for its first launch in December 1998. Previous delays in the scheduled launch date have been the result of satellite development and launch vehicle problems, as well as ICO's bankruptcy last year.
Clare Brown has become director of corporate communications at the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority. Adrian Moorey will be director of corporate communications at National Air Traffic Services when it is separated from the CAA.
Stress Engineering Services offers a way to acquire and process virtually every signal variable used in stress testing and strain measurement. The StrainDAQ strain gage data acquisition system is an economical, high-channel count data acquisition solution designed for both field and laboratory testing use. The software is an intuitive, Windows-based ready-to-run program. On-screen pull-down menus offer quick procedure selection and simple setup of hardware and channels.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China will press the country's airlines to reduce services on trunk routes with a limited number of passengers, while increasing ``lateral'' flights to destinations with poor or no air service in China's vast west. China's airlines also must better coordinate flight arrival and departure times at major airports to enhance passenger transfers, according to Bao Peide, CAAC deputy director.
Continental Express plans to start a regional jet hub at New York LaGuardia Airport, adding 22 routes within two years. The regional airline subsidiary of Continental Airlines will use all-new Embraer ERJ-135 and -145 regional jets, and said it has filed for the necessary slot authority. Congress recently passed legislation encouraging the development of air service to smaller communities from slot-controlled airports such as LaGuardia. Planned destinations range from Buffalo, N.Y., to Birmingham, Ala.
The acquisition last week of Honeywell's Traffic-alert Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) business by Thomson-CSF's Avionics Group and L-3 Communications removes the final obstacle to the alliance between Honeywell and AlliedSignal, and creates a new player in this vital aviation safety technology.
The U.S. petitioned international authorities to settle its dispute with the European Union over the legality of transports fitted with engine ``hushkits,'' a move that U.S. officials said they hope will prompt the Europeans to negotiate a settlement of the matter.
The growing use of Russian and Ukrainian rocket systems in major joint ventures with U.S. commercial, military and NASA programs is becoming a mixed bag of business success tempered by technology transfer headaches on all sides. The tech-transfer issues are being further exacerbated by mission failures and proliferation issues that are as much about U.S. politics as missile or technology concerns.
The Next-Generation Space Telescope, the successor to Hubble, is likely to be one of two new projects to be added to the European Space Agency's long-term science program. The projects, intended for launch in 2005-09, are so-called Flexi-missions--medium-scale efforts with lower costs and shorter lead times introduced in 1997 (AW&ST July 21, 1997, p. 56). They will be chosen--in principle, by September--from among six proposals short-listed by ESA's Science Advisory Committee earlier this month.
SR Technics, SAirGroup's maintenance and overhaul subsidiary, has received a 15-year contract from Martinair Holland to maintain its MD-11 trijets. Monarch Airlines has selected SR Technics to maintain its Airbus A330 twinjets.
Like a duel with no survivors, Boeing and its engineers' and technicians' union remained deadlocked late last week with no movement toward negotiations. A small but steady stream of strikers, however, have been crossing the picket lines, Boeing reported (AW&ST Mar. 13, p. 42). Internal head counts showed 1,200 returnees in the first 30 days of the strike, Boeing said. More have come back to work since then. All told, 15,000 of 20,300 engineers and technicians remained out as of late last week, Boeing said.
On the eve of President Clinton's trip to South Asia, two anti-nuclear weapons groups unveiled commercial, high-resolution satellite imagery. They say the pictures show Pakistan is working to put nuclear warheads on the mobile M-11 missiles it acquired from China. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) turned to Space Imaging Inc.
