Model Airplanes

On April 29, 1939, a staggering 50,000 people turned out for the dedication of the Sacramento Air Depot, which went on to become McClellan Air Force Base, a critical asset for the United States during World War II and an economic engine for the Sacramento region. Local historians say it was the first event in the region to draw such a massive crowd.

Military dignitaries flew in from Washington, D.C., and B-18 bombers flew overhead. Col. Harold Strauss, Depot Commander, opened the ceremony by saying, “It is difficult to realize that 2 square miles of rolling pasture have been transformed into this marvelous depot.”

Fast forward 80 years, and that pasture has been transformed again. The 230 businesses and organizations at McClellan Park include the U.S. Coast Guard, Cal Fire, U.S. Forest Service, California Department of Transportation, ATT, Siemens, Sacramento Metropolitan Fire, Mikuni corporate headquarters, Gateway Charter School and Twin Rivers Unified School District administration offices. The business park is 85-90 percent occupied, the airport and its 10,400-foot runway is fully operational, and 18,000 people work there. 

“What we hope is ultimately (McClellan Park) is going to be the premiere business park in Northern California,” says Ken Giannotti, senior vice president of leasing and marketing at McClellan Park. 

Successful Transformation

Eighty years ago, McClellan AFB turned the Sacramento region into a major hub for the U.S. Air Force and a critical player during World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the Cold War and the Gulf War. As many as 26,000 military and civilian personnel

Article source: https://www.comstocksmag.com/longreads/former-base-booming

An airplane is more than just a collection of parts, an airborne conveyance, or a style statement. Every aircraft tells a story of its time and place, and of the organization that spawned it. Sometimes it is a tale of toil and triumph backed by vision and persistence, a risk that is rewarded with marketplace accolades and happy customers. And then there are times when the whole process is tainted by hype, hobbled by cost-shaving compromises, subject to endless delays, carried forward by hubris, and ultimately, ended due to overwhelmingly poor return on investment. Airplanes so developed are monuments to managerial missteps. Airplanes like this do a depreciation death spiral. Airplanes like this, one imagines, get pushed outside hangars while their owners pray for damaging hailstorms and hurricanes to trigger insurance payouts. The Hawker 4000 is an airplane like this. 

Fractional companies canceled early large orders for the model as development dragged on for 14 years. Meanwhile, parent Raytheon Aircraft foundered and was eventually acquired with loads of leverage by an investment banking consortium. It renamed the company Hawker Beechcraft in 2006, a halcyon time for the corporate jet business that would abruptly end a couple of years later with the worldwide economic crash. By the time the 4000 finally made its way to customers in 2008, competitive products from Bombardier and Gulfstream had substantial head starts and had been flying for years. 

In addition, early-serial-number 4000s were full of expensive bugs, and solutions were often slow in coming. By the time

Article source: https://www.bjtonline.com/business-jet-news/hawker-4000-0

Such hybrid drones can take off and land vertically like multicopters and are energy efficient like fixed-wing planes — but there’s a catch. Since engineers have to design their control systems from scratch, actually producing the hybrid drones can be both pricey and time-consuming. That’s the problem that MIT CSAIL grad student Jie Xu and her team sought to address. “Our method allows non-experts to design a model, wait a few hours to compute its controller, and walk away with a customized, ready-to-fly drone,” said Xu, who is lead author of a paper to be presented later this month, in a statement on MIT’s website. “The hope is that a platform like this could make more these more versatile ‘hybrid drones’ much more accessible to everyone.”

Typically with hybrid drones, engineers design separate controllers for the helicopter flight mode, the plane flight mode and a “transition mode” that lets pilots switch between the two. Skipping the hassle of manually building three modes, the CSAIL team opted for a method that relies on neural networks to automatically compute a controller. With the design program Onshape, the CSAIL team’s system lets users select their drone parts from a data set. The drone’s design then gets inputted in a simulator that tests its flight performance.

Researchers often experiment with neural networks in simulations, but such methods often don’t hold up in the challenging, physical conditions of the real world. The team at CSAIL hope their approach can help close “the reality gap” between

Article source: https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/16/mit-is-testing-drones-that-can-switch-between-hovering-and-glid/

The appeal of 3D printing is strong and growing among manufacturers in all sectors. For those in the aerospace industry, this technology offers a way to quickly and economically produce lighter parts that reduce airplane mass and fuel consumption.

Sogeclair Aerospace S.A.S. is an engineering design firm based in Blagnac, France, that has used 3D printing for several years. Established in 1986, Sogeclair offers consultancy and management services to OEMs worldwide in product configuration, data management, aero structures, systems installation, aircraft interiors, manufacturing engineering and equipment.

Recently, Sogeclair engineers looked into the feasibility of 3D printing an assembly-ready airplane access door. This type of door is located at the nose’s fuselage and used by operators for airplane inspection and maintenance.

Working with Sogeclair on the project were casting specialists from CTIF and Ventana Aerospace, and technical representatives at Voxeljet AG, a German manufacturer of 3D printers that use binder-jetting technology to join sand and plastic.

Early on in the project, the collaborators realized that 3D printing an assembly-ready door presented many challenges, beginning with the door’s large size and function integration. In addition, the door is made of AS7G06 aluminum, which the aeronautics industry has not yet approved for 3D printing using the direct metal laser melting process. Also, the door possesses a thin skin with tight dimensional and geometrical tolerances.

In light of these challenges, the engineers decided a better approach is to cast the door in metal from a 3D-printed resin pattern. They optimized the process by using Altair Engineering Inc.’s HyperWorks software

Article source: https://www.assemblymag.com/articles/95070-d-simulation-opens-door-to-better-aerospace-parts