The Hobart Whisper Power can produce 120 kva. to meet the ground power needs of modern transport aircraft. The Cummins 200-hp. engine that powers the unit can be started with the push of a button. A starter lock-out helps prevent flywheel damage. An in-line fuel pump helps reduce emissions from the engine, which burns Jet A fuel.
A LEAP KINETIC KILL test vehicle failed to hit its missile target launched from Wallops Island, Va., in a test Mar. 4. A Defense Dept. statement noted ``deviations from the expected interceptor flight path'' in the Lightweight Exo-Atmospheric Projectile test.
Japan is to continue development of its H-2 launch vehicle this week with its third mission, the launch of the country's first recoverable space platform and a U.S.-made communications satellite.
Asia's well-documented air service growth, particularly the use of new wide-body transports, will be a major factor in the long-term success of Boeing and Airbus. The region's impact on Douglas Aircraft is less clear because its sales there are diminishing.
In the next three years major U.S. airlines will earn only modest profits as they struggle to reduce costs, rebuild crippled balance sheets and combat growing numbers of aggressive, low-fare competitors. The airline industry will remain in a constant state of flux through 1995-97 as it attempts to complete a life-or-death metamorphosis of its financial and organizational structures and corporate philosophies.
Peter Muirhead has become production manager of Aviall Caledonian Engine Services, Prestwick, Scotland. John Horsburgh is director and general manager of CF6 services, and David Crews is general manager of CFM/Accessories/Test. Muirhead was a management consultant in the U.K. and U.S. Horsburgh worked in project and contract management, and Crews has been with Aviall Caledonian since 1982.
This line of yttrium oxide paints can help stop interactions between reactive materials at high temperature. The thermodynamically stable properties of ytrrium oxide make the paints ideal for crucible and mold coatings in applications involving highly reactive molten metals, and as a reaction barrier coating between other reactive materials. Other proven uses include high-temperature lubrication/release with superplastic forming, diffusion bonding and hot processing. The paints, available in liquid, aerosol or paste forms, can withstand temperatures of more than 1,900C.
Frederick Sine has been appointed vice president-engineering services and quality assurance for Intertrade, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He was with UPS' Airline Div.
Cleveland M. Howie has been named director of marketing for the Nacelle Services Unit of Precision Standard. He was senior sales and marketing representative for AAR Engine Component Services.
While the Pentagon's top civilians are considering whether to ask Congress to seek a fifth round of military base closures, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Gen. John Shalikashvili, has said such a move is inevitable.
CAROL BOYD HALLETT will become president of the Air Transport Assn. of America Apr. 3, replacing James E. Landry, who announced his intention to retire last year. Hallett, a general aviation pilot, currently is trade adviser for a Washington-based law practice and was U.S. Customs Service Commissioner in the Bush Administration.
New, higher-performance products, an improving global economy and record orderbooks portend a strong corporate aircraft market over the next five years. Challenges include containing high operator costs, climbing interest rates and proposed FAA reform. Rapid and reliable access to and transit within certain Asian airspace also is necessary to maximize the utility and value of increasingly capable business aircraft.
THE FIGHT IN CONGRESS OVER FINANCING two new wind tunnels for NASA may go into extra rounds if Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R.-Mo.) has his way. Bond, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on independent agencies, wants to restore $400 million approved for Fiscal 1995 but dropped by the House in a follow-up emergency supplemental appropriations bill. Although the White House agrees the tunnels are needed, it did not provide the additional $400 million in its Fiscal 1996 budget request required to keep the NASA projects alive.
TioTech 20/21 are solvent and water-free coatings designed for application on metal surfaces. TioTech 20 is a 100% solids coating applied in a liquid resin system that serves as the carrier and the film former by converting from a liquid to a high-quality solid film upon baking. TioTech 21 is an ultra-high solids version of TioTech 20 that uses a small amount of non-HAPs solvent. It allows users to reduce emissions by more than 50% while making minimal equipment changes. Tioga Coatings Corp., 1440 Huntington Drive, Calumet City, Ill. 60409.
Christopher Maddy has been named director of communications for the Cirrus Design Corp., Duluth, Minn. He was public relations chairman of Aviation Expo 1994.
Structuring by major airlines will help U.S. regional carriers grow in the coming year, but tougher federal safety regulations will make that growth more expensive to achieve. The shift of marginally profitable markets to smaller carriers from major airlines has been underway for more than a year. But the process will leap forward May 1, when Delta Air Lines overhauls its schedule to refocus on long-haul, high-yield flights in an attempt to improve its performance by at least $40 million a year.
NORTHWEST AIRLINES' SEATTLE-OSAKA route, begun in January, will be worth more than $150 million a year to the Seattle region's economy, according to Port of Seattle estimates. Upgrading the nonstop, thrice-weekly flights to daily service would bolster related tourist and business spending around Seattle to approximately $500 million annually. Osaka's new Kansai offshore airport services the sixth largest metropolitan area in the world, with a gross regional product larger than the combined economies of Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan.
NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System data base is now available on CD-ROM for IBM-compatible personal computers. The system collects, analyzes and responds to voluntarily submitted incident reports. Specialized indexing allows a user to search more than 140,000 reports in a matter of seconds. A user can select reports based on any combination of more than 50 data fields. One data base contains about 40,000 accidents that have been fully coded, including a full-text paragraph description of the event.
The City of Los Angeles plans to transfer about $54 million from Los Angeles International Airport accounts to the city treasury, after receiving grudging tentative approval from the FAA. Airlines, represented by the Air Transport Assn., are upset by the city's latest move to divert airport funds to the general treasury, though they have not decided what action to take (AW&ST Feb. 21, 1994, p. 45). The ATA filed suit in February to stop an unrelated $8.7 million transfer.
The French aerospace industry's downturn is expected to come to an end during the next two years and will be followed by a moderate business upswing. According to GIFAS, the French aerospace industries association, overall sales in 1994 decreased 3.5% to $21.1 billion. GIFAS member companies last year booked orders valued at $18.2 billion, a weak 2.2% increase (lower than the inflation rate), and generated an additional reduction of the companies' overall backlog.
The HPR family of high-current feedthrough capacitor filters carries ratings of 32, 63, 125 or 250 amps. They also are rated for 50, 100, 200 or 500 v. d.c. With a maximum capacitance of 10 milli-Faradays at 50 v. d.c., the HPRs can reduce noise over a range of 6 KHz.-1 GHz and higher. These filters are well suited for power supply input and output, computers, military electronics equipment, and test and measurement systems and other applications. NexTek, Inc., 439 Littleton Road, Westford, Mass. 01886.
U.S. carriers and Air Canada are inaugurating dozens of daily nonstop flights on new routes between U.S. and Canadian cities in response to the completion of a new bilateral agreement.
AMERICA WEST AIRLINES plans to cut another 700 employees, on top of 300 previously planned layoffs. The company's workforce of 11,500 will drop by 1,100 as a result. The recent cuts will be mainly administrative jobs, while the earlier ones were the result of closing one reservations center and outsourcing commissary functions.
