Habco's Precision Airflow Laboratory is available for annual verification of customer-owned aircraft engine support equipment. The facility provides accurate flow and pressure parameters, traceable to NIST standards, for annual recertification of transducers in vacuum flow carts and oil seal assembly flow checkers. The lab's airflow accuracies are 0.25% of reading for mass flow of 1-1,000 particles/hr. and 0.1% of reading for pressures of 0-3,000 psig. Habco Inc., 40 Sequin Drive, Glastonbury, Conn. 06033.
Tad Hutcheson has been named director of sales and marketing of ValuJet Airlines. He was vice president-marketing and business development of Kiwi International Air Lines.
The Spotcheck Jr. is a pocket-sized penetrant crack detection kit for use on metal and ceramic parts. Four small, replaceable aerosol cans containing a cleaner, two types of penetrant and a developer fit into the unit. The device can be used with red SKL-SP penetrant in visible light or with fluorescent green ZL-37 penetrant for checking for fine cracks under a black light. Magnaflux, 3624 W. Lake Ave., Glenview, Ill. 60025.
New England Aviators 1914-1918 Parts 1 and 2, Their Portraits and Their Records profiles 542 New England pilots who flew with the U.S. Army Air Corps, Navy and Marine Corps, as well as the British and French air forces. The set originally appeared in 1919 as companion volumes to an exhibit in Boston. The reprinted set includes biographies of these early aviators and photographs. Schiffer Military History, 4880 Lower Valley Road, Atglen, Pa. 19310-9717.
National Transportation Safety Board officials have dropped plans for a ``pre-hearing'' at the Calverton, N.Y., hangar in which TWA Flight 800 wreckage has been reconstructed. Also, only NTSB Chairman Jim Hall will preside over the Dec. 8-13 public hearing in Baltimore about that crash. NTSB officials had toyed with having the board's four other members preside along with Hall. The four are expected to attend--a sign of their interest in the investigation.
SermeTel Process 2000 is a chrome-free, environmentally friendly protective family of coatings for gas turbine components. The coating systems protect ferrous, nickel and titanium alloys against corrosion, erosion and fouling. They can be used on blades, vanes, spacers, casings, shafts, disks and hubs. Process 2000 consists of an aluminum-filled ceramic basecoat that sacrifices itself to protect the component and a chemically inert, glassy ceramic topcoat. Sermatch Technical Services, 155 S. Limerick Road, Limerick, Pa. 19468.
Saab Aircraft is considering pulling the plug on production of its two regional turboprops--the Saab 340 and Saab 2000--citing continuing ``considerable losses'' as a result of overcapacity in a tight market.
Two new pulse code modulation interface modules allow TEAC's portable family of Hi-8mm instrumentation data recorders to fulfill the role of expensive, stationary recorders in field applications. The RX-800 series recorders can be configured with five or eight asynchronous NRZL PCM data channels to store up to 2 hr. of high-frequency recording time on a cassette. As many as four RX-800s can be used together for synchronous recording. TEAC America Inc., 7733 Telegraph Road, Montebello, Calif. 90640.
A flyby of three near-Earth comets and a flight to collect samples of solar wind emitted by the Sun have been selected as the fifth and sixth missions in NASA's Discovery program.
Analysis of Radome-Enclosed Antennas by Dennis J. Kozakoff is designed to help engineers and scientists develop software for radome analysis. The book has sections on the fundamentals of antennas, an overview of radome modeling techniques and the approaches for software programming to model a radome on a personal computer. The book also comes with a diskette containing radome software code. Artech House Publishers, 685 Canton St., Norwood, Mass. 02062.
Airbus Industrie this week celebrates the 25th anniversary of its first commercial transport. The European consortium's first aircraft, the A300B1 prototype, powered by two 49,000-lb.-thrust General Electric CF6-50A turbofan engines, made its first flight on Oct. 28, 1972, from Toulouse-Blagnac airport in southern France. The A300B1, launched in May 1969, was followed by the A300B2/B4 production versions subsequently ordered by Air France and Lufthansa German Airlines.
FaroArm, a portable measurement arm designed with seven degrees of freedom, and AnthroCAM three-dimensional measurement software have been combined in an integrated manufacturing and inspection system. This allows UCAR Composites Inc. to conduct inspections and check surface profiles of aerospace tooling at vendor sites in 30 min., one sixth of the minimum time needed previously. The analysis can be conducted after a workpiece has been removed from a tool, minimizing downtime. UCAR Composites Inc., 5 Burroughs, Irvine, Calif. 92718.
The joint U.S./Russian crew on board the Mir space station are scheduled next week to begin a series of extravehicular activities (EVAs) to further bolster the vehicle's electrical and environmental systems and to begin work toward sealing the leak in the station's damaged Spektr module.
The U.K Ministry of Defense is turning to private industry to provide aircraft training for the Royal Air Force's fleet of Chinook, Merlin and Puma medium support helicopters. A consortium consisting of CAE Electronics of Canada and the Vega Group and Serco Ltd. of the U.K. will build, finance and operate a new aircrew training facility under a 40-year contract. It is valued at $446 million for the first 20 years. The RAF plans to make extensive use of simulators in ground-based aircraft training at the new facility at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire, England.
Multiple orbital sanders can be connected to the GB 833 vacuum cleaner with a HEPA filter to reduce paint dust levels during aircraft repair, repainting and refurbishment. A Gore-Tex main filter captures dust and debris, which is held in an 18-gal. vacuum tank. When using the optional HEPA filter, the GB 833 retains 99.97% of all particles down to 3 microns, keeping the level of hazardous particles below that at which employees must wear respirators and protective clothing under OSHA standards. Nilfisk of North America Inc., 300 Technology Drive, Malvern, Pa. 19355.
A CONTRACTOR IS EXPECTED TO BE CHOSEN SOON to develop and produce a next-generation airborne precision sigint (signal intelligence) system to determine characteristics of threat radars, for use on ``a classified USAF platform.'' The platform is believed to be the Lockheed Martin DarkStar or the Teledyne Ryan Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (AW&ST Sept. 30, p. 74). The High-Band Sub-System (HBSS), as it is called, is an operational companion to the Low-Band Sub-System (LBSS), intended for airborne sigint against enemy communications and lower-frequency radars.
GEC-Marconi, Britain's major producer of airborne EW systems, has just been selected to provide the passive portion of its helicopter integrated defensive aids system (HIDAS) for the British version of the AH-64D Apache Longbow. The system will include the company's Sky Guardian 2000 radar warning system, its type-1220 laser illumination warning system and a passive ultraviolet-type missile warning system (MWS). The two MWS contenders are the Northrop Grumman AAR-54 and the Lockheed Martin AAR-57, with the selection to be made by the Ministry of Defense.
Congressional supporters of the SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft probably don't have the votes to override President Clinton's Oct. 14 line item veto of the Air Force program. Instead, they will consider challenging the legality of the cut because the law that allows line item vetoes has ``national interest'' exceptions. The aircraft have been serving as a gap-filler until the Tier 2+ and Tier 3- drones are operational. Don't hold your breath for this to happen. Tier 3- crashed on its second flight in April 1996, and has yet to fly again.
New types of defensive electronic countermeasures systems, designed to protect aircraft against ``smarter'' infrared and radar-guided missiles, are attracting great interest around the globe and are highlighted in this report on electronic warfare. Some of these new systems are the first to offer defense against IR-guided (``heat-seeking'') missiles, which are responsible for about 90% of aircraft lost in combat. But operations in Bosnia emphasize the need for EW techniques that can more rapidly counter mobile surface-to-air missiles.
Iscan Inc. is experiencing strong sales of its new head-mounted eye-tracking system with more than 50 sales in the last eight months. The 8-oz. headband uses two lightweight video cameras, one tracking eye movement while the other, an outward-facing camera, records the general scene the subject is viewing. A cursor indicates exactly what the subject is looking at on a video monitor, according to Rikki Razdan, president of the Burlington, Mass.-based company. USAF's Armstrong Laboratory has ordered two for use in an F-117 simulator and in situational awareness studies.
THE EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY and French space agency CNES have scheduled the second launch of Europe's new Ariane 5 heavy booster for Oct. 30, within two days of the target established earlier this month. The slight delay was required to examine main-engine fuel-line mounts. Subsequent checks run on the flight 502 vehicle showed these mounts to be in accordance with specifications. The final item to be qualified, the flight program software package, should be cleared early this week.
Stephen J. Fortune has been named an Arlington, Va.-based director specializing in strategic planning, airline fleet development, aircraft economic analysis and aircraft trading, for MergeGlobal Inc. He was co-founder/executive vice president of Potomac Financial Group and Gemini Air Cargo.
