Gerald P. FitzGerald has become president of Parsons Brinckerhoff's aviation business unit, based in New York. He was director of aviation for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The Servostar is a compact, low-cost digital servo amplifier that can operate a wide variety of Kollmorgen brushless motor types. Servostar's control algorithms allow one amplifier to provide optimum machine performance with a wide variety of motors. Applications include defense systems, machine tools and electronic assembly. Servostar ratings are available from 3-55 amps. Kollmorgen Motion Technologies Group, 201 Rock Road, Radford, Va. 24141.
Planners at Hong Kong's new Chek Lap Kok airport say they are amazed at the expressions of interest they have had for building a 6,500-sq.-ft. business aviation terminal. The requests for proposal period will close this month, with selection of an operator expected in early 1997. About 60 proposals have been received from North American, European and Hong Kong interests.
Horst A. Bergmann has become chief executive officer of Times Mirror Training Inc., while remaining chairman/president/CEO of Jeppesen Sanderson, Englewood, Colo.
The Color Touch Station is a fully integrated, expandable touch-screen computer with a high-resolution display. The unit is designed for the shop floor. It is available in both Intel 486 and Pentium configurations. The touch screen can be wiped clean of most chemicals and solvents found in the shop environment. The touch-screen eliminates the need for a mouse. The station comes with a fan and filtration system. The unit can be integrated into a network. Greco Systems, 372 Coogan Way, El Cajon, Calif. 92020.
D. Dale Browning has been appointed to the board of directors of Frontier Airlines. He is president/chief executive officer of ProCard Inc., Golden, Colo.
Boeing has assembled a suite of advanced training courses to match its new high-technology 777 transport. The programs, conducted in the company's new $109-million training center here, are part of a growing thrust by Boeing to provide comprehensive, world-class support services for its airliner products. Such back-up can prove a key sales differentiator in a cutthroat world air transport market, the company said.
THE FAA IS REQUIRING small aircraft weighing 41,000 lb. or less--which includes a large number of turboprop-powered regional airline transports--to remain at least 5 naut. mi. behind a Boeing 757 during landing approaches conducted under instrument flight rules. These aircraft also must fly no closer than 4 naut. mi. behind a large jet such as the Boeing 727, and must remain 6 naut. mi. behind heavy jet transports such as the Boeing 747.
THE RECENTLY CONCLUDED agreement between Lagardere and British Aerospace to form Matra BAe Dynamics includes safeguards to protect sensitive national technologies on existing missile programs, including elements of BAe's work with Hughes for the U.S. AIM-9X program. The two companies also agreed that if Lagardere succeeds in acquiring Thomson, the new Anglo-French company would subsume Thomson's missile businesses. Matra BAe Dynamics will have a turnover of 1 billion pounds ($1.55 billion), a 2.6-billion-pound orderbook and employ roughly 6,000 people.
AFT FUSELAGE SECTION FOR THE FIRST F-22 air superiority fighter undergoes assembly at Boeing's Seattle facilities. The aircraft's rib-shaped center keel assembly (shown) is being lowered into a jig for mating with the F-22's 650-lb., all-titanium left forward boom. The right forward boom was loaded the next day. They serve as load-bearing attachments between each wing and the fuselage.
GREECE WILL BE USING AN AYDIN CORP. radar integration system (RIS) to combine the overlapping coverage from radars on a nationwide level. The system recently completed the provisional site acceptance in Greece. RIS provides the interface between a variety of military radars and air defense systems. RIS is a NATO procurement, contracted and managed by the NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency in Capellen, Luxembourg. Over the next year, RIS will become operational in three other NATO countries--Turkey, Denmark and Belgium.
Gilles P. Ouimet, president/chief operating officer of Pratt&Whitney Canada, is one of three new members of the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) board of directors. The others are: Alain Vidalon, executive vice president-technical affairs and quality of Air France; and Henk Wolleswinkeln, director of the Aeronautical Inspection Directorate of the Netherlands Directorate-General of Civil Aviation.
THE LAUNCH OF THE GE American Communications GE-1 advanced communications spacecraft on an Atlas Centaur from Cape Canaveral will be delayed from late August to at least Sept. 8 for replacement of the satellite's on-board computer. A similar computer is being tested at its supplier for a different flight malfunctioned, prompting a decision to replace GE-1's flight unit to guard against any generic problem from affecting the mission. GE-1 is the first of Astro Space's next-generation A2100 satellites.
Navy salvage teams are plucking the last major pieces of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 from the ocean floor and may soon start vacuuming the silty bottom to help air-safety and criminal investigators find small but critical clues to what destroyed the aircraft more than five weeks ago.
Functioning much like the new international space station to come, Mir this week is being used for research by six crewmembers from France, Russia and the U.S. following the successful launch and docking of the Soyuz TM-24 carrying a joint Russian/French crew. French CNES astronaut Claudie Andre-Deshays and cosmonauts Alexander Kaleri and Valery Korzun lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome Aug. 17 and flew a normal automatic rendezvous and docking with the Mir on Aug. 19.
JAPAN HAS COMPLETED 13 AUTOMATED landing tests for its Hope experimental unmanned shuttle program at Australia's Woomera airfield. The Japanese space agency NASDA and the National Aerospace Laboratory used a 1,672-lb. (758-kg.), 20-ft. (6-m.) lifting body called the Automatic Landing Flight Experiment (Alflex) to test the Hope-X's computer-controlled guidance system. NASDA reported only minor problems and concluded that all 13 flights were successes. The flight path involved releases from a helicopter at about 4,900 ft.
The Clinton Administration is having second thoughts about what once seemed like a slick solution to a sticky diplomatic problem--what to do about the F-16s that Pakistan paid for but were not allowed to be delivered in 1990 because of concerns over Islamabad's nuclear program. Secretary of State Warren Christopher offered them to Indonesia last year, and the Administration planned to use the proceeds to reimburse Pakistan.
Sukhoi and Rosvoorouzheniy plan to export Su-37s and other Sukhoi fighters with thrust vector control systems, raising the prospect that India or a country in Asia may achieve the first operational capability of this type in the world.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is considering using the wing it is building for Bombardier's Global Express business jet as the basis for a 90-110-seat regional jet.
Unless FAA Administrator David R. Hinson takes action before the end of the year, his successor is likely to inherit one of the airline industry's most controversial issues--implementation of new flight and duty time rules. Air Transport Assn. President Carol Hallett says the agency's proposal lacks any scientific basis, is unnecessary, and would cost the airline industry as much as $5 billion over the next 10-15 years. The Air Line Pilots Assn. also abhors the proposal.
C. Lloyd Carpenter has been named vice president-international operations for the Northrop Grumman Corp. Electronic Sensors and Systems Div. in Baltimore. He was vice president-technical services, logistics and capital resources. Other recent appointments were: William S. Carrier, 3rd, vice president-business development of the Data Systems and Services Div., Herndon, Va.; and Dean Philpott, director of the Wings Programs at the Commercial Aircraft Div. in Dallas.
Royal Brunei Airlines has big plans for Myanmar (formerly Burma), the Southeast Asian country whose human rights record has brought criticism from Western nations--although not from its neighbors in Southeast Asia. The airline has accelerated its plans for beginning London-Yangon (formerly Rangoon) services by a month to Sept. 12 and expects to start connecting services from Yangon to Brisbane, Australia, this winter. The airline's twice-weekly Boeing 767 services from London would stop in Abu Dhabi on the Persian Gulf before reaching Yangon and continuing to Brunei.
SERVOS AND SIMULATION INC. of Altamonte Springs, Fla., recently delivered a five-channel control loading system to Alphamation Inc. of Salt Lake City for installation in a Level C full flight simulator for an EMB-120 Brasilia aircraft. The 15-year-old small business designs and produces digital electric control loading systems to give the ``feel'' to simulator flight controls. The company is better known for electric servo-motors that replace hydraulic actuators on 6-deg.-of-freedom motion-based simulators, up to regional jet size (AW&ST Jan. 15, p. 56).
FAA inspectors uncovered additional, severe maintenance and pilot-training problems at ValuJet Airlines in the six weeks that followed the carrier's June grounding for a lack of maintenance oversight and other deficiencies, Aviation Week&SpaceTechnology has learned. The newly discovered problems, most of which have been corrected, came to light last week just as ValuJet appeared to be on the threshold of recertification as a safe airline competent to carry passengers on revenue flights.
